Showing posts with label XFCE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label XFCE. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Debian Buster with XFCE4 Basics - Stopping the Windows From Going Full Screen on the Edges

This is basic, quick, and annoying.

While I can make my Debian Linux look like just about anything including a Mac, various versions of Windows, and more, I have a fairly lightly modified desktop.  I look for speed and flexibility and it shows. 

However sometimes things just don't go quite right.

I use a trackball, not a mouse.  I need it for graphics work both here on the blog and elsewhere.  The Hand Tremors we all have mean that sometimes something I do will jitter.

Sometimes I just get a little too close to the edges of the windows.

Either way it means now I have a window I am trying to move to a corner or a side has just exploded full screen or is strobing large and small in some fit of electronic insanity.

Lets stop that.

In XFCE 4:

  • Click Applications Menu.
  • Mouse over to Settings, then down to Window Manager Tweaks.
  • Click on the "Accessibility" tab.
  • Click the check box off on "Automatically tile windows when moving toward the screen edge".
  • Click close.

That's it you're done.

Enjoy.  No more weird strobing.

If you want it back, simply reverse the steps and click the box back on.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Gnome 3 in Debian Jessie Using VMWare Workstation 9 With No Fallback Mode

First the "TL:DR" executive summary:  Get Debian Jessie to install to VMWare Workstation 9.0 to have Gnome 3 run in full graphics mode and not gnome-fallback mode.

Instructions to make it work like I did in a cookbook and a narrative follows the instructions after the jump break:

To install
First Boot
  • Go into VM Settings.  Make sure that the CD/DVD virtual Device is connected to the Debian Jessie ISO file.
  • Start Synaptic and install gnome-core
  • Mark upgrades and apply
  • I got a window asking Configuring GDM3 - Default display manager: GDM3, just because I could.  This enables Gnome 3.0 as your default display manager where lightdm is xfce.  Since you specifically wanted a clean gnome 3.0, this is how to enable it.
  • It will run dpkg and install a lot of stuff.
  • Close Synaptic and reboot

Second Boot: Logged in, and ticked the session for gnome, gnome 3.0 is active without fallback.

To install the VMWare Tools

My VM had problems seeing the vmware tools. 
  • In VMWare Workstation, click VM, Install VMWare Tools
  • Having clicked on help, I typed mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom in terminal and got an error, then magically the iso automounted.  I. Just. Don't. Know.  Linux magic.  Trust me on this one, I was frustrated waiting for it to decide to find the blasted VMWare Tools ISO myself.
  • Extract the files with full path to somewhere useful like your home directory.
  • In root terminal, run vmware-config-tools.pl from the directory you just created and take the defaults.
  • The VM will hunt all printers available to the host machine and tell you that Printer Added a number of times.
At this point you should be up and running with Gnome 3.0 in Full Graphics Mode.  
You can manually tell Gnome to flip back and forth between Full Graphics and Fallback with a command shown at this link.
You will now have the ability to arbitrarily resize the windows.
You will probably need to go into dconf to configure the way your linux works.  There are a lot of tweaks you can do in there.

Personally I prefer xfce for its speed and lack of clutter, but that's just me.