Linux Mint 13 “Maya” XFCE Released – 332 days old

[ZemaTalon]

thumb_xfce.png

New features at a glance:

Xfce 4.10
mintMenu and MATE applets
MDM
Artwork improvements
Search engines
For a complete overview and to see screenshots of the new features, visit: “What’s new in Linux Mint 13 Xfce“.

Important info:

Xfce trash in live mode
Boot hangs on systems with b43 wireless cards
Moonlight
Make sure to read the “Release Notes” to be aware of important info or known issues related to this release.

System requirements:

x86 processor (for both 32 & 64-bit versions)
x86_64 compatible processor (for the 64-bit version)
384 MB of system memory (RAM)
5 GB of disk space for installation
Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
CD-ROM drive or USB port

Upgrade instructions:

To upgrade from a previous version of Linux Mint follow these instructions.
To upgrade from the RC release, simply apply any level 1 and 2 updates (if any) available in the Update Manager.

From the LinuxMint Blog where you can find a mirror of your choice.

Yahoo: Linux Mint switches to Yahoo as the default search engine for the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Yahoo is the 2nd biggest search engine in the World, and the first major search engine to share revenue with Linux Mint. The results page is full of features, it comes with a nice layout, images, videos and blogs search, points of interest, time filters and cached results. Underneath the interface, Yahoo comes with a strong network of advertisers and its addition represents a huge opportunity and an additional source of income for Linux Mint.

I guess Yahoo's not dead after all

[Dark Angel]

Updated Mr Eepers. Seems a little more solid after the upgrades but I still don't trust the ATi drivers to not lock down my HDD again. (had to boot to a live USB and mount the drive to make it wake up again, though it seemed ok after that ... shit display aside.)

[Grogan]

Man, is this ever configured for retards out of the box. It goes back to what I was saying about XFCE in another thread... people would never know what it's capable of if they use defaults. (This is much worse than XFCE's own defaults when first installed)

No virtual desktops, and a "classic" windows-like start menu and desktop icons. Also, it's greyish white. Fug-ly!

(Virtual Desktops are enabled, but no switcher or pager... you have to middle click in the desktop to bring up the window list interface, where you can switch workspaces. At least that still works)

I sure miss the good old days when people weren't expected to be a bunch of drooling idiots (change the world for the lowest common denominator). Remember the wow factor when you installed something like a new version of Mandrake back around the turn of the century?

[Grogan]

At least it can still be taught (just screwing around here to make sure XFCE can still be configured my way)

[Dark Angel]

You mind sharing your settings? That's pretty bloody nice.

[mlangdn]

Very nice! I gotta try a dark theme again. It just seems to take some getting used to.

[floppybootstomp]

Man, is this ever configured for retards out of the box.

That'll be me then

I sure miss the good old days when people weren't expected to be a bunch of drooling idiots (change the world for the lowest common denominator). Remember the wow factor when you installed something like a new version of Mandrake back around the turn of the century?

The wow factor. Back around '98 or '99 I had an old machine setup in my attic on which I would try and install Linux Distros, mostly Mandrake & Red Hat. I moved from there in 2002 having tried for hours and hours to install a working distro but never once succeeded. It was exceedingly frustrating but I didn't give up.

Around 2005 or so I got my first ever distro actually doing something and working after a fashion, it was probably Suse or Mandrake.

Fast forward a bit and Mint 10 is the first ever distro I've used purposefully on a regular basis, I'm now using Mint 12 KDE.

This either makes me a retard or lazy, I'm not sure which but I think you experienced fellas should maybe put yourself in the novice's shoes and see it from our side of the fence.

I apreciate that tailor made distros with flaws could upset you but to me they've been the best thing since sliced bread, it's like - Hey! I'm using Linux!

Some may disagree that I'm using Linux, lol, and see it as just button clicking, but I like it

[Bad Haircut]

Mint 13 KDE is now out, Flopps, if you want to play.

[Grogan]

Would you like this XFCE the way it is? Do you want to drill through a Windows 95 start menu to get at your programs? Boring greyish white desktop, with two silly icons on it? (That's not how XFCE is supposed to be by any stretch of non imagination)

Nothing but a dumbed down selection of applications installed, such that you have to KNOW what you want, to go and install them with the package manager?

I think you'd have fared better with the Mandrake I describe, if you would have been able to get it to work on your system.

