I Switched to XFCE!

[@TheLinuxCast]

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[@Infinite3Fold888]

WELCOME TO THE XFCE PARTY MY DUDE!!

[@xXUnrulyXx]

ive had the same issue as you with the monitors not shutting down etc.. a work around for that for me, was i put a power splitter/surge protector on my desk out of the way, and i just reach over and flip the switch to kill both. i also run a dual pc setup and have relocated both power buttons to my desktop as well (theres kits on amazon that facilitate this). now i run a single monitor in linux, and i dont run my pc's 24/7 anymore. and last i checked, my single monitor went into standby with no issues what so ever.. try (temporarily) unplugging the secondary monitor and see if the single monitor goes to sleep like it should. my primary is a 28 inch samsung 144hz 4k, and my secondary is an MSI Artymis 32inch 1440p for reference, and both will go to sleep while plugged in as single.. but when they are plugged in and used together, is when the sleep issue would happen. good luck! cheers!

[@xXUnrulyXx]

oh..about your mic issue.. youre using an SM7b dynamic microphone, with a Fethead inline pre-amp... that mic should be closer to your face and off to the side, and pointing at your mouth about a fist distance away from your mouth. from the SM7b user guide: Speak directly into the mic, 1 to 6 inches (2.54 to 15 cm) away to block off-axis noise. For a warmer bass response, move closer to the microphone. For less bass, move the microphone away from you. (you will need to recalibrate your gain settings when you do this) cheers!

[@abhisekmukherjee]

Still on XFCE?

[@ArniesTech]

XFCE is like this old friend who will never be angry at you for going Out on adventures and instead will greet you with open arms when you come back ❤️🙏

[@mearetom]

Man I agree, Feels welcoming and same.

[@lynn_targz]

You're so right! ❤️

[@itsfkf6106]

True

[@folksurvival]

Same with MATE.

[@troyroa7768]

Sounds like The Parable of the Prodigal Son

[@Zeioth]

XFCE was the reason why I came to linux in the first place. Best desktop environment. I won't change my mind.

[@samuele5931]

Gnome is both more updated and still not buggy and thought (although it is not as traditional as XFCE), halso has Wayland. XFCE is very good and it is a bit sad to see countless projects that basically create something very similar but does not work improving XFCE: Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie come to mind. XFCE was also the default for a version of Debian: an huge accomplishment for a project that is basically without sponsor compared to GNOME (that also work on GTK) and KDE

[@uncrunch398]

@@samuele5931 I went with XFCE a long time ago when I ran a computer without a lot of RAM and found out it was the lightest that had most of the functionality I wanted. The rest it "imported" from Gnome. I stuck with it because a lighter desktop means snappier usability regardless of hardware because it saves space and bandwidth between your CPU, GPU and RAM. That means all applications can make better use of all resources they require. In the interim I learned KDE lost weight and became more efficient/snappier. Still haven't tried it in over a decade.

[@prasadk289]

@@samuele5931 GNOME is for those who want to try something unusual . (for anything conventional you've gotta use extensions).

[@j1d7s]

For me, having a keyboard-driven, fast user experience is the main point. I once thought I need a tiling window manager for that (bspwm in my case), but nowadays I just use XFCE and have keyboard shortcuts for the main UI operations (switching workspaces, moving applications to workspaces, tiling to the left, right, bottom, top, top-left,...). I am also using tmux, so I get the tiling for terminals there. If I used bigger monitors and not mostly laptops, I may be going back to tiling window managers since then it would make sense to have more than one window automatically laid out on a single workspace.

[@Phoenixwizard77]

Xfce is my favorite desktop environment. It's so light and so customizable.

[@dguimaraes]

XFCE has been my choice since 2003 or 2004 when version 4.0 was released... Right now I am using Gnome in my personal computer, but I still use XFCE in my work computer. It is the perfect desktop environment for virtualized systems, as you can disable all eye candy and have a very snappy experience. I don´t personalize it much though -- I just change the panels to follow the old-school CDE style and leave the desktop color as the windows 2000 teal.

