No "busy" mouse pointer?

[ander111]

Hi,

Mint XFCE is super! It's noticeably faster than KDE or MATE on my pokey little netbook. An excellent implementation---I have nothing but good things to say about it.

There's just one small oddity I'd like to ask about. When I run a bigger app like Firefox or The GIMP, the mouse pointer should change to the animated "busy" pointer. But it usually doesn't. Sometimes I can see it by moving the pointer to the panel area, but not always.

Anyone know what's up with that? Should I file a bug report? If so, where?

[xenopeek]

The libraries needed for the busy cursor are installed on Linux Mint Xfce. However, only applications that support that standard will show the busy cursor while loading. For example, both Firefox and LibreOffice are known to integrate poorly with the Linux desktop and neither of them supports this standard (so no busy cursor). GIMP does support the standard, and so should do the busy cursor.

It also depends on your mouse cursor theme (in Mouse and Touchpad > Theme), but is sounds like you have a theme with a busy cursor.

Which version of Linux Mint are you using? Perhaps you are using one an older one, with an older Xfce version?

[ander111]

The libraries needed for the busy cursor are installed on Linux Mint Xfce. However, only applications that support that standard will show the busy cursor while loading. For example, both Firefox and LibreOffice are known to integrate poorly with the Linux desktop and neither of them supports this standard (so no busy cursor). GIMP does support the standard, and so should do the busy cursor.

So it's the laurched app that controls the cursor? Not XFCE? I thought maybe XFCE, or a more fundamental part of the OS, showed the "busy" cursor till the app finished launching.

But that doesn't explain why, while FF (for example) is loading, I can move the mouse pointer down to the panel and the "busy" cursor does appear. Then when I move it back to the desktop, it disappears again... Doesn't that mean XFCE does know the app's still loading? Try it yourself and you'll see what I mean. You may need to do this on a slow PC, with many plug-ins added to your FF. ;?)

It also depends on your mouse cursor theme (in Mouse and Touchpad > Theme), but is sounds like you have a theme with a busy cursor.

Yup.

Which version of Linux Mint are you using?

Mint XFCE 14, with all updates... Anyway, it's curious.

[xenopeek]

I don't know, perhaps a full-time Xfce user can pitch in with an answer AFAIK, the application is responsible for telling Xfce it is busy.

[ander111]

Hey, this is great---I've done some updates (including a dist-upgrade) and now the "busy pointer" appears right away. So someone else out there noticed. Isn't it cool how quickly stuff can get fixed in the Linux world?