On Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:29:35 -0800
Tom <[email protected]> dijo:

>Try XFCE 4.12, LXDE, or IceWM. Give Devuan ASCII
>https://devuan.org a try in a virtual machine which comes with XFCE4.12
>by default and no systemd. At least just to try it out so you know
>what you'd be targeting if you went down that route. I'd advise staying
>away from anything GTK3 based as themes are still absolutely broken
>https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Moves_against_Themes
>and the overall toolkit is still largely unpolished, with various
>usability bugs like scroll bars not showing up properly and forced
>animations, increased system footprint, and less portability between
>systems. Compound this with the fact the GNOME developers don't seem to
>care about polishing their releases and are instead working on GTK4
>when GTK3 is still a broken mess. The GNOME developers also seem to
>have a complete disregard for any desktop programs and environments
>that are not GNOME3.

I have been using Xfce ever since Ubuntu went to Gnome 3 (hated it), but
I am just an ordinary user, not someone who really understands how it
works. I find your observations interesting, as my recent upgrade to a
UHD display broke a lot of things, and there are a few that I have still
been unable to fix.

To clarify, my old display was 1920x1080 and the new display is UHD
(3840x2160, [4K]). When the computer booted I noted a ton of error
messages relating to NVIDIA. When it finished booting I saw that it
was using the Intel video at 3840x2160. I fixed the NVIDIA error
messages by removing old NVIDIA drivers and installing one new one
('440') for the NVIDIA T2000 chip in the computer. Happily 'lshw -c
video' now shows both the Intel and NVIDIA driver in use, exactly what
I was hoping for. This situation uses the Intel video normally (easier
on the battery) and the NVIDIA chip when it needs to. I can watch a 4K
movie with no tearing and perfect rendition.

However, it is challenging to do things on a UHD monitor when no parts
of the desktop environment were created with that resolution in mind. My
frustration has been that the settings are scattered all over the
Settings Manager GUI - some are in Appearance, some are in Window
Manager, some are in Window Manager - Tweaks, some are in Desktop, and
yet others have to be set in the individual applications. And some
settings seemingly cannot be controlled at all. As an example of how
unorganized things are, the size of most icons is controlled in
Appearance, but also in Desktop. Yet the size of icons in application
toolbars is not controlled by any settings. The icons (and the text) in
the Chromium URL bar are only 3mm high, ditto for many of the toolbars
in other applications. Text that is 3mm high is pretty hard to read.

I tried using xrandr or the GUI Display tool to scale the video, but
doing so loses the beautiful sharpness of my 3840x2160 display. And I
mean, it is stunning! Once you go to UHD it will be hard for you to
give it up.

I should interject here that I know Keith uses a display resolution that
is no longer customary on computers. I appreciate his reasons, but he
may also encounter issues getting the resolution working right.

You mentioned using Xfce4.12 over 4.14. Xfce 4.12 is what I am using on
my Xubuntu 18.04, but I have been told on the Xfce forums by people far
more knowledgeable than me that 4.14 handles higher resolutions much
better than 4.12. I have been encouraged to upgrade, although I have
not yet done so.

I will wait until Ubuntu 20.04 to upgrade to Xfce 4.14, as I have
things working well enough on my UHD display that I can live with it
until then. Meantime, if you have any suggestions for things that I
might do before then to improve things, I'm all ears. And if you can
make it to the January Clinic I'll be there with this computer to give a
demonstration of how awesome UHD displays are. :)
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