Is Linux Mint XFCE usable at all?

[rod-q]

Hello everyone, I'm here again because I tried to start using XFCE this week and the experience has been very frustrating. I've been encountering a number of bugs. My PC is a Intel Core i3-6006U bits: with 4gb ram, I'm using this system for educational porpuses because Windows 10 is so heavy on resources and people recommended me Mint XFCE. So some of my problems are:

1- This. I can't solve it:
viewtopic.php?p=2028368#p2028368

2- My mouse is working like crap. The left clicks sometimes don't work. I can't drag files at all. It works like a defective mouse but the same mouse works perfect on Windows 10. It's very difficult simply to click on text to edit on the mouse in Mint XFCE.

3- My PC freezes and/or get ultra slow when many tabs are open at times. Worse than Windows 10 in case. I quit Windows 10 exactly to do a little more multitasking and Mint XFCE is somehow even worse.

4- Sometimes I leave my PC untouched for a while, and then when I log back in it's also in this frozen/ultra slow state. The only way is turning off and on again.

5- Sometimes the taskbar (or panel, I don't know the name), gets frozen, I can't swap programs (unless it's alt+tab), I can't open the "startup menu", and I have to kill the process with some obscure command line. It feels like an old Windows vista bug.

6- My CAPS lock is delayed and I have to enter a script constantly on the cmd-like app to fix it

Among other stuff. Every time a new bug appears and I lose 30-1h on google to find an obscure script or something to fix it. Don't take me the wrong way, I understand the massive appeal for tecnhology hobbysts to do those tweaks all the time, but I need a realiable system for my work with education with children. Just being stable and able to browse the web to work with Google Docs already would be good. I'm from the third world and was told this system would be an alternative to spending money I don't have on hardware upgrades, but right now Mint XFCE is a bugfest that's slowing me down more than Windows was. Is there any fix to the constantly unstability? Is there any other Linux distro that would suit me better? Thank you so much for the attention

[Larry78723]

Without some technical information, we can’t help you. Please post an inxi -Fxxxzr report. This will give us a concise overview of your hardware and on how Mint sees it.

Here is how to generate the report and post it:
Open a terminal window (Ctrl-Alt-t). Make it fullscreen to avoid unneeded linebreaks or chopped lines. Execute the command

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxxxzr 

exactly as it has been typed here.

Mark the complete text output which the command will display with your mouse.
Press the keyboard shortcut <Shift><Ctrl>C to copy the marked text into the clipboard.
Enclose the results between the code markers by selecting </> from the mini toolbar above the textbox where you type your reply then paste <Ctrl>V them in your reply between the code markers [code]Results [/code].

The results will help us to help you.

[ThaCrip]

Update Manager > View > Linux Kernels

try switching from what I assume if your current 5.4 to 5.8.

that might not help but it's worth a shot.

[ajgreeny]

Yes, we really need the output of that

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxxxzr

command, but even before seeing that I think my first suggestion would be that your graphics is running like a three legged donkey at the moment.

I may be wrong, of course, but it's difficult to figure out why Xfce should be running so badly for any other reason; usually Xfce is fast and has been my favourite for very many years, whatever distro I'm using; Mint, Xubuntu, Arcolinux, all using Xfce, and all running very fast.

[t42]

it's difficult to figure out why Xfce should be running so badly

if it's nvidia, the recommended nvidia driver is not installed.

[zcot]

I use Xfce almost exclusively, often because I have such outdated hardware.

For me it works excellently. I have yet to experience any bugs.

I will mention that a number of years ago I was using some random cheap mouse and would get some weird action from it, but I changed it to some other cheap no-name-brand mouse and it was fine after that. There are certainly many 100's of mouses that work perfectly, but I'm sure there is also some that do not work very well. But the mouse is not handled with "Xfce" so much as the kernel and Xorg library functionality, which would be the same on Mint MATE or Cinnamon.

I would caution you about going out and finding these fix scripts, that doesn't seem like a good idea.

If something is wrong then you should deal with the root of the problem, and then things will work very well, like they should.

The system info should at least clear up a lot of the detail that is needed to do some diagnostics.

