Switching between programs using hot corners

[Wade Patton]

I'm on Mint Xcfe and using Kodi. I'd like to try MATE, but don't really look forward to going through the process and setup again (Kodi) just for testing.

Why I'm posting right here is because richmorehave indicates that he/she has a distinct preference for Mate. I'm asking because I don't want to have to try out every single version of Mint to find one that will do what I like. I'd like to inquire, richmorehave as to exactly why the strong preference for Mate. Is it "looks/feel" or more a functionality thing?

[Wade Patton]

Searched "Kodi" this forum and only got one hit. I didn't appear relevant.

Here's the dealio. Been using Elementary (my first Linux OS) for well over a year.

I could use Hot Corners to get from full screen Kodi to any other tab/workspace without issue.

The HDD failed on my EOS setup and I used the opportunity to update to a later Linux, and decided to try the Mint variety as well. Am now running Sarah-xfce. I like it fine, but can't get Hot Corners to work (tried to follow instructions from somewhere, but it didn't work). Can't use windowed Kodi as it causes a conflict or overtaxes my onboard video (card is next hardware upgrade). So I downloaded and tried Cinnamon. Hot Corners work but the video overload appears in Kodi menus causing a laggy/jumpy cursor. I don't think I even tried to run a show. Too much trouble in the menus.

Any help?

I'm not sure if trying yet another version of Mint would help, or if we can figure a way to make Hot Corners work in Mint as they did in Elementary or if it will "resolve itself" when I pop in a proper video card.

Thanks mucho.

[Wade Patton]

Does Mate have "hot corners"?

I'm so sick of trying to make XFCE have hot corners. stuff doesn't work. And I have other things to do.

Maybe Cinnamon didn't work right because I was running off the USB, but danged if I want to spend half a day every other day changing OS's in order to get back to where I was with Elementary Luna. (able to switch between Kodi and BROWSER)

[richmorehave]

Wade Patton
I'm not sure about hot corners, I don't use them in Mate.
But maybe I can share how I deal with Kodi so I can switch because Kodi and regular desktop.
I go to System settings in Kodi, and then Settings, then find System options, Video Options, then look for Display Mode and make the setting "Windowed". I do this first thing when I install Kodi. So if that was your problem , you can do that in any distro.

Also, if you want full screen in Kodi, in mate panel, make it "show hide buttons". And you have options when panel is hidden to click on hide button to expand panel again.

[Wade Patton]

I was dehydrated and rambling last night and my posts here were edited, thanks.

I used "hot corners" to switch between my browser (Mozilla) and Kodi when I was running Elementary (Luna) which has the "Pantheon" GUI.

When my HDD failed I thought I'd like to try a different and fully-up-to-date version of Linux. This brought me to Mint and after reading all the info and seeing half the videos, I decided to try XFCE. I had no prior experience with XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, or anything else Linux-but Elementary.

I'll learn as I go, but have hit a real point of frustration trying to get "back" to the functionality I had using Hot Corners in Pantheon.

I've been poking on computers since the TRS-80 and the 8088, BUT I'm not a programmer and "fake my way" around that end of the deal. It's going to take me some time to learn much of the nuances of using terminal here. I C/P most of my terminal commands.

I've downloaded Mint 18 XFCE and have been running it. I tried patching hot corners into it as I found out on the web, but that was for version 17.x and it wouldn't work. I ran the stuff twice. Then I found another "patch" it didn't work either.

SO I downloaded Sarah Cinnamon, nice has hot corners, but the video gets all sketchy--BUT this is running from the USB drive. Maybe it would run better fully installed?

Now I'm downloading Sarah MATE in order to try it from the USB.

Then I'll start doing backups and full installs I suppose. I've yet been able to find anyone who uses Kodi and Mozilla at the same time as I do.

I can get around the lack of hot corners, but it involves starting a new browser window each time--a bit ridiculous.

Any guidance would be appreciated. I am a quick learner, but my patience with this particular subject has grown quite thin, because the time it takes to download, backup, make a bootable, setup programs, and test.) I'm in W7 presently because I find Rufus much easier to use here than in terminal, and I really don't care to be in W7.

I just don't like being "locked in" to Mozilla OR Kodi. I want to traverse twixt the two as I was able to do before. I'd like to get to know Mint better before I decide to stay with Mint or to go back to Elementary (if I have to). Or jump to something else. Thanks!

[Wade Patton]

Thanks richmorehave, but I've tried that.

If i engage "windowed mode" for Kodi, then the video bogs down for whatever reason. The cursor becomes jumpy and unpredictable. So I went back to full screen mode.

The same thing happens with the pointer/cursor when I tried to use Cinnamon from the USB-but in the Kodi menus.