[@michaelthomas5662]

I have used XFCE since the early version 3. I liked its simple and stable environment. During the early stages of version 4 development I helped this desktop shed some of its aged user connections such as using the CDE desktop style. I beta tested quite a lot of tools with the best feedback I could offer.

[@AdriaanW1966]

I am using Debian and Xfce for many many years. Sometimes I was distro hopping, but i always came back to this rock solid combination. It works for me, so I will stick to this.

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

Same here, Debian + Xfce is the way to go.Thus my main is MX which adds the MX Tools and a good-looking out-of-the-box design.

[@toddpark2893]

I agree. I use Debian XFCE. Solid and quick 🙂

[@folksurvival]

Debian (or better yet Devuan) and XFCE is a great combo.

[@skelebro9999]

Finally he became a chad Xfce enjoyer.

[@stephenwilson0386]

Matt - I had pretty much the exact issue as you regarding monitors not going to sleep when I first started using Linux. Drove me absolutely nuts. I finally figured out there was a setting on my monitor itself (Acer) called Auto Source, which apparently looks for another available input when it loses signal (i.e. Linux tries to put it to sleep). Turning that off fixed the issue immediately. Something to look for if your monitors have an option like that.

[@Mr.Finkel]

i removed my rx6700xt because i couldnt figure out the monitor sleep issue. i'll have to check this out. i have an acer monitor too

[@danielwebofrito2]

XFCE has just updated to 4.18 so it's a great time to install it! it's been my favourite Linux home for 10+ years! from Pentium 4s to the latest hardware, runs beatifully everywhere!

[@rishirajsaikia1323]

And yet no Wayland support.

[@folksurvival]

@@rishirajsaikia1323 Doesn't matter.

[@rishirajsaikia1323]

@@folksurvival I want it now !

[@themisterchristie]

I use XFCE regularily and haven't delved extremely deep into it. For the ALT+TAB switching to go reverse you don't have to do ALT+TAB then ALT+SHIFT+TAB, just ALT+SHIFT+TAB will work fine. For the the monitor power managment and having the options in two places, that could be a Fedora issue. I run Linux Mint XFCE and it handles the screen sleep consistently and properly. Also there is no Screen Saver Settings screen in Linux Mint XFCE. As a note, I'm not using multiple monitors and am running on a laptop that is plugged in. XFCE is great, not as fancy as KDE or Gnome, but I find it is more usable for me.

[@eriksiers]

I've been using xfce since... 2005? I've tried other WMs but none of them really do it for me.

[@davidrichardson2513]

Matt, showing temperature in weather app is very easy. Right-click it, set your location then you will see a dialogue box called "scrollbox" I think. From that, you can add various criteria such as temperature, wind speed, apparent temperature, wind direction etc. Whatever you select and add to your list will display on the panel bar and alternate each choice. Hope this helps.

[@snowhusk]

thank you!

[@miljantrajkovic1862]

To quote Taylor Swift: "Somewhere in the haze, got a sense I'd been betrayed" - GNOME right now

[@ArniesTech]

🤣🤣🤣Bravo

[@topherfungus8424]

xfce4-terminal is great, and it supports nerd fonts no problem. Also you should search for color schemes for it.... it's definitely my favorite terminal. Also if you switch your xfce4-panel workspace switcher to the icon view, you can drag windows to your other desktops. You can do that with the keyboard, too.... but it's pretty nice to be able to see which programs are open on which desktop

[@TheLinuxCast]

The nerd fonts just don't show up for me, IDK why. They show up everywhere else.

[@herrpez]

@@TheLinuxCast Doesn't really matter. Gnome Terminal = xfce4-terminal = Terminator. Kinda. They use the same engine, if you will, and just add stuff on top. Whichever one you use will function much the same as the others... but you get *more* stuff if you use a spin-off of Gnome Terminal.

[@michaelthomas5662]

@@TheLinuxCast Make sure that you are setting the fonts in the right location. With XFCE and similar terminals you can make some font settings through its control panel. You can also set certain font controls including the actual font & size inside the program itself. I always set them here to ensure the mono-space fonts always work. My preferred font is Terminus or xos4 Terminus. I love the old school style that they bring to my terminal. After 40 years of working with various terminals I just feel more at home with these. I think the font style reminds me of my Apple 2+, 2e and 2c days and the many, many hours that I spent configuring DOS computers.

