Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng said on Mon, 20 Dec 2021 18:49:59 +0900



>
>ACK. I really wish the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin dependency were
>downgraded to a Recommends:. Note to self, submit a bugreport!
>
># Don't mind if someone else beats me to it. If so, submit to Debian
># BTS cuz this ain't no Devuan bug.
>
>While I agree that marking all dependencies of xfce4 is a PITA, the
>list is not all that long. Even if it were
>

> sudo apt-mark manual \
>   $(dpkg-query -W -f '${Depends}\n' xfce4
>        | sed 's/([^)]*)//g; s/,//g')

>
>should do the trick.
>

>  Warning: Check the output of the command in $() before feeding it to
>    apt-mark.  If there's any `|` in there, DON'T feed it to apt-mark.

>
>After that you can, in theory,
>
> apt purge xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
>
>without losing your xfce4 dependencies.
>
>URK! Dogfooding this, I am told that another 150+ are going to be
>purged, most likely because of task-desktop and task-xfce-desktop being
>automatically installed.
>
>Hmm, doesn't look as easy as I first thought.

About the only positive thing I can say about xfce is it's better than
Gnome, KDE and the now defunct Unity. Except compared to those, it's
not particularly lightweight, and my experience is it's been quirky on
Linux (but not OpenBSD) for the past decade, at least. There are so
many great WMDEs (Window Manager/Desktop Environment) that it's a shame
to use xfce.

I use Openbox and have no problems, ever. When I take it on the road
and want a complete setup with panel, I use LXDE, which is a panel and
various programs to run with Openbox. If LXDE isn't available, LXQt is
almost as good. I have info on how to set it up at:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/quickhacks.htm#startxlxqt

Other outstanding WMDEs include fvwm, IceWM, Windowmaker, jwm, i9, and
a host of others. From my perspective, there's absolutely no reason to
use xfce.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques