Xfce 4 in Mint 12

marshman
  12 years ago
  6

I don't class myself as a Gnome shell 'hater', but I don't find it anywhere near as productive as Gnome 2. I installed the main edition as this is the only Mint where the installer lets you put 'home' on a second hard drive.

After making it work (see my other tutorial about NVIDIA graphics cards), open Synaptic and install 'Xfce 4', this is the Meta-package for the Xfce Lightweight Desktop Environment and will install everything you need to use the desktop.

After logging out and back into Xfce you will notice that Nautilus will open, and Gnome is still controlling your Desktop, you will have the Gnome options on 'right and middle clicks'. If you want the Xfce 'right click' options with the application list and the 'middle click' window list do the following. Log out and back into Gnome, open 'Advanced settings/Desktop' and switch off 'Have file manager handle the desktop'. Of course when you log in to Xfce you will now have to use Xfce settings to change desktop background, themes and other appearance related preferences.

If you wish to default to Xfce 'apps' go to 'Application Menu/Settings/Settings Manager/Preferred Applications' and chose what you want.

I have always used 'Avant Window Manger' with Gnome, no Desktop icons and panel on auto hide, so using this same method on my Xfce desktop it looks identical, and is a lot nearer to Gnome 2 to use than Gnome 3 will ever be, despite all the hard work the Mint team are putting in.

I have been using Xfce as my desktop and 'Thunar' as my file manager for a month now, and after years of using Gnome the only differences I can report is more speed and more stability.

Comments
kazztan0325 12 years ago

@marshman:
I also use 'Mint 12 Lisa with XFCE', though my way to customize desktop environment is different from yours.
Anyway I got my desktop which is similar to my previous one, very comfortable.
I hope Mint Team would develop Lisa XFCE if possible.