On Mon, 13 May 2013 00:53:17 +0200, Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> wrote:
The blank screen I first reported in January with Linux-3.7.3-1-i686 seems to have been cured by the latest update to Linux-3.9.2-1-i686 (and/or other updates that have happened at the same time). (Using the nouveau graphics driver).
But the desktop and mouse settings in XFCe4 aren't all working.
Are you sure that this is caused by the kernel and/or graphics driver? I'm a Xfce only user for a long time and experience it as a PITA. If I would know another DE, that would be similar near to the wanted work flow and that would be less odd, I would switch the DE. It's "normal" that lot of options are broken and reporting them to upstream as a bug, only does lead to flame. However, what exactly doesn't work? The default buttons and wheel settings should work as expected. Even while there's lot of very bad code for desktop stuff, a lot of, if not all default settings should work as expected. Customized settings at least often need to be manually restored after package updates. The latest updates for Xfce on Arch where annoying, I e.g. had to switch from a .svg to a .png for the menu icon, because the .svg I used for a long time, can't be used anymore. But there are also very serious issues, I for example had to remove gvfs, because it does make external drives spin down and up again and again. The menu is a complete mess and it can't be fixed with Alacarte or other menu editors, it only can be done without such a tool. FWIW, I'm using the open source ATI and the kernel-rt from AUR on 64 bit architecture. Sometimes I use a NVIDIA on the same machine and experienced the nouveau driver as better working, unfortunately the graphics can have impact to real-time audio abilities so I sometimes prefer to use an ATI.