[Grogan]

OK Mick, I'll try to describe what I did in a meaningful way. Some of it is non obvious, to get the panels the way I have them etc.

First of all, Go to Settings in the Menu and choose Settings Manager to get to the XFCE control panel integrator.

Starting with Appearance, on the Style tab I choose Xfce-dusk. This uses a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file to define the style for all gtk+ 2 apps. On the Icons tab, I chose GNOME for the XFCE icon set. The others are either fugly or don't work well with the dark style. I would imagine more icons sets for XFCE can be had. It doesn't matter so much, because I always choose my own icons for my panel launchers and such. On the Fonts tab, antialiasing is already enabled, but you can also enable subpixel hinting. (I think the fonts look better without it, in this instance but that may not be the case on your display).

Now, click All Settings to get back to the XFCE Settings Manager. Go to Desktop. On the background tab, set your wall paper of choice. The waterfall I'm using is just one of the default wallpapers provided with Mint. I would use my own if I cared enough (I'm just testing this in virtualbox). Go to Icons. I hate desktop icons, so I choose None for icon type. You also have to uncheck the Default Icons if you want the existing desktop icons to go away.

Back to All Settings and go to Panel. Here's where it gets tricky. In addition to choosing the right settings, you have to add things (even as placeholders for now) and drag them. First thing, I work on the main (bottom panel). I enable autohide ("Automatically show and hide the panel"). Row size (height) 48 pixels. Length 100% (it already is). Now, up near the top you see a "Panel 1" in a drop list. Click the + sign to add a new panel. It will be Panel 2 and will at first show up as a rectangle in your desktop. You'll be thinking "what the fuck?". Drag it up to the top of the screen. Now in the panel configuration dialog, set the row size of Panel 2 to 22 pixels. Length 100%. Uncheck "Lock panel" for now. At this point it's just a defunct rectangle. Now, back to the bottom panel (Panel 1) where the fun begins. You can now start to work on panel settings by right clicking in various places. Right click on a vacant area of the panel and go to Panel Preferences or go to Items in the panel configuration dialog. Click the + sign to add items. You'll want to add a Workspace Switcher (graphical pager) and set the number of virtual desktops. I like 8. Add Application Launchers (as placeholders for now even if you don't know what you want to add yet). Right click on panel items and choose move and drag them where you want, or where it will let you. To configure a launcher, right click and Properties. Click the + sign to add. You can either choose already installed apps that have .desktop files (they'll show up in a list) or choose New Application and configure your fields manually. Choose the icon you want for the launcher. (Browse the icon categories, manually browse for your own icons etc.) Fill up your panel with launchers on either side of the Workspace Switcher as desired. Wide screen displays will have more launchers on the panel. You can also add more than one application to a launcher if you want a tear off menu. I normally would, but I really don't have a lot of applications I intend to use here in this test install. Now, on the bottom panel (Panel 1), I remove the "Window Buttons". That's what they call the taskbar entries for open programs. They used to call it the "Task List" in previous versions of XFCE. That's what I use my small top panel for. Go to Panel 2 and add the "Window Buttons". I haven't done it yet in my screenshot, but I also remove the "Notification Area" (Systray in windows terminology) from the bottom panel and add it to the top panel in the right hand corner. Right click and Move your items where you want them. Recheck "lock panel" on both panels when done to avoid accidents.

Now, back to the Settings Manager. The next area of significance is Window Manager. For the style (titlebars) I am using Mint-X. I normally would have used "Default 2" but that's no longer available. Mint-X is nice though. Now, some under the hood settings that you can't really get from a screenshot. On the Focus tab I set Focus Follows Mouse. I like to hover on a window to give it focus, I hate having to click all the time. It also gives the benefit of being able to position windows such that you can still have one on top and be typing in another. Note that I do not automatically raise windows (needs a click to raise). Now, on the Advanced tab, I set "Wrap workspaces when the pointer reaches the screen edge". This is so I can move between desktops just by sliding around with my mouse pointer. Set the delay as desired.

Now, back to the Settings Manager and go to Window Manager Tweaks. On the Compositor tab, I like to Enable display compositing. I set a little transparancy for window decorations (titlebars). I set a bit of transparency on inactive windows. I set a lot of transparency on windows during move. This is so that I can click and pause on a title bar (or drag it) to have the window go transparent so I can read what's behind it. I set it such that I can STILL faintly read text on the transparent window, but can easily read everything behind it. Adjust these transparency effects to taste, for productivity. (It's not "eye candy", it serves a useful purpose for me)

If you haven't already, under Workspaces you can set the number of virtual desktop workspaces.

