Showing off my Xfce desktop on Arch

Discussion in 'General Linux Discussion' started by Daerandin, Oct 19, 2013.

  1. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    So here is how I've set up my Xfce desktop on Arch Linux. In addition to making great use of PlayOnLinux, I also have set up simple launch scripts for games I play through DosBox, as can be seen on the small menu I have opened in the bottom right. 'Enable Midi' simply starts timidity, for which I use a very large and high quality soundfont. Some of the DosBox games make use of 'general midi', which requires this to have sound.

    Oh and for those who don't know, World of Xeen is actually Might and Magic 4 and 5 combined. I have great affection for those old games, I still consider Might and Magic 1, which is from 1986 (hardly any colors at all) to be among my all time favorites. I think the reason why I love those old games is because I played a lot of games on Amiga when I was a kid. In some ways I miss my old Amiga with the Workbench desktop, haha.

    Xfce_arch.png
  2. rolandttg

    rolandttg Member

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    That is an outstanding looking desktop!
    Daerandin likes this.
  3. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    Thanks, I did spend a lot of time going through the xfce-goodies website looking for different themes. Xfce do admittedly look quite ugly from the default install, but it is also easy to modify.
  4. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Wow, nice desktop and environment!
    Sadly I don't get a chance to customize like that. i'm afraid my guides would suffer because I'm making them as basic as possible! You know how them Windoze users are... always have one interface ingrained in their mind. Can't break from it...

    But I'm very impressed with seeing what Linux can do.
    From time to time I use Openbox to run my games. Provides a few frames-per-second in some games.

    By the way, nice list of games!
  5. ThunderRd

    ThunderRd Irreverent Query Chairman Staff Member

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    When I do use a DE, it's Xfce. I discovered it a few years ago, and have stuck with it, mainly because it's a lot lighter then the other big DEs.

    90% of the time now, though, I use a tiling WM called Xmonad. It's something like 6 times lighter on resources then even Xfce is, and gives me the same flexibility. It is also fast. Not just fast, but blazing fast.

    My Xmonad/Gentoo desktop looks a lot like your Xfce screenshot, except the windows tile rather than float by default. If I want a window to float, I just use a keystroke to do it.
  6. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    I figured I could post a screenshot of the my new theme, which is really very similar to the previous theme. I suppose it is quite obvious that I like dark themes, and blue-ish space backgrounds :p

    desktop.png
  7. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Nice, black is good for sure. I am using a "Tron" theme in Mint that is pretty awesome. I'm sure I could spend some time learning how to create a theme for Mint, but its really not that important. I'm always trying to stay "vanilla" so new Linux users will get the same experience as they follow my guides.
  8. rolandttg

    rolandttg Member

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    Wow! Looks good! I got a dark theme sci-fi desktop. I tend towards the dark as well.
  9. RoHen

    RoHen New Member

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    Sorry for my bad english, could you tell me which theme are you using? And could you send me the wallpaper link, please?
  10. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    This thread is 2 years old and I am now using a very different setup. The theme used in the first screenshot is Dark Cold, but it was never updated for GTK3, which means all GTK3 apps will look ugly. The second screenshot is using the Plasma Bolt, Fire, Shock theme, which I did like a lot. I can't seem to find the original page for that theme, but I did find this one after a quick search:

    https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1157147/

    I don't use Xfce anymore so I can't vouch for the quality of this theme currently. The screenshot I found by doing a google image search for space wallpapers. The specific google search I used (I still remember even after two years) was "blue space wallpaper". So just do a google image search for that and you will find it, along with other really cool wallpapers.

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