[@camerontgore]

I would love to see a follow up video when you get the window movement key bindings down! I switch between xfce and qtile and the one thing I always miss in xfce is knowing where windows will open and how to quickly snap them in place from the keyboard!

[@Shugari26]

Nice experiment, i think xfce was a good choice! I actually started my Linux journey with MX standard xfce edition and still enjoy it! For the terminal i would go with with kitty, with some configurations it fits in every DE or WM!

[@iodreamify]

You can also press alt + tab and then while holding alt use the arrow keys to select a window

[@thechadbuddha]

nice thank you i didnt know that

[@gunthergamefreak2689]

Lean, efficient and configurable. What more do we need?

[@zayta0]

Xfce has been working well for me during past months, i used to be wm user before but having to set up from scratch is just tiring to me. Xfce is easy to set up while you get to customize it just like you do with wm. Don't forget its stability tooo

[@N0zer0]

You can save and reuse your WM's config files. No need to set everything up from scratch.

[@browser1685]

rofi has a task switcher rofi -show window -sidebar-mode -show-icons -location 5

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Typing this from Gnome 43; glad you picked XFCE! Fantastic desktop and doesn't reinvent the wheel even as a version releases 2-3 years after the last. Honestly, all DE's are pretty keyboard-fluid, I hadn't missed too much going from i3 to Gnome. I've given up extensions right now and am holding up just fine. I've now limited my ricing to container-specific color schemes.

[@nado911]

Niceeee, there's something about XFCE to me that says: "Alright time to get shit done." I also had a similar stress on productivity last year and my conclusion was, everything didn't matter, just give me tmux LOL

[@mikacasaubon8219]

My new love is Gnome (I know, I know), but once you get used to it, I think is the perfect combination between window manager and desktop envirnoment since it's very keyboard oriented. Fedora workstation may very well be the best linux experience I've had so far and the defiinitive cure for my distro hopping. I hope you can give Gnome another chance and maybe do a long term review sometime, it would be interesting to see if your opinion has changed. Thanks for the content, Mat!

[@gogereaver349]

gnome is good if you like its layout bone stock otherwise its a total shit show tying to customize it.

[@sagichdirdochnicht4653]

There is NOTHING wrong with Gnome or using Gnome. There is nothing wrong with using ANY other DE or window manager. Use what is comfortable to you and what feels right to you. If that happens to be the case with Gnome - use Gnome and be happy about it. I personally use KDE at the moment and I'm very happy with it. The beauty with KDE is, that KDE really is what you want it to be. KDE can be very, very keyboard oriented, if you want it to.

[@mikacasaubon8219]

@JestyJoshua No. I'd like to try it though

[@gogereaver349]

@@sagichdirdochnicht4653 same camp hear. like i said gnome on its own good. but the second you wanna make changes its a dumpster fire. why i use kde i can change almost everything without the need for broken outdated extensions

[@sagichdirdochnicht4653]

@@gogereaver349 Yep. I really like Gnome, but out of the box it ain't customizeable at all. If all you need are some minor changes/ addons it'll be fine. Which is probably fine for most users. If you wanna customize tough, make your desktop your own, gnome just sucks. You may (...or may not) get it working the way you want, but it WILL most likely break. It may work again, once stuff has been updated... But a half working desktop at any time is just not acceptable. .... But then again, if one likes Gnome and doesn't need a ton of extensions, it's a fantastic DE and I enjoy it quite a bit as well. It just beautiful that we have not just a choice, but choices in general. It's one of the reasons I couldn't use Windows in any capacity anymore, even if I really, really wanted. I dislike their enviroment and I can't just slap another one on there and use that.

