Xfce MORE xfce issues...

K

KenGordon

FreeBSD 14.4 RELEASE-p11, GENERIC amd 64 system here, installed on an old Seagate 320GB HDD, using X-11 and using the xfce desktop.

I have had some audio issues here, and in trying to track those down, I went into settings and disabled pulseaudio before I realized that xfce includes pulseaudio as an integral part of xfce.

So, when I startx now, when xfce starts, the main screen is all blank and black. There is the small icon in the upper left labeled "Applications", which is still active and correctly-usable, so I can still do the work I need to do, although the applications open more slowly than they did before I messed xfce up.

Also, the small window in the upper right corner (the calendar, etc.) is still there and active.

However, there are now 4 dark squares which indicate other "workspaces" which I do not remember being there before I made a mess of this.

So, how do I fix this....if it can be fixed?

Ken Gordon
 
KenGordon out of curiosity when you have xfce issues, open a terminal (ALT+F2 should still work) and type: xfwm4 --compositor=off
If that works, and you get a working XFCE, your issue is that you have no hardware acceleration, see Espionage724 comment for general steps on what is needed to fix them. Except, of course if you have an AMD (i)gpu that is handled by amdgpu, in that case 14.x is broken out of the box :P
 
fahrenheit said:
KenGordon out of curiosity when you have xfce issues, open a terminal (ALT+F2 should still work) and type: xfwm4 --compositor=off
If that works, and you get a working XFCE, your issue is that you have no hardware acceleration, see Espionage724 comment for general steps on what is needed to fix them. Except, of course if you have an AMD (i)gpu that is handled by amdgpu, in that case 14.x is broken out of the box :P
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Well, when I do that, I get (xfwm4:96555): Gtk-WARNING **: 13:34:57.856: cannot open display:. but in colors. the word "warning" is in yellow, and the numbers beginning with 13: is in dark-blue.

Ken Gordon
 
I’m not picking a fight here, but if XFCE is so desired then why not MX Linux that uses XFCE natively and has all the mainstream hardware accessories already in place and working?

I wanted XFCE that works with Nvidia and mainstream sound hardware so I went with MX. I have no need to shoe horn this into FBSD if MX gives me a turn key solution. Is there some advantage that FBSD offers over MX as a daily driver?
 
CShell said:
For sound you might have more luck running the sndio daemon - works great for me. And yes, sndio supports Pulse Audio. Details here: (Link https://www.siberoloji.com): How to Enable Sound with `sndio` or `pulseaudio` on FreeBSD Operating System

Did you follow the steps to install xfce in the handbook as defined here (?): (Link https://docs.freebsd.org): Chapter 8. Desktop Environments
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I did follow the correct steps to install xfce. This problem occurred immediately after I tried to disable pulseaudio, and yet remains after I re-enableed it.

Ken Gordon
bgavin said:
I’m not picking a fight here, but if XFCE is so desired then why not MX Linux that uses XFCE natively and has all the mainstream hardware accessories already in place and working?

I wanted XFCE that works with Nvidia and mainstream sound hardware so I went with MX. I have no need to shoe horn this into FBSD if MX gives me a turn key solution. Is there some advantage that FBSD offers over MX as a daily driver?
Click to expand...
Well, in my case, I was an IT Professional at the University of Idaho for over 30 years. I first used Linux when it was ver 0.99, then FreeBSD around ver 4.0. I found FreeBSD to be faster and more secure than Linux. In fact, I ran one of the very first web and email servers on the U. of I. campus for my College of Mines (which then became the College of Science) from an old PC and FreeBSD for several years, then switched that to an HP-UX box for those services, and ran it until U. of I. Computer Services provided those sorts of services for the entire University.

Linux has a lot to recommend it, and some things NOT to recommend it. For one thing, there are so many darned "distros" of it, it is difficult for the average person to decide on which one to use.

I MUCH prefer FreeBSD over any distro I know of of Linux for many reasons, the main one, I think being it is so robust and uncrashable unless one really screws up. I prefer to do things myself, not have someone else do them for me.

I am now 84 years old, and long retired from the U. I first got "into" micro-computers when 1 K of RAM cost $1500.00 and a 5 MB HDD cost $4995.00. 1970s.

Ken Gordon
 
Well, after doing what rmomota suggested above, my XFCE is now working, although the icons on screen are not as "high quality" as they were. However, I am going to leave things as they are until I receive my new HDD and build a system from scratch. Thanks for the help, folks.

Ken Gordon
 
Glad, settings reset helped you. My money was on faulty graphics driver.
XFCE is my go to Desktop Environment re utility vs resource usage vs ease of use.
I noticed (second hand) GrokBot Virtual Machines use XFCE as well. So, hopefully there will be some development $ pouring in to XFCE project, which is not very active.
 
KenGordon said:
Well, when I do that, I get (xfwm4:96555): Gtk-WARNING **: 13:34:57.856: cannot open display:. but in colors. the word "warning" is in yellow, and the numbers beginning with 13: is in dark-blue.

Ken Gordon
Click to expand...
Did you change to a virtual terminal to do this?
I was talking about the keyboard shortcut that opens this dialog on xfce:
1792155209641.png

But from a VT, setting the DISPLAY env to ":0.0" may be enough to make it work.

Optionally you should be able to do this: $ xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false (may need a re-login)

In any case glad that you have it working.
 
Ken, I’m born and raised in Boise.
53 years in this business first IBM then HP and years of contracted sysadmin.

I understand wanting secure but see FBSD as a stable server platform with a desktop tossed in as an after thought.

Not picking on FBSD at all, as I’m a great admirer. But it sounds like you want a desktop and not a server.

I also did Linux in the early Slackware years and found it just plain sucked. That was then and this is now.

I landed on MX Linux as a turnkey daily driver because it works. At my age I have zero interest in tinkering. I hope you find what you need here.
 
bgavin said:
Ken, I’m born and raised in Boise.
53 years in this business first IBM then HP and years of contracted sysadmin.

I understand wanting secure but see FBSD as a stable server platform with a desktop tossed in as an after thought.

Not picking on FBSD at all, as I’m a great admirer. But it sounds like you want a desktop and not a server.

I also did Linux in the early Slackware years and found it just plain sucked. That was then and this is now.

I landed on MX Linux as a turnkey daily driver because it works. At my age I have zero interest in tinkering. I hope you find what you need here.
Click to expand...
What I was initially trying to do was to completely dump Windows for all the computers in our home. I have built/support 6 of them here so far. I wanted to get a desktop which would appear closely enough to Windows to enable my dear wife, who is a complete computo-klutz, to need the minimal relearning curve to use hers.

As you make clear, and as I agree with you, the desktop environment in FreeBSD is an after-thought. Even so, in my use, so far, it appears to work reasonably well.

I recently have installed Liunx Mint (Cinnamon) on a couple of computers for my military-veteran friends (I am a vet too) who were having serious problems with Windoze and hackers, and I have been pretty impressed with that distro as far as ease of installation and ease of use is concerned. Even so. I also enjoy working with FreeBSD and this forum has been one of the very best I have ever been connected with.

I am also an amateur radio operator, W7EKB, having been first licensed in 1956 and being still active. My favorite mode is CW although I can do them all. I suppose my second most favorite mode is digital.
:)

Later.

Ken Gordon.
 
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