Down a bit lower in the Settings manager, under System of significance is Session and Startup. You can remove any stupid programs that Mint is automatically loading. Like that bluetooth applet... I fucking hate bluetooth crap and even if I had it on my motherboard, I would not use it so there's no point in having that program running and putting an icon in my notification area.

That's about it. Much of it is up to the individual.

[Grogan]

By the way, this is what XFCE used to look like (except for the green, that's my doing) about 10 years ago. It was based on GTK+ 1.x back then. It was never supposed to be a Windows 95 clone, or even a Gnome 2 clone (like the project defaults)

[Bad Haircut]

It's gotta be said original style XFCE is infinitely preferable and infinitely more interesting than any sad gnome 2 / windows copies.

I can see why they do it though, not to overwhelm Windows new to Linux users in the first instance. And Mint trades off that tag... Fortunately you can get it how you want it relatively painlessly. It pissed me off no end that other distros started turning XFCE into gnome 2 though.

[floppybootstomp]

I don't think I've ever used the XFCE desktop, perhaps I'm misunderstanding where and what the bile is directed at.

So Mint 13 is released, I'm wondering whether XFCE is the only option, will have to check it out. If it is, then I'll stick with what I have, thanks, (12 & KDE) cos I like it

[mlangdn]

I just downloaded and installed Mint 13 KDE. Its not that I don't like xfce, I just like kde better. Its running in a vm right now. Rather painless install, but it will be tomorrow before I give it a good go. Almost time for bed.

I do have to say that I like KDE for all the bells and whistles - which is exactly why some people don't. They call it bloat - but if they think that's bloat, I'll send 'em a pic of my belly!!!

[Grogan]

Post #8 from BH might have been overlooked (There is a Mint 13 KDE download) because it was in between two larger posts.

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=116

[Dark Angel]

All easy enough, Mike, though I'm having trouble with white text on white backgounds with this setup. It only seems to happen on forums though.

[ZemaTalon]

Thanks for the write up Gro DA I've been having the same problem for some time, particularly when I use FF, and I usually have to use a text editor to see what I'm typing, then paste it in. In Chrome/Chromium it's not an issue though.

[Grogan]

With Firefox, yes. I used to work around it by using the "wysiwyg" editor here, which is a blue background. This is caused by web application developers thinking they are too clever to let the client handle the default colour scheme. NooOOOoo, they have to force the TEXT colour in the styles (black), while still allowing the background colour unspecified (black, in our style). This problem has become even more prevalent. It used to be that there were just a few places with forms that did that to me, and I worked around it by simply composing in a text editor and pasting into the edit box forms. Now it's just too damned many places. Even my fucking bank login fields I have to type blindly with Firefox.

Chromium doesn't have that problem with the black GTK+ style and it's only a few clicks away if you don't want to compile it. It won't be the latest, but it will be new enough at this time. I'm pretty much done with Firefox so I haven't been bothered by this in a long time.

[Grogan]

By the way, Mick, I didn't really elabourate on what I mean is "tricky". It's hard to get stuff to go where you want it on the panels, hence, the need for adding things for placeholders as you build your panel. This newer version of XFCE (4.10) is better in that respect than the one I'm still using in Slack (4.6) but worse in that it won't let you drag stuff beyond the end of the other stuff you have. I think what's going on here is, we're really defeating the dynamic panel sizing that's meant to be. If it's too annoying for you, consider making the panel size dynamic and then it will grow and shrink. Then stuff you want on the end, will be on the end. It will just be a shorter panel, centered. It can still auto hide. That would solve pretty much solve that annoyance. (I still prefer the full sized panel and on my workstation, I wish I had MORE room for launchers so it's no skin off my ass to fill the panel up)

[Dark Angel]

I have the panel set up how I want it (this is on my netbook so small is important), and as much as I prefer the dark scheme the white on white thing is a killer. It would have made sense for the FF devs to disallow text and background colour to be the same and force the text to be either black or white based on how close the background is to the end of the code list.
Whatever. I've gone to a grey scheme that works for now. I'll have to customise one at some point and post it up or something.