[@faustipez]

Congrats! 🎉🎉 After spending a couple of months in various Tiling Window Managers. I just came back to the traditional desktop experience with Gnome, Plasma & XFCE. I understand the appeal of them, but to be honest, it's just too much time spent to make them functional, they are very distracting as well, because things don't work out of the box. You can achieve a very decent tiling experience with any of those desktop environments, learning a couple of keybindings for tiling and workspaces is enough for most of the people (master-stack layout is easily achievable) and you have the whole desktop integrations with your apps, notifications, applets, etc. without wasting your time and focusing on productivity, doing work! Keep us updated in your journey, Matt!

[@gogereaver349]

when it comes to tiling i like awesome. you can switch tile modes and even floting with a click.

[@thechadbuddha]

xfce gang

[@paulj505]

I am using Linux Mint XFCE. Installed i3wm on it once, for autotiling, but after some time it came to me, that it's not that comfortable for me to use. Plus, theming is a bit tidious. So I came back to XFCE and like it much more.

[@rarminqorset3628]

Finally. Xfce is the best always will be best

[@patpopov]

Ricing Xfce is fun!

[@mrtexas3225]

My daily driver has been arch + xfce with the chicago95 gtk theme and the gtk thumbnail file chooser patch since 2020 I use tmux for terminal multiplexing. Been using this setup for work since last year, I only use vim with xdebug and ssh to maintain websites for several energy companies I love xfce tbh

[@patpopov]

+1 for Chicago95

[@keikogaming]

XFCE is hands down my favourite DE. Love your channel Matt, you're amazing as always!

[@ChimeraX0401]

xfce and kde are my favorite DE but right now I'm more leaning to kde. For ricing I did do it on xfce but again I more like to do it on kde because I feel that kde is more challenging to rice than xfce and there are lots of parts of it that you can rice, from global theme to kwin....

[@johnstewart9156]

I'm wrong Matt. It was the monitor settings in my case. If you have a monitor with multiple inputs, and have it set to 'auto', it might start to search for other inputs when the screen blanker activates. I thought it was software because the screen blanker worked perfect on my 32 bit Raspian. Nope. Check your monitor settings and change them to look at only one input. That may fix it like it did for me. Sorry for the bum steer.

[@jpberes]

If you don't use and/or like the ALT-TAB functionality, you can add window buttons to the panel, and as such switch to the open app by clicking on its name in the panel

[@choulth]

Interesting, i recently did something similar. I switched to ParrotOS with MATE (from EndeavourOS with bspwm) and i love it.

[@hiii4805]

If u want a tip for xfce there's the genmon plugin u can install for bar it 's basically dwmblocks for xfce allow script output in the bar and what do when clicked and stuff like that It's xfce4-genmon-plugin on arch Also u can try replacing alt tab and alt shift tab with super j and super k

[@gimcrack555]

Been using Xfce for along time. I do have a Window Manager as well. But I can stay on Xfce and still work well in it. You can use terminator, tmux or even zentile in a workspace to have that tile effect. I believe Xfce has it's own tiling, at least the newest version.

[@bernardev3]

6:24 How and where you downloaded the Mint-Y theme? I tried downloading it this in all ways possible, but i just can't do it.

[@jsnjyn]

For a “reverse alt-tab” you could try alt-grave (`), which is borrowed from macOS. I find it fairly easy to remember.

[@surfer_silver]

Hi. What key is 'grave' ?

[@jsnjyn]

@@surfer_silver it’s also sometimes called a back-tick. It’s on the same key as tilde (~). Typically it’s left of the number row, next to the number 1 key, above Tab.

[@surfer_silver]

@@jsnjyn - Thanks.

[@wyfyj]

When COSMIC is dropped and I assume Fedora gets it in their repos, would you live in it for a bit? Think of the content!

[@pip5528]

You can also alt-tab, hold alt, and click on the item you want rather than tabbing through a bunch of things but I understand those who want to use their keyboard more heavily won't necessarily want to do that.

[@DrivingVertigo]

I use to prefer XFCE for a lightweight yet beautiful DE, but I've since switched to LXQT since it is just a bit lighter. When restoring old netbooks that extra ~100MB free RAM matters. In my experience, the Ubuntu variants that run on Qt tends to be lighter than Gnome.

[@tylerdean980]

Going window manager only is the way to go with really underpowered hardware. AntiX is good if you have to have it all set up for you.