SO now I'm making a bootable USB of Mate to try. Oh lookie, it's done.

Thanks for the info anyway.

[richmorehave]

Wade Patton
The only way that I can really see if the distro works for my pc is to do a tri-boot or quad-boot maybe giving each distro 30-50 gigs for testing. Then you can go back and forth and see what works best. I'm not sure memory stick install is the best way or virtual box.

Up until last week, I had on my 350 gig hard drive : windows 10, Mate 17.3, Cinnamon 18, Xfce 18, and Mate 18 (5 distro's on the hard drive) . I was switching between them to see which one I liked the best, gave it 2 weeks to compare them. It beats virtual box or a distro installed on a usb stick. I made sure each distro was fully undated before testing them. It was fun to play with them. If any of them went bad, I had the other 3 distro's to play with plus windows 10 anniversary edition.

[Wade Patton]

Okay, yes, I'm going to have to fully install to see what actually works.

But I only have 250 GB of SSD total and I gave 100 to W7 already as I never thought I'd be triple booting.

Quickie question: how much drive space do I need for each Mint? for testing purposes only that is. I'll make a decision pretty quickly as I hate having to reset the settings all the time to get things where I want them.

[Wanders off in the direction of making backups (something he should do more often)]

[uberdorf]

Another relevant factor affecting usability is the specifications of the PC. (You can type "inxi -F" without quotes into a Linux Mint terminal and paste the results here if you want advice on that.) While I personally prefer Cinnamon, I use Mate on any PC less than 4 GB of RAM. Of course Cinnamon doesn't need that much RAM, I just need extra RAM for apps that I use instead of having the desktop environment use as much of it, and Mate uses less RAM than Cinnamon.

And a PC running from USB or CD will be slower and have more trouble than if it was actually installed on the PC.

XFCE is my least favorite environment, by the way. I don't like the interface, and it doesn't work right with some apps that I use. So for low RAM I use Mate, and for really low RAM I would go with a 17.x series Mint Mate instead of LM 18 XFCE because LM 17 used less RAM. That's just my own experience and preferences.

50 GB drive space should be plenty for a linux distro. Another option rather than installing a bunch of OS's on your hard drive, is to install a virtual machine like Oracle's VirtualBox. A virtual machine tricks the OS into thinking that it is installed on a computer, and you can even run Windows in a virtual machine if you have the product key to type in after installing from DVD. That's what I do, I have all my PC's running only linux with a virtual machine on some of them to try out different OS's and to run Windows for the few Windows programs I prefer. This will work for whether you like the functionality of a distro, but it won't tell you if it will get along with your hardware while installed on a drive which is why I would guess some people don't like them.

As for hot corners, I don't use them so can't give any advice on that. If hot corners are what the Gnome 3 environment uses by default (like in Ubuntu Gnome 16.04), then I personally find that very annoying.

[greerd]

Hi Wade,
I run kodi on Mint 18 cinnamon, so I did some testing for you.

If hot corners are setup and kodi is in full screen mode, the hot corners are NOT accessible. But shift-tab is, holding the shift key and tapping the tab key will cycle through all open windows on that desktop. So you can access a browser or whatever from within kodi(as long as they're already running). This is a gnome thing so I would be very surprised if this same thing isn't available in mate.

Kodi works on my system without stuttering whether its windowed or full screen. The only issue I have since updating from 17.3 is kodi doesn't shut down correctly and start the processor racing. I kill kodi.bin from within the system monitor. ('killall kodi.bin' doesn't work for me)

If you have kodi setup the way you like (fusion installed, etc) and decide to zap you distro for something else (xfce to mate for example) all you have to do is backup the ~/.kodi directory and copy it back over after you've installed the new distro. Its best to copy the ~/.kodi directory back over before you start kodi for the first time on the new distro. (but not necessary) I do this for multiple programs like firefox and thunderbird so when I start them up for the first time, everything is ready to go.

Cheers,
Doug

[theStreak]

I run Kodi full screen on MATE and switching between it and the full desktop is just a matter of pressing the "\" key which toggles between full screen and windowed mode. AFAIC, media software like Kodi is useless if you can't access a full-blown Linux O/S in the background at a moment's notice but that's just my opinion.

Hot corners are available in MATE using Compiz. I've got scale in one corner, expo in another and a window switcher in a third one. An added bonus of some of these Compiz plugins is that they support drag-n-drop. For example, you can drag a file, folder or selected text to the scale plugin hot corner, find the window you want to drop to, hover over it, let Compiz switch to that workspace and then drop it.

I've run Kodi many times from a live CD while running Compiz on MATE -- even from a 12 year old Dell Dimension 2400... and it still ran fine.