Xfce Forum

xfce_curious

Member

Registered: 2020-02-20

Posts: 11

Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

Apologies if I've failed to embrace an existing feature of XFCE. It's often quicker to ask than spend days fiddling at random.

I've been using and enjoying XFCE on top of vanilla Arch for several years now. It gives me mostly trouble-free use. The other day I reformatted another old computer (with Arch) and decided, purely for experiment, to install LXQT and Openbox on it.

I was impressed enough that I then did the same to this machine. So now, my Login manager (Slick Greeter) defaults to XFCE but offers me the other sessions too.

So far so good. Except now I have this curious but annoying problem that the desktop icons - both the default ones provided by XFCE4-wm for display (Home, Trash, Computer/Filesystem) - as well as my own custom shortcuts are being displayed twice over. To be clearer: I had just the one desktop layout with only XFCE on this machine. But once I created a second DE with its own session control, it then created its own set of layouts, using the different icon themes etc. Now I have both sets displayed for both sessions! This means doubling up with the same shortcuts, only using different themes and icon sets.

Is there any way to store desktop layout such that logging in to XFCE will display ONLY specific things?

p.s. should have added for clarity:

yes, I reset the desktop, cleared saved sessions, and then saved. A simple reboot showed all was well. Logging into other DE though... and they all get put back!

p.p.s yes, probably an LXQT issue but... their website is utterly down/gone/unavailable... likewise their forum etc. so asking here just in case

Last edited by xfce_curious (2020-04-14 08:45:33)

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

Not sure if this helps, but: LXQt specific configuration of window manager Openbox

It's linked from the main LXQt repo wiki.

I can't help any more at the moment, good luck!

xfce_curious

Member

Registered: 2020-02-20

Posts: 11

Re: Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

That is supremely helpful, THANK YOU!

Just as importantly as being related to the question is to have found a human being involved with LQXT that I might talk to! I am rather surprised and inconvenienced by the fact that there appear to be NO working links at all to the LXQT site or forum.

Anyway, I greatly suspect this may be at least partly related to my issue, so I'll look into it in more depth later.

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

Good! Please tell us any progress you make on it.

xfce_curious

Member

Registered: 2020-02-20

Posts: 11

Re: Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

thank you - in fact I just looked.

The several .rc files the linked reply talks about are config files yes, but in reading through (I did!) the set up guide for LXQT I had already looked at said files and had edited them to any extent needed. It's probably worth noting that one is instructed to copy those config files into `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/` such that one's local configuration changes overwrite /etc and which (presumably) means one's customisations persist across updates.

However those same .rc files have nothing at all in them that deal specifically with these levels of configuration or layout as I'm having issues with. They are all about noting what theme(s) applied, items on the menu and launchers etc. etc.

I have also looked inside `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/` and other places for any other files which might possibly have a bearing on this matter. In fact both Openbox and LXQT seem remarkably orderly, and the other file I found (inside `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/openbox/sessions/` listed ONLY the three desktop icons I'd set for it.

I did a small test. From within XFCE4 I cleared my desktop. I backed up then deleted any shortcuts, I turned off the native display for desktop icons, left me with a bare desktop. I deleted any saved sessions for XFCE.

I logged into LXQT desktop (either under qt5 or direct, no idea why both are listed, I may adjust that). It booted fine - no confusion or overlap, everything was just as expected with only the icons under LXQT.

I logged out and back into XFCE. XFCE now showed ONLY the icons inherited from the LXQT session!

I had no trouble restoring my desktop of course, and truth be told while it was a circuitous route to using LXQT, I am in fact looking for an option to XFCE for a daily driver, so while I feel LXQT isn't quite ready for mainstream yet (too many tiny little niggles), I may in fact just go log in and stay there, and stop worrying about complete compatibility between the two as although that would be nice, I'm just looking for ONE system that I'm completely happy with.

I'll continue to investigate this because I rather relish getting to understand the why's but at end of day, if this does turn out to be an issue within XFCE and not Openbox well...

Thanks for the help though. If I find out anything that might be helpful I'll post back

xfce_curious

Member

Registered: 2020-02-20

Posts: 11

Re: Is there such a thing as creating and restoring exact desktop layout?

I think I may have found something:

reading the advanced section of the XFCE site, re the Session Manager, it says this:

"Xfce now uses the Basedir Specification as defined on Freedesktop.org to locate its data and configuration files. This means that file locations will be specified as a path relative to the directories described in the specification.

${XDG_CONFIG_DIRS}
A list of system directories that contain configuration data. By default the panel will look in ${sysconfdir}/xdg/ and /etc/xdg/. The value of ${sysconfdir} depends on how the program was build and will often be /etc/ for binary packages."

Err... yup.

Part of the Openbox installation requirements are to copy across some config files from /etc/xdg/

So, if XFCE is going to parse EVERYTHING in that directory, and just what - randomly load anything it sees as a config file?? Not saying it does, just saying this could well be why I'm having trouble. Presumably I would need to set some sort of switch to exclude specific dirs? Can that be done?

In the meantime I did just post to ask on the LightDM page whether there was any possibility that the session manager is loading up some bunch of configs that aren't helping?

Never expected to have this issue, to be quite honest.