[@DrivingVertigo]

@@tylerdean980 Neat, I'll check it out. Thanks for the tip.

[@folksurvival]

Try IceWM.

[@Psoewish]

I tried something like this recently, trying out gnome and kde first which were just a very fast no-go for me with way too many quirks, then wend for xfce and that was just a way way better experience, Unfortunately it didn't last very long though as I just kept losing track of all my windows being so used to always having everything I have open visible to me in one way or another. Now I'm sure this was something I could've easily learned how to get used to, but the time I closed my browser and found several terminal windows hiding behind it that I'd just forgotten about because they got shifted to the background was the moment I decided it just wasn't worth the trouble trying to switch to a floating style when I'm already so used to tiling and it just works perfectly for everything I need it to do.

[@toddpark2893]

Great video. I am using Debian Xfce. Does anyone know how to increase the width of the scroll bar on the right hand side?

[@jefersonjhf]

The thing about the Power manager, in my case it was the keyboard, I put it to sleep and it came right back. Then one day I put a new keyboard and it solved the problem. Theoretically the keyboard worked perfectly before, probably a bad contact.

[@mellowgeekstudio]

qterminal works great on xfce also with nerd fonts support, tabs and split screen. It also has less bloat than terminator, which is based on gnome-terminal and, this, has a LOT of extra dependencies, unlike qterminal which is pretty light and efficient.

[@blixuk]

I've currently just set up fedora xfce, but replaced the xfce window manager with i3. It's the perfect combination. Making i3 into a desktop environment.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I may do that after my experiment.

[@topherfungus8424]

I do the same with fedora xfce, but with bspwm.... xfce + tiling is the best.

[@blixuk]

@@TheLinuxCast It's definitely worth giving it a go. You can keep most/if not all the features xfce offers, like the bars and other desktop environment features and just allow i3 do what it does best. It's also really simple to set up.

[@blixuk]

@@topherfungus8424 I haven't tried bspwm yet, but you're right. Xfce and tiling is the best.

[@janbodnar7815]

I am a long time XFCE user and I am experimenting with I3 WM. It is a great choice in many ways; for instance, if you install Linux for your family members and friends. It is lightweight, so it works great on older machines. For me the best thing is that it practically does not change. So that we do not have to constantly relearn basic things such as the menu options like you have to do constantly in Gnome or Windows. As for XFCE terminal vs Kitty & others, I found out that Kitty does not work with ssh and XFCE terminal does. And this is a big no. Finally, there are always some issues; for instance today, when I put the laptop to sleep, I cannot log in back. Well, but this is life.

[@magnuzguerra]

Have you installed kitty-terminfo in the ssh server? I too had problems with Kitty not working with ssh, but installing the terminfo resolved everything for me.

[@janbodnar7815]

@@magnuzguerra No, I have not. I will definitely check. Thanks for info.

[@DrathVader]

Really curious what your experience will be. I switched from Arch + dwm to Fedora Silverblue (GNOME). I found I wasn't any slower managing even a large number of windows. I can still snap windows to the left/right halves of my display, move windows to different desktops and switch desktops with keyboard. Same with opening applications pinned to dock. If anything, I'm more efficient because now I don't have to sift through lines of .h files and recompile to change a basic setting.

[@UnhingedNW]

I like this a lot. It would be cool to show a tutorial or a walk through. Ive always like xfce but i never could be fucked to get it customized lol.

[@speed488]

A bit late, but just in case you still need this info. It was due to the AMD video card. I had the same issue with my RX580. Add amdgpu.dc=0 in your kernel command line. I don't remember where I go the source for this fix, but it fixed my issue back then. Idk if it's still needed with today's kernel/drivers.

[@jonaskeepauthor1935]

Would like to see you do this experiment with each of the spins, I switched from Mac OS to pantheon but eventually landed on cinnamon fedora when elementary didn’t work out for me.

[@Martin-lc1sk]

Sure it's not as perfectly polished as plasma but it has a certain minimalistic charm. I use XFCE btw.......

