Xenial Is Looking Better

[jglen490]

As soon as 16.04.1 came out, I downloaded the iso, backed up /home, burned the iso to DVD, and custom installed it.

Right out of the box, no problems - ugly as mud, but functional. So I went back and installed Synaptic, so I could install Muon. Don't get me wrong, Synaptic is nice, but I'm very much at home with Muon. As for Discover - meh. I got Thunderbird/Lightning, Clementine, screensavers and a few others of the packages that aren't stock. I promptly dumped Kmail, Kontact, etc. Don't get me wrong, I just prefer TBird.

I played around with various themes, and combined some features, along with FF and Tbird themes. Don't get me wrong, but I hate the flat, square, un-colorful stuff that was in the stock install. After much playing, my desktop is almost inviting again.

Just out of curiosity, I looked for, found, and started up Amarok. I haven't like Amarok in a very long time, but this time it just ran. I could start to like it again.

So I bid adieu to Trusty, and look forward to what seems to be a fine, stable Xenial (whatever that is!) for the next couple of years. Just gotta whup the ugly, other than that the devs have done a very good job.

[DrGeoffrey]

Care to post a screen shot?

[jglen490]

Not a problem, be back in a few ...

[jglen490]

See if this works - my first time with Spectacle. Normally, I keep most things minimized, and just jump around as needed.

[jglen490]

And here's my 'bare" desktop ...

[Rod J]

Do you have any panels? I can't see a panel in those screenshots. I guess you might have hidden the panel? A desktop screenshot seems incomplete without a panel (to me, anyway).

[jglen490]

Yes, I have Autohide set. Here's view with Always Visible set.

[Rod J]

What is the theme you are using? I like the look of the semi-transparent panel. I'm trying out different themes, etc in my K16.04 VirtualBox machine. At the moment it looks like this:


I'm using the bare-naked theme which makes the panel completely transparent, not sure I like it that way so much but it's growing on me. I didn't like the look of the panel as it was set up initially. I'm not sure why Firefox has a dark theme, as it's the default theme. I've switched back and forth in the System Settings, Workspace Theme, Look and Feel, Breeze and Breeze Dark a few times. There seems to be a bug there because sometimes the settings got stuck and mixed up. It's set to the default Breeze now.

[DrGeoffrey]

Wow jglen490. That looks so similar to mine. It appears we have the same opinion about the current popular themes. Rod J., you may want to change Workspace Theme > Look And Feel to Breeze instead of Breeze Dark. The result should be something like this:




Edit:
Hmmm, I just reread your last post and it seems I still need to learn how to read. That said, it was the switch I mentioned above that changed my menus to a lighter background. Wish I could help more about the bug.

[Rod J]

Yeah, that's my point ... it IS set to Breeze NOT Breeze Dark. But the dark theme persists in Firefox ... weird.

When I first changed to Breeze Dark it didn't seem to fully change (the panel was messed up somehow) then I switched back to Breeze and everything is as you would expect except Firefox. It's got me scratching my head It may be some bug in VirtualBox. When I first created this Virtual machine I had 3D acceleration turned on and that really didn't work well with parts of the desktop being invisible like the panel completely hidden and started applications not appearing at all. Then I remembered I had this problem with my K15.10 virtual install too. Disabling the 3D acceleration fixes that problem.

[DrGeoffrey]

VBs are great for fast switching between distributions, or running Windows, but they can introduce their own idiosyncrasies. A curious question, have you tried creating a new user?

[Rod J]

No, not yet. I might try that tomorrow (or I should say, later today). Got to get some sleep now, it's nearly 2 a.m. here.

[oshunluvr]

jglen490, Comment and question;

Just a suggestion, but rather than installing Synaptic and all the GTK stuff it requires, why not just install Muon? sudo apt install muon in konsole does it in one step!

Question: Are you using the nvidia drivers? I ask because of Spectacle has an odd problem if being used with nvidia drivers. Regardless of your video card, try to use "Rectangular Area" capture with spectacle and capture a small area - less than 300x200 pixels. Let me know your results and what video driver you're using, thanks.

[acheron]

Question: Are you using the nvidia drivers? I ask because of Spectacle has an odd problem if being used with nvidia drivers. Regardless of your video card, try to use "Rectangular Area" capture with spectacle and capture a small area - less than 300x200 pixels. Let me know your results and what video driver you're using, thanks.

That is odd.

Just returns with no SC displayed, as if it has no been taken. But export/save to somewhere else, and it seems to be there.

spectacle - 16.04.3
Nvidia Drivers - 367.35-0ubuntu0~gpu16.10.1

Seems related:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365741

&

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362450

[jglen490]

oshunluvr --

Thanks for your input! I am using Nvidia 340.96, as recommended. With Spectacle, I just saved the image and then resized it to the images that are shown above - seems to work O.K.

As for Synaptic, I wanted to try it because there are some high praises for the application. Like I said it's O.K., but I'll probably dump it at some point, just because I do like Muon better.

I am liking Xenial. There are still some issues that I'll work on. All minor stuff and not problematic, more like irritations and preferences.