The state of desktop OS

[tperry2x]

I think it would be cool to have a xTalk-Linux Distro Spin, where OXT and OpenXION come pre-installed and it has a tested-OXT-compatible Window Manger as the default.

I had already produced several ISOs, both in 32-bit and 64-bit in the past, but since deleted as I needed the extra 2GB these took up. The window manager issue isn't as cut-and-dried because it's also tied into which particular graphics card you have too. You've just reminded me to try something regarding that too...

[richmond62]

Just go for the lowest common denominator, say, LXDE or XFCE.

[tperry2x]

Just go for the lowest common denominator, say, LXDE or XFCE.

XFCE (with ubuntu) is one of the worst if it has certain desktop sessions. Plus it's actually quite a needlessly huge distro compared to a plain Debian distro.

[richmond62]

Nothing wrong with XFCE as far as I'm concerned, and it works very well with Debian.

Mind you, having run Xubuntu for 17 years on lots and lots of machines of all types, I have yet to find a besetting reason to try something else.
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[richmond62]

The ONLY problem I had with more recent version of Xubuntu was with LC 963 and the massageBox NOT receiving focus:
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Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 15.31.02.png (136.74 KiB) Viewed 626 times

[richmond62]

AND, something wonderful happened:
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Screenshot 2024-11-27 at 15.24.43.png (71.96 KiB) Viewed 625 times

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[tperry2x]

Aha! - yes, my site is back online. Seems my whining may have caused someone to do something about it.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

XFCE (with ubuntu) is one of the worst if it has certain desktop sessions

That's strange to me because xfwm4 is one of the window managers that I've had the best luck with getting the Browser Widgets to work without strange phantom windows appearing and not going away when asked to. And XFCE works fine with most distros that I've tried it on, including Debian based (which I think Ubuntu was once based on as well).
The other one is KDE Plasma KWin wm that came as the default with Ubuntu Studio.

I was unaware of Video driver / GPU playing any factor in those issues, but that would make a lot of sense because GPU would be involved, passing along its accelerated rendering pixels that get dumped into a view box on a screen.

[tperry2x]

I was unaware of Video driver / GPU playing any factor in those issues, but that would make a lot of sense because GPU would be involved, passing along its accelerated rendering pixels that get dumped into a view box on a screen.

Yes, and this is also why testing in a VM won't always give you an accurate representation of the windowing issues, as unless the VM is configured to use the detected graphics card, it may be using a software renderer instead.

But then you are into the nightmare scenario of trying to support, list and diagnose IDE fixes for various graphics cards too

[richmond62]

This whole discussion strikes me a very odd for the simple reason that I have run RunTime Revolution/LiveCode for 17 years on Xubuntu running on just about "any piece of crap" PCLIFE:

https://www.pclife.bg/?gad_source=1&gcl ... gLQovD_BwE

could throw at me without any obvious problems with GPUs at all . . .

So: I would suppose that a .deb version of OXT should no more fuss about Graphics cards than the LC 963 thing did.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

With 'Native Layer' Browser Widget (and Player control) it's a different animal, the 2D can be GPU accelerated (or could be software renderer) which becomes apparent if try something like SVG animations in a Browser Widget, even image pixel manipulations are faster then doing same with the engine / xTalk script. Hermann Hoch did some nice library (of sorts) and demo stacks of image manipulations in browser.

I'm currently running Linux on an old laptop with whatever plain-old Intel integrated GPU (4th gen i5). If you aren't using browser widgets or trying to use the player, you likely wouldn't have any of those problems (except for possibly stack window focus issues).

[richmond62]

Why not have 2 versions . . .

OXT Lite for Linux distros that let everything,

and

OXT 'Incredibly Lite and Fluffy' with the Browser and the Player removed.

?

[tperry2x]

Nothing wrong with XFCE as far as I'm concerned, and it works very well with Debian.

I don't doubt that. Debian and XFCE do play well together. Debian, XFCE, and LCC do NOT play well together.
That screenshot is a standalone, where you don't have inspector palettes, things topleveling, trying to set systemwindow properties, and lots of other stuff the IDE is doing, so not a great example. If you tried to run LCC 9.6.3 on there, create a new stack, open a stack inspector (not a card inspector), open a message box, and a script editor. Then for good measure, open the Application Browser. (I can almost be certain you are going to have window focus issues of some kind).

[tperry2x]

Why not have 2 versions . . .
OXT Lite for Linux distros that let [do?] everything,
and
OXT 'Incredibly Lite and Fluffy' with the Browser and the Player removed.
?

Because of time, or lack of it.

[richmond62]

Many, many times during progging classes over the last 10 year.

No problems.

[tperry2x]

Many, many times during progging classes over the last 10 year.
No problems.

That's good. So if I'm to take it that these are 10 year old (+) devices, are you using a software compositor in Linux, or is there a graphics card in use on them? That would also have a big impact on how the windows are drawn. You can normally find this in your window preferences: (will vary by distro).

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