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Xfce DE

Indeed the best DE out there.

By default xfce is a very plain desktop and looks kind of old and shitty (like this website), but it can look and feel great with some work!

  • Install nicer icons like papirus, can never go wrong with papirus icons. then set them as your icon theme
  • Install a better theme. Some good ones are:
  • Install kvantum and kvantum-qt5 to change qt themes. Add this to /etc/environment for kvantum to work:
    QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=kvantum
  • The default menu is alright but I like whisker menu more.
    • Install whisker menu for a way better menu
    • Go into the panel settings to remove the old one and change it to whisker menu.
  • Enable clipman as one of the startup apps for a kde like clipboard.
  • Make some nicer keybinds:
    • Bind xfce4-popup-whiskermenu to something like alt+f1 than use xcape to bind it to super to get around the xfce super key bug. Add xcape -e 'Super_L=Alt_L|F1' as a startup application or whatever dummy keybind you binded to whiskermenu. Sadly xfce cant bind anything to super key without breaking other shortcuts that use super so we have to use xcape in a painful hacky way.
    • Bind "super+v" to xfce4-clipman-history to make it feel more like the kde clipboard
  • Make new windows show up at the mouse by going into the "Window ManagerTweaks" "Placement" tab, turning the minimum size all the way up and chaning the place windows position to under the mouse pointer.
  • Go into "Window Manager" and set a cooler window style and more sane shortcuts for virtual desktops.
  • Go into "Window Manager Tweaks" and fuck around with the compositor settings for cool clear things.

Rofi in xfce

The default xfce appfinder been causing me issues lately so I decided to switch to rofi.

To make rofi work with my workflow I like to add some binds for it:
  • Bind rofi -show drun -icon-theme "Papirus-Dark" -show-icons to super+d
  • Bind rofi -show run to super+r
  • Bind rofi -show window -icon-theme "Papirus-Dark" -show-icons to super+w
There is much more I could use rofi for but this is all I need.