[Reddog1]

I have zero problems with Xfce and I run it on all my desktops and laptops and as virtual machines. I think you've tweaked something (your link to a previous post). I don't know what, but whatever it is I haven't done it, ever, so I can't help in that regard. What I do know is that when you open a program, the icon should appear in your taskbar, along with a dialog (Firefox Icon--Mozilla Firefox dialog when Firefox opened, and home icon--yourusername-FileManager when the File Manager is opened). The icon that opens the program remains only an icon. I have machines that are more powerful, less powerful, and about equal to yours. Some of your problems appear to be hardware specific. Post your

inxi -Fxxxzr

[Hoser Rob]

Yes, we really need the output of that

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxxxzr

command...

+1, you can't get any real support for most issues without proper system details.

Yes, Xfce is quite useable. I've been using it for years (though KDE is my main DE).

And I'm not convinced in the least that Xfce has anything to do with your problems. But with no useful system info how is anyone going to be able to tell?

[missmoondog]

have xfce on 6 different machines here ranging from almost ancient to 1 that is brand new. xfce runs like a champ on every one of them. personally, i prefer xfce over the other desktop environments just because of the simplicity. have never had an issue with it.

as already stated though, if you don't post the out put of that command that was asked for, you're not going to get any real help.

[DAMIEN1307]

try switching from what I assume if your current 5.4 to 5.8.

Don't assume here...That advice may well work for people running LM 20.0 or LM20.1 but your automatically assuming he is running The most up to date Linux Mint numbers here.

We need the readout of his system before we start recommending a kernel change that isn't designed to work on an older system that might be running LM 18.xx or LM 19.xx as a for instance.

Right now we only know that he is using an XFCE desktop without knowing the LM version...DAMIEN

This code below, should be run in the terminal by "copy and paste", and posted back here in the thread before offering any advice

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inxi -Fxpmrz

that might not help but it's worth a shot.

NO, its not worth a shot...That could mess up his system even more than what it is already when system stats for his system are unknown.

[Green man]

Hello. I'm sorry you're having a bad experience with Mint xfce. On my 11 year old dell laptop, it's blazing fast and rock solid stable. It's my favourite Linux OS to run on hardware, and it would still be my distro of choice even if I had a more powerful system to run it on.
Larry78723s advice is spot on and should be your first priority.

Without some technical information, we can’t help you. Please post an inxi -Fxxxzr report. This will give us a concise overview of your hardware and on how Mint sees it.

Here is how to generate the report and post it:
Open a terminal window (Ctrl-Alt-t). Make it fullscreen to avoid unneeded linebreaks or chopped lines. Execute the command

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxxxzr 

exactly as it has been typed here.

Mark the complete text output which the command will display with your mouse.
Press the keyboard shortcut <Shift><Ctrl>C to copy the marked text into the clipboard.
Enclose the results between the code markers by selecting </> from the mini toolbar above the textbox where you type your reply then paste <Ctrl>V them in your reply between the code markers [code]Results [/code].

The results will help us to help you.

If you are on 20.1 both the 5.8 & 5.11 kernels are now available and might be worth a try.

Is there any other Linux distro that would suit me better?

You should post the inxi report first, and see if you get helpful feedback once the report is posted, but MX Linux might eventually be worth a try. I prefer Mint, but MX Linux is on the 4.19 kernel and is just different enough under the hood, that you might not experience the same hardware issues out of the box.

https://mxlinux.org/

Lastly, once you have your hardware issues resolved, the solution to getting the task bar behaviour you want, is dockbarx. On mint you can add the ppa from the instructions here: https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx
Remove the panel buttons applet and any pinned launchers from your panel, add the dockbarx plugin where the panel buttons one was and re-pin pin any launchers you want quick access to within the plugin. But don't worry about this until you have your hardware issues resolved!

Also, on MX dockbarx is available from the stable repo in the software installer.

I hope some of this is helpful

[Green man]

I totally forgot to add this, but did you check the integrity of your ISO before installing Mint? I've never experienced it, but I've heard of weird issues like this stemming from a corrupted ISO, which might be prone to happen, if your internet connection was poor while you are downloading the ISO.