Xfce Default Configuration

[David]

On 12/22/2013 3:25 PM, Wes Gregg wrote:
> User installs a distro and either dislikes its DE or it mercilessly
> tortures his/her hardware (Cinnamon), so the user asks about
> alternatives - or complains and receives a suggestion to try a DE that
> doesn't want accelerated graphics even to just display the desktop.
> User, as directed, looks in Synaptic Package Manager (etc.), finds XFCE,
> and installs it. But either the distro doesn't provide a "customized"
> experience or else the user missed the meta-package that would have
> provided it.
> 
> Or maybe the user's friend set up the computer. User knows just enough
> to run the distro's updater and run apps from the DE's menu. Then an
> update changes his mountain landscape background to "an ugly-*** mouse,
> and not even a real mouse, something that looks like it was used on a
> computer 30 years ago" and calls me to rant. No big deal, and when I
> finished laughing at his rather brutal - but, I suppose, brutally honest
> (looks great as an icon-sized graphic, say, as a button to open the
> menu, but increased in size enough to become the desktop's background?
> Not so much, lol.) description, I was able to quickly explain how he
> could get his preferred desktop background back. However, it might not
> be a bad idea to consider adding some text beside the mouse that
> explains how to change the image. Especially if future updates will also
> have a chance of including whatever bug it was that changed people's
> desktop backgrounds, lol. (To be fair, we're using Mint 14 XFCE - with
> the XFCE 4.10 & 4.12 PPAs added to our sources list - around here, so it
> could have been a Mint (Ubuntu?) bug that only annoyed a certain set of
> XFCE users instead of, well, all of them. IDK.)
> 
> Regarding changes to XFCE: I'm pretty happy with it and would generally
> say it's the best "interface" I've encountered since first using
> computers back in the days of Osbournes, Kaypros, and Commodore Pets.
> But I realize that some might be less satisfied with the user experience
> and clamor for change. All I ask is that you not follow the Firefox
> developers' example - making changes that appear to be "just for the
> sake of change" when they're not (apparently) actively trying to poleaxe
> the app.


My personal preference. Xubuntu, for me, is way to much 'eye candy'.
Fedora Xfce is seriously 'plain jane' unless you go with the SIG
Live-CD. Mageia is similar but, IMHO, the base Xfce is betterand the
Sig Live-CD is even nicer.

Which means what? Linux is about choice. Try one, or two, or all and
then chose the one that you like the best. *Some*, not all, users get
stuck with a distribution and they live with what that distrobution
provides. That is a choice too.
-- 

  David