[@liblevi45s53]

With that monitor issue I share your pain. I used to run four screens which all extended the desktop for multitasking. Setting up the profile and restoring the configuration was a pain and it has been a problem for very long time now. In terms of the monitors not going to sleep, it's likely just an application in the background that's keeping the system active. It can be anything really. I just turn my displays off manually when I'm not using them.

[@nerdCopter]

FlameShot is useful for screencaps with annotation. window manager>keyboard>Tile Window* shortcuts useful for manual tiling.

[@asdqwe4427]

I use OSX for work, and I have come to realize that what I missed the most form the tiling window managers had absolutely nothing to do with the tiling aspect of them. For me, not having to tab, tab, tab, tab looking for the app that I want to switch to is all I really cared about. Workspaces in OSX absolutely suck, but using something like keyboard maestro I can easily assign a shortcut to get to the most common apps that I need. I think I'm gonna play with XFCE today and see if I can make it behave more like my workstation.

[@I_am_Locutus_of_Borg]

To manually turn off the monitor I put this in a script: sleep .1 && xset dpms force off and then assign a keyboard shortcut to that script.

[@hkh5655]

If you want tiling in a non-tiling window manager, you can make a script that uses xdotool to resize windows.

[@andyyiu3987]

The gap between using a DE like XFCE and a window tiling manager shouldn't be like a deep chasm that is that difficult to cross. Personally, I switch between using Windows (which is of course predominantly sports floating windows) and i3 which powers my Linux all the time, and I really don't find that I work better or worst in either environment. The one thing that probably destroys productivity the most is the impulse to "rice" the desktop for the simple reason that it distracts you and takes away your time.

[@themroc8231]

You use a kde spin to build your tiling wms? Any particular reason you don't start from a minimal install?

[@thingsiplay]

kitty has tiling windows builtin too. And I don't get why it works better on tiling window managers. It works the same on XFCE.

[@n.miller907]

I love using Linux Lite on this old HP Pressario tower. XFCE runs so nicely and looks beautiful. I honestly don't know why anyone puts XFCE down. It's the best balance between minimalism and overt eye-candy. I also have a brand new laptop that I installed Linux Mint on with the Cinnamon desktop. I debated whether I was going to use the XFCE desktop but since this laptop has 4GB of RAM, a rarity for me, I went with Cinnamon instead. I've used just about every DE going. KDE looks nice but there's something about it that irks me. Way too much emphasis on looks and configuration tools at the expense of memory. So I'm an XFCE lifer as far as I can see.

[@jr_Linux]

as someone who mainly did everyday things. i ended up using xfce on my laptop and would just try to learn TWM but i ended up finding myself just changing some keybinds and i ended up sticking to xfce.

[@thisday77]

I never used tiling wm's, and was satisfied, when windows split to quarters if dragged to the edges. But I'm actually trying KDE with bismuth. The good thing with this is, I can list all programms I want to exclude from tiling (wich are many, because I like them to open in a custom (the last) position and size). For example, my browser ever opens left and takes almost all of the desktop-space, except the space on the right, where my conky output is placed. But when I open a terminal it tiles with bismuth (and the first instance is centered and leaves space on both sides, so my conky can be seen with one instance only). But I don't need this auto-tiling thing. I just like the little gaps between the windows, when I open two or more windows :) As to XFCE, I tested KDE, Gnome and XFCE last years, when I switched my distro from Ubuntu. And the look and feel on KDE was the best for me, and it was the best to configure my two-monitor setup.

[@TradLollo]

Been trying to find the answer to this question, but don't seem to find a solution for it: I am currently using Linux Mint XFCE Edition, here's the thing, I want to use screen lock while downloading a file through Firefox, but when ever I do so the download stops, is there a setting in XFCE which you can set so the download keep working in the background?? This never happens in Cinnamon or MATE, there you can start a download in Firefox and lock the screen and the process does not stop.

[@n0us3rn4m3s4v41l4bl3]

I like xfce it gets all the crap out of the way

[@AcidiFy574]

XFCE is pretty rock-solid (like vibranium)

[@anonemoose102]

Love the Angry Birds poster. What a throwback!