[Grogan]

Netbook is where this will eventually be installed for me too, if it passes. Next, is the kernel test. I have to be able to use my kernel of choice, done my way, preferably without being forced to use an initrd image (I hate that shit and it's not desirable for a custom kernel)

I'm using an expired Kubuntu, which works very well for me. It used to be one of those LTS releases, but even that has expired (That's OK if it's expired, I hate updates anyway. It's just that the package repositories might degrade on an old, unsupported distro). If this Mint works out I'll probably switch. It hasn't pissed me off yet, so it's looking good.

[Dark Angel]

So far I've found it has the benefits of Ubuntu (nice fat repositories, easy install of 3rd party tools without needing to compile everything etc) without the Unity abortion or codec restrictions.
One warning: it used Pulseaudio out of the box. I tried for days to get the volume hotkeys (and system sounds) working but in the end had to purge pulse and go with ye olde Alsa to get everything working. Even then the system was defaulting to the wrong audio device (HDMI out), but once that was found and sorted it works well. There seems to be a lot of things that list pulse as a prerequisite as well, I have no idea why. I just use different things.

The last thing that I have had zero luck sorting is a Libreoffice issue. For some stupid reason it will not, no way no how, play audio in ppt/pps/pptx/ppsx files (which is a real shit since my lecturer keeps putting up lectures in ppsx format), nor will it let me open pps/x files for editing. I do the old name-change and change the extension to .ppt/x but it still forces the slide show.

[Grogan]

Things like that become dependencies if the software links against them at compile time. (Even though there may be other input/output settings in the app and the user has no intention of using pulseaudio, the program won't run without the libraries present). Other libraries can also be linked to other libraries and then you can get a situation where a program that doesn't even have anything to do with audio has pulseaudio as a dependency

That is why so many packages have pulseaudio as a dependency.

The other way to do it is with 'dlopen' which is a call that a program can make to load a specified library if present. It is optional (but not optimal) when done that way. The program will still load without them, in that case, without the functionality. It's not used so much because I think it hurts launch time, and wastes memory.

[Dark Angel]

I took to watching exactly what was going to be installed when I use package managers some time ago. Some of the things that demand pulse ... :shakes: no valid reason as far as I can tell, but I REALLY don't want pulse on this little baby. It just fucks too many things up completely.

[ZemaTalon]

I've been practicing Only thing though, I can't seem to get the notification area to go to the right side of the panel, and it refuses to move. It slides over to make room for running programs, but when everything is closed it slams itself all the way to the left again. I even tried adding some separators but didn't help. I originally moved the clock up there too, but thought it looked better in the bottom panel where it displays larger.

VM_temp.jpg

[ZemaTalon]

I moved the system menu back to the bottom panel, I'm not sure yet where I'd prefer it. That didn't exactly help with that other little issue, which I struggled around with some more. Adding two more Window Buttons holds the notification area to the right side, but then of course every open application shows up in the panel x3, so that idea is out

VM_temp2.jpg

[ZemaTalon]

...and the "Applications Menu", is now once again just the "Menu". Like anyone would be confused without that extra word I changed to the regular menu, and overlooked that before.

[Grogan]

Yeah... I mentioned this in another post. It won't let you move any items further to the right than you already have stuff in this version of XFCE, it seems. Either put the notification area down to the bottom panel, or make your top panel dynamic sized (It then grows when you open apps lol). I ended up just putting mine on the bottom panel again.

[Grogan]

Well, it passes the kernel test (barely). I got it to work without an initrd, but only because the kernel now has a setting to maintain this tempfs /dev directory and automatically mount it. (Under Device Drivers/Generic Driver Options, "Maintain a devtmpfs filesystem to mount at /dev" and "Automount devtmpfs at /dev..."

No big deal, I knew that setting was there and had a good idea it would help with things like this. I couldn't get it to boot until I enabled that, in Linux 3.5.0... it otherwise would have needed some silliness in their initrd image to create a /dev directory for early userspace.

fstab needs editing too of course, if not using their initrd. The mount by UID string has to be replaced by the real device node in the fstab file.

They sure do silly things. For example, they have made /var/run and friends, as well as /dev/shm tmpfs mounts under /run. This was a change in Ubuntu 11.10 to use "fewer tmpfs mounts" I found, while searching for information on this bastardization. (How about just don't use so fucking many of them then? /var/run and friends were doing just fine as directories on the hard disk since long before you were an itch in your daddy's loins, Ubuntu.

