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Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

[SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello:

After finally upgrading my box from Beowulf to Chimaera and then to Daedalus and having solved problems that arose with Wine and CUPS, I am now in the process of getting the desktop working as it did before the upgrades.

My original Xfce setup took me some time to get right but it worked: from Jesse to ASCII to Beowulf and I got used to it.

But now, with Xfce 4.18 I cannot get the panel transparency working properly.
ie: as it worked in the previous version of Xfce, with the panel itself totally transparent and the launcher icons / minimised windows completely opaque.

I have followed the instructions but have not been able to get it to work as before: now both the panel background and the launcher icons / minimised windows become transparent at the same time.

Sort of defies the idea of panel transparency ... 8^/

Does anyone have the same problem?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello:

... defies the idea of panel transparency ...

Right after posting my question I remembered a package called compton that had to do with transparency.

I saw that it in was the repository but was not installed (it was installed in ASCII and Beowulf), so I disabled compositing in Xfce and installed / enabled compton.

And that was  that, problem solved.
The panel transparency works as before.

I am still getting a very faint diagonal tear I had across (upper left to lower right corners) in my centre monitor when scrolling and in every monitor when resizing windows by dragging with the mouse pointer.

I'll look into that in another thread.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2024-06-07 23:41:31)

Andre4freedom

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 174  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Yes, indeed,
I just now see your 2 messages.... but yes, I encountered the same problem with transparency and could do nothing about it.
Now, thank you for the hint with compton, I will try it the next time I configure a box with xfce.
On my work-horses (daily machines) I use lightdm and Cinnamon, and I'm very happy with it.
But lightdm with xfce looks very appealing to me, specially when the panel transparency works again. Thank you.

Last edited by Andre4freedom (2024-06-08 16:53:40)

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello:

...  encountered the same problem ...
... could do nothing about it.

Well ...
There seems to be (and evidently still is) some sort of problem with Xfce+compton.

Previous versions of Xfce (4.10-4.16) had a problem if compton was installed/enabled: Firefox, Thunar (and other desktop applications) would crash if you tried to drag something with the mouse pointer. eg: move around shortcuts within menus in FF, drag folders in Thunar.

Being a common issue to both applications, it was obviously not a FF or Thunar issue so I posted a question to the forum in 2018 and again in 2021.

I also posted a bug.

The questions to the forum never got a reply and the bug report got one stating that it was an Nvidia/compton/unsupported Xfce 4.10 problem, to try with  4.12 ...

The same problem persisted till Xfce 4.18 when it got "solved" by adding a native compositor.
A compositor which does not work properly.

So ...
Where is the problem?

Moot point now.
Disabling the Xfce native compositor and installing compton seems to be what is needed.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2024-06-08 10:55:07)

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,334  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Thanks for this. When I finally get to Daedalus will come in very handy . . .

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Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello gl:

Thanks ...

You're welcome.

When I finally get to ...

Ahh ...
Good to see I was not the only one deferring a system upgrade.  8^)
Not looking forward to doing it again, I see that /usr merge looms in the horizon.

Who knows what else awaits my (ca. 2007 and perfectly working) non-UEFI box.

That said, it may be worth considering ie: packagers taking note, that the native Xfce compositor does not work properly while compton 1-1+deb12u1 does.

It is a sign of the times we live in that Xfce maintainers never bothered to fix the long standing (pre 2018) compositor issues they had and (surprise!) added native compositing. I wonder what else they will add in future versions, seeing that the 2020 row generated by pushing CSDs was not duly noted.

I did at one point try out compton-conf but did not manage to get things properly configured.
Probably because the repository was archived on 08/2023 and is considered to be deprecated.

Fortunately, I got a good result following the instructions in the link I posted, although there may still be some room for improvement.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2024-06-10 01:26:45)

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello:

A necessary heads up.

... because the repository was archived on 08/2023 and is considered to be deprecated.

It would seem that compton itself, although it has not been explicitly archived by the maintainer, would be at least in a pre-archived state as (apparently) they have had no activity there for the past five years.
ie: there are unassigned issues from as far back as 2019 with no input from them.

[rant]
Would it be too hard to at least say: "ain't doing no mo' maintaining, bitch!"
But in a timely fashion ...
[/rant]

An unanswered post post from 01/2022:

Since the development on compton has halted, this repository should advise to switch to picom (https://github.com/yshui/picom) at the top of the README. In addition, it should be archived to further make it clear that asking for support here is a waste of time.

This would clarify the status of the compton package with picom packages available for Ceres, Daedalus and Chimaera.

From what I have read, a working compton.conf file would work also with picom, but we'll have to see about that.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2024-06-10 01:27:52)

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,583  

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce panel transparency not working

Hello:

From what I have read, a working compton.conf ...

Not really ...

There are a set of deprecated entries which will prevent picom from starting when you test it from the terminal, but there is a warning to that effect with instructions.

Installing picom gets you a /usr/share/doc/picom/examples/picom.sample.conf file that has to be copied to ~/.config/picom/picom.conf after creating the destination directory.

I have purged compton and installed picom with no ill effects.
And after editing the *.conf file to get rid of all the shadows, fading, partial opacity, bluring and such I now have a snappy Linux desktop.

There is still the matter of some slight tearing which did not ocurr with the Nvidia drivers, but they are in the past now.
I'll have to make do with what is available, there may be some xorg.conf magic to be done as nouveau does not seem to use one by default.

Best,

A.