[@RESPEKTOS]

im an XFCE guy. its the only decent desktop experience

[@folksurvival]

Not the only because there is also MATE and Cinnamon.

[@LinuxTinker]

I just love XFCE4 its a great desktop enviroment, so easy to customize as i want it :D Great video as allways

[@kackotopi]

Xfce is a way of life!

[@MYNAME_ABC]

Best DE is Cinnamon!! Fast - elegant - stable!!

[@sligit]

You could also use a tiling window manager as the WM in XFCE

[@catayloprince4772]

Tried Gnome 2, Lxde and Xfce but end up with Xfce for the longest time. I love it. It is light enough but with more functionality than Lxde. Tried Mate and found it modest on ram use. Love it too. But went back to Xfce because configurations are accessible to me than Mate.

[@Your_Degenerate]

Power Management and getting monitors to do exactly what I want is an ongoing battle. For Linux in general I can get consistent results with Xscreensaver, plus it has the bouncing cows.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I did get x screensaver to work for a screensaver. But it still won't turn the screens off or put them to sleep. It does the same thing as the built-in power management. I've been told that it's probably a fedora problem. But I guess we'll see

[@zoltan1953]

I replaced my alt+tab with rofi and use that to browse my open applications.

[@joshua_lee732]

In the meantime I've switched to kde plasma

[@narwhal4304]

I'm using MX Linux AHS with XFCE 4.18 and I love it. May or may not switch to MX KDE, but if I'm honest, I don't like KDE that much. XFCE feels both customizable enough for what I want, but also not overwhelming with options.

[@BraidenVstob]

xfce4-terminal is amazing. Setting it up to your liking isn't intuitive, but it's as flexible as any, probably more so. Nerd fonts work fine, your problem was more likely a GTK problem, not an xfce4-terminal problem. And setting up color profiles is as easy as alacritty, etc.. but has the benefit in easily saving the schemes in a single file as opposed to a complicated yaml file or something. You can edit your terminalrc and it will update realtime just like alacritty. Unlike alacritty, it also honors your gtk settings so you can design your tabs, etc... the way you want. Also those emulators that use the GPU are kind of interesting to play with, but they defeat the purpose of being a terminal emulator. If I dont get any benefit when using them remotely, then they're not worthy of learning/configuring. Being able to dump more information to the screen than a thousand humans could process isn't exactly a useful feature, anyways. And I'm almost always in an rdp session or a VM anyways, so it's almost never going to be used anyways.

[@thelinuxtube]

Matt I had the very same issue when I was on Fedora i3 I simply installed xscreensaver and unticked all the savers and just let it blank the screen..I also added a bash script to launch at startup by putting it in the autostart folder.

[@podunkis]

I have the same screensaver issue with Linux Mint 21 with Cinnamon. It's a frustrating regression since these things used to "just work" in Linux. I haven't tried 21.1 yet.

[@Bruces-Eclectic-World]

Matt, give Tilix terminal a look. It does all the tabs and splits also. I tend to use tilix more than terminator these days. I use them both with WM's and Cinnamon, Xfce DE's... Good luck, hang in there it will be ok and fun! 😆 LLAP 🖖

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'll give it a look.

[@moistness482]

I love many different desktop environments and window managers, but only with XFCE I feel at home

[@JustWhyFFS]

IIRC, super + arrow keys will allow you to snap your windows around the screen. Good luck. I just nuked and paved my yesterday as well, went with the new(ish) ArcoLinux Hyprland spin.

[@knghtbrd]

I think you will want some custom keybinds. It's pretty common for tiling folks to use super-enter to pop a terminal. the three finger salute needed to do so under most Linux DEs … is silly. I found xfwm's default alt-this and alt-that interferes with too many things, so I changed that key to super as well (that's in the wm tweaks). I ended up finding I don't want a "taskbar", I want a place for a few controls that are sometimes easier/faster to grab with a mouse than to do with a keyboard. Like when I need to pause the video in the firefox tab that's playing, wherever it is. Or to glance at system temps or RAM usage. or to see which of my insane grid of virtual desktops is currently focused. I threw a few app launcher icons in there for occasional convenience, but I mostly just use the menu's open-and-search feature (which required swapping which menu I used). ATM I actually run a hybrid of XFCE and MATE because XFCE's panel isn't ready for Wayland. Neither DE is really, but that'll happen in time. I'm still on X.org with XFCE, but as we start seeing support for fractional scaling, I'll probably switch over.