(Also, virtualboxadditions needed patching to compile modules for the 3.5.0 kernel, but that's got nothing to do with the distro)

[Dark Angel]

The vbox aditions were one if the first things I bollox'd when I installed. No need for them when it's running on bare metal.

I gave up trying to get xfce-dusk working and installed the theme I ... acquired from an Alienware source plus the LavaFox Black theme for FF. As a plus I can see what I'm typing now.

Screenshot - 260712 - 21:33:17.png

[Grogan]

I uninstalled the distro packages with Synaptic before I installed the virtualbox additions. I didn't even realize they were installed, but the vboxadditions installer script warned me. It's one of the first things I do as soon as a newly installed OS in VirtualBox so I hadn't noticed that my display and mouse were working like they should. The reason it might be a problem here is that they use DKMS modules. I often remove the dkms packages so that dkms modules can never be built again. Some distros are really annoying... upgrade your kernel and then on the next startup it goes through this routine trying to rebuild all their DKMS kernel modules and fails on every one of them because try as they might, you CAN'T make old drivers compatible with new kernels. It works for the distro's kernel updates (back ported patches on same kernel with only local version number change), but not when the kernel has changed significantly.

Anyway, that's a nice looking theme. It reminds me of the gnome 2 theme that one iteration of PCLinuxOS used. (That was I think their best release ever, whatever that one was)

[ZemaTalon]

That does look great! I had been thinking of trying the PitchDark theme for FF to fix that problem.

[Grogan]

Actually yes, I think applying a Firefox theme (only if it styles the forms as well) also eliminates that problem because it overrides. I don't like themes on browsers though, they slow down drawing of the program window, especially amateurish ones with poorly optimized image overlays.

[Dark Angel]

From memory I extracted the icons and theme files from a Windows package that was specificly for the Alienware laptops and then found a way to re write (or find, or something ... it was a while ago) the required index files for Linux. I don't have the original files any more, I just keep the .icons and .theme folders.

[ZemaTalon]

I decided to mess with my primary OS, Mint 12 XFCE, I was just going to add a few launchers but ended up going a little further. I discovered that same issue is present in this version of XFCE as well. After adding the Window Buttons to the top panel I removed the original one in the bottom panel, and the Notifiction Area shoots over the left. I added a bunch of launchers and panel apps, but it wasn't enough. So what I ended up doing is having the Window Buttons in both panels, but in the bottom panel they're minimized, with grouping and no labels. The end result is the Window Buttons tightly grouped together on the left, and the launchers on the right, and the Notification Area where it's supposed to be. Since I set the bottom panel to auto hide I added a clock to the top panel, and made the font bold and a few points larger to compensate for the smaller panel. Here's how it looks. I haven't finished working on it. That little white rectangle is just a persistent anomaly that showed up this evening. Also I had to limit the bottom panel pixel size to 30, otherwise the launchers and active open program icons run together.

desktop_temp1.jpg

[ZemaTalon]

I think I have the definitive solution - put a separator in the panel, and edit it's properties to "expand". When I did that, the Notification Area jumped over to the right where it belongs

desktop_temp1.jpg

There are some additional settings in the separator panel properties, I'll have to experiment with those later. But now there's no more confusion between launchers and currently running programs

[ZemaTalon]

This probably illustrates it better - the top panel in this VM has nothing in it except the Window Buttons, a Separator, and the Notification Area:

VM_temp3.jpg

[ZemaTalon]

A little more fine tuning - I added a 2nd separator set to expand, to the left side in order to keep the launchers centered. With the separators set to expand they act sort of like compressible springs. The icon on the far right is a Window Menu - a switcher for running programs to allow you to quickly switch focus to another running application.

desktop_temp2.jpg

[Grogan]

It beats a boring old "start menu and desktop icon" user interface, doesn't it? Now you're starting to see.

[ZemaTalon]

I sure am

I kind of got on a roll - now my netbook is all retweaked too. I ended up installing Mint 13 to it, then I went to work on the settings.

netbook2.png

This is the first version of Mint (or Ubuntu) I remember that picked up a model # when it auto-generated a computer name. Usually I'm installing it to a machine I built so there wouldn't be one, but this is the first time I've seen it do that on my netbook. Another thing that's new to this version is it wants to take your picture during the installation It prompts you to let it photograph you to use as your account profile picture. I've got colored tape over this netbook's camera lens so that's not happening. I don't remember seeing that under VirtualBox, so maybe it only does that when the installer detects a netbook or notebook.