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Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Hello,

I'm not exactly brand new to the world of Linux because I've slowly made the transition to Linux in the past two years. I love GNU/Linux and during my distrohops I've switched to so may distros out there from Fedora to OpenSUSE to Debian to Ubuntu and Ubunu-based to Arch to Arch-based to Kali and now finally Artix. I feel Artix has everything. No SystemD, a choice of your favorite init system, Zero bloat, XFCE, and most importantly, AUR and bleeding edge stuff. However, I am encountering issues I have never encountered in any other distro. I will list all of them in order of their priority, so please be patient. 

1. DWM Customization issues (.xinitrc doesn't pick up the changes)
2. XFCE's default terminal has transparency issues (the host name always remains opaque)
3. Is compositor missing dependencies? Because it says picom is outdated, install compton instead buit installing compton doesn't help with Xterm either
4.i3 is missing dependencies
5. Sway doesn't even show me the main screen and loops back to the login screen

So let me at least elaborate issue 1 and 2 to begin with.

I'm using DWM as I type this post. I was totally unable to install DWM via the extraction  > sudo make clean install method. So I took the AUR > git clone > makepkg -si route. It worked and I'm now able to use DWM. however, I noticed that after copying .xinitrc to my home directory and editing it to restore my selected wallpaper and run compositor on login, neither of the services work. There's no transparency and I'm stuck with the Radiant Glow default green Artix Wallpaper.

Edit: Apaprently it only picks up the wallpaper from lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf file from /etc/lightdm folder. When I change the value in background = section, the same background gets used as the DWM wallpaper.

Issue 2 is pretty weird too. I had to remove xterm and install Konsole because that's the only terminal that's offering total transparency, all the others like Xterm, Terminator do not make the BG behind the host name transparent. This issue is present in every device I've installed Artix on and have never encountered it anywhere else.

I wanted to Rice DWM but the .xinitrc changes didn't work as intended. I took it to Reddit and got the advice to try out i3wm instead but while it does work. I'm also getting this error at the bottom where it says it's missing dependencies "Error: status_command not found or is missing a library dependency."

I tried Sway but that doesn't even load up fully. I loop back to login screen before I can even see my mouse pointer.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Re: Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Reply #1 –
Quote from: POTUFS – on
1. DWM Customization issues (.xinitrc doesn't pick up the changes)
Typically dwm is 'riced' by patching in specific features that you want directly into dwm.c and setting all configuration options (keybinds, colours, etc) in config.h file then compiling from source yourself.

As to your specific question, as long as your window manager/desktop environment is the last program to run, you should be to, in your .xinitrc, just run the command to set your wallpaper, how are you trying to do it?

Here's a snippet from my .xinitrc.

Code: [Select]
feh --bg-scale ~/Pictures/lock_screen.png &
exec dwm


Quote from: POTUFS – on
2. XFCE's default terminal has transparency issues (the host name always remains opaque)
That should be a changeable setting in most applications, although I don't use xfce4 terminal, so I can't talk about that program specifically, although what you'll find is that this is actually the default transparency setting for most programs, because text becomes very hard to read if it is transparent.

Quote from: POTUFS – on
3. Is compositor missing dependencies? Because it says picom is outdated, install compton instead buit installing compton doesn't help with Xterm either
If I'm remembering correctly, picom is the maintained fork of compton, what specific error are you getting? Are you making sure to run picom so that it can actually make the programs transparent? I don't think you've given enough information here.

Quote from: POTUFS – on
4.i3 is missing dependencies
i3 always expect to have a status bar (the status_command option in it's config), but it doesn't actually care what that bar is (the most common are i3blocks and polybar) are you making sure to run a status bar when you launch i3?

Quote from: POTUFS – on
5. Sway doesn't even show me the main screen and loops back to the login screen
Sway is just a fork of i3 for the wayland display server, do you have that installed?

Re: Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Reply #2 –
sudo pacman -S mate mate-extras caja-open-terminal

i'm without  computer for another week while i wait on my used machine to come in the mail from st. paul so i can't look o see the setting myself as i usu have to look myself to find these things... my mind is mush.

you def want to use picom and delete anything in the .config home directory tht is related to compiz at tat will cause errors.

nitrogen is the back in the day standard tool for wallpapers in wms but i guess the feh is the thing now in a terminal.

Cat Herders of Linux

Re: Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Krellnus – on
Code: [Select]
feh --bg-scale ~/Pictures/lock_screen.png &
exec dwm

There is a $HOME/.fehbg script which is autogenerated by feh when you right click a picture in feh and choose File -> Background -> Set ... option. By executing that file, you can change the background interactively through feh.

Quote from: POTUFS – on
1. DWM Customization issues (.xinitrc doesn't pick up the changes)
The name dwm is never capitalized.

Like all suckless software, dwm is meant to be customized by editing its config.h and recompilation. Recompilation is done by
Code: [Select]
$ make
$ su
# make install

Re: Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Reply #4 –
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm sharing my .xinitrc over here. I now have suspicions that Artix isn't picking up my .xinitrc file for some reason because when I run these commands manually:

Code: [Select]
nitrogen --restore &
picom -f &

I start getting transparency in Konsole (when i'm using DWM) and in other apps and the BG i set up on Nitrogen restores itself.

Note that while running picom makes Konsole transparent on DWM, it still doesn't make ST transparent.

With that said, I also don't see Xresources and Xmodmap. even
Code: [Select]
locate
command couldn't fetch anything

Code: [Select]
#!/bin/sh

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then







    xrdb -merge $sysresources

fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then







    xrdb -merge "$userresources"

fi

if [ -f "$usermodmap" ]; then
    xmodmap "$usermodmap"
fi

# start some nice programs

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
 for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?*.sh ; do
  [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
 done
 unset f
fi

twm &
xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 &
xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 &
exec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login

#keyboard layout
#setxkbmap en &

#display resolution
#xrandr --output Virtual-1 --mode 1920x1080&

#compositor
picom -f &

#wallpaper
nitrogen --restore &

#execute dwm
exec dwm


I have commented out some lines. I was told exec commands should always be last. and I've tried that too by putting the 
Code: [Select]
exec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login
and
Code: [Select]
exec dwm
at the very last, but that didn't work either.

Another thing to note here is that Artix is picking up default wallpaper details for DWM from lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf file. 

Re: Loving Artix. But Running Into Issues (Help Woth XFCE Transparency and WMs )

Reply #5 –
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit#Configuration
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit
Quote
xinit is typically used to start window managers or desktop environments. While you can also use xinit to run GUI applications without a window manager, many graphical applications expect an EWMH compliant window manager. Display managers start Xorg for you and generally source xprofile.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xprofile