[@coldmass]

How did you handle worskpaces with two monitors? I want to switch to XFCE as well but having both monitors act as one big workspace is not the best, especially coming from a WM where I had two sets of workspaces per montior.

[@Mr.Finkel]

I had that same issue with the monitors not staying asleep and coming back on to mirrored dual displays. I've been using xfce for years and this only started happening after i bought a new amd rx6700xt card. i figured it was the drivers. could never get it fixed, and annoyed me so much I returned the card.

[@aarond309]

You should take a quick look at the output of “systemd-inhibit” to see if something is blocking sleep, might not fix it, but iirc xfce4-power-manager blocks sleep by default

[@benjacook3771]

Could you try out Alacritty with Zellij installed? Zellij is like tmux but 100x more noob friendly and written in rust. It's also modal like Vim. I think if you did this you'd be able to enjoy alacritty even without a tiling window manager. Cheers mate.

[@maker000]

Your not sleeping issue in Power Manager -> Display I think is due to "modern standby" - check out your bios, there should be a setting for it. It may be called something different between vendors.

[@slomazbutow536]

I liked your Desktop. You can gived some short info how to do that. Some people who start with linux can many things learning from you.

[@jesse7631]

Thanks for this video, Matt! In Fedora, how did you install XFCE? Just install the package from DNFDragora, or using the terminal?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Nah, I nuked, paved and installed the XFCE Spin.

[@LowSpecLinuxLaptop]

Xfce FTW 😉

[@LowSpecLinuxLaptop]

Did you install xfce4-goodies ??

[@LowSpecLinuxLaptop]

xset s off -dpms didnt work I have do do that to stop monitors to stop sleeping no matter what is in gui

[@NatePick]

Sounds like you need PopOS. Where you you can turn tiling off and on with a click of a button. 😁

[@TheLinuxCast]

I could just use gnome for that, which had it first. LOL

[@NatePick]

@@TheLinuxCast 🤣

[@OldieBugger]

I never understood the use of a tiling WM. I like to keep my apps fullscreen, often on different workspaces (sometimes I feel it's more useful to just Alt-Tab between them). But then, I only have one 24" 1920x1200 monitor. Maybe if I had a larger one with the resolution to match I might think about a tiling WM.

[@m_hrstv]

That's odd, nerd fonts definitely work without any issues in my xfce terminal. I'm on 4.18 though, noticed you're still on 4.16. Have you tried tilix? It's been my default terminal for the past month now and I love it.

[@crazycatman4171]

Have you already tried to disable any "wake from" in UEFI (except "wake from USB", because I consider at least waking up from mouse or keyboard input useful)? I enjoy your videos and your journey in Linux , thank you - I hope you will always have fun doing them!

[@night_h4nter]

did you make it so you have separate workspace switching on your monitors?

[@swapnendukarmakar8547]

I think this is the great time to give kitty (Terminal Emulator) a chance.

[@Seselix]

I normally use Luke Smith's Larbs on my thinkpad (yes, the thinkpad x200 meme), but when I want to use the mouse more, I switch to xfce. I honestly get better battery life. Xfce4 is best for performance, KDE for looks, Larbs for no mouse.

[@wisnoskij]

I would be interested in the reasoning behind XFCE. It seems like gnome and KDE are considered the only major players in the DE space. I recently tried Gnome again, and for me I dont even think I am exaggerating here, it is the worse possible DE you could possibly make. I dont particularly love KDE, but it really does not seem like the community really considers XFCE real competition. More like a niche DE for low resource systems. As for your monitor turning off problem (have you not had this problem before?), while it technically could be many different things I might look at things like audio sources. I know my new monitor has a speaker and everytime I sleep discord starts asking about audio sources. Your system is probably detecting a audio device (or maybe some usb through DP thing) disconnecting and waking up.