Better Usability for Very Low Resolution Devices...

Hi nuihc88

I have found that initially windows sometimes open in annoying ways and positions, but once I correct them they usually stick (with a few exceptions). But I am wondering whether a tiling setting would be more suited to your needs. Just a thought.

As to your suggestions, the devs will need to reply to that, but we have a few members who are much better with moksha and resolutions and graphics related issues than me that could probably assist with some of the issues you are experiencing, that will probably chime in when time zones allow.

EDIT - I was actually referring to enigma...but yeah lmao

Ya, but fixing existing stuff to work the way it's supposed to would benefit everyone. Adding a whole new window manager mode, far less likely to happen and one more thing to go wrong. I have some of the same issues as you and have just learned to deal with them. That's just the way Moksha is.    And it'll take more than a few days to get familiar.  I only learned the F1 for everything starter borders this week, coincidentally a few days before you brought it up, and I've been using bodhi for years...

But, if there is a specific problem you can describe clearly that you really want fixed, and a way to repeat it and test it, etc, maybe one of the two bodhi developers will solve it for you.

I can create a custom dconf file and put it in /etc/skel. That is add it to the bodhi-skel package. This will only affect new users and fresh installs on the upcoming ISO.

BTW the easiest way to edit all these dconf settings is to dump all the info to a text file and then edit and reload.

You need to make sure dconf-cli is installed and most likely it is not by default.

i'm certainly not opposed to having every Moksha bug fixed, but that could potentially take long enough for my 32bit hardware to be totally obsolete at that point; depends on what the pace of development is going to be going forward...

Potentially the most basic version of what i'm suggesting could be implemented just by fixing the broken 'Remember'-dialog behavior so that users can simply go to 'Window Remember'-dialog and tick 'Transience' in 'Identifiers'-tab & 'Position' & 'Size' in 'Properties'-tab to get the behavior i'm describing and for convenience adding a separate universal 'Auto Maximize' override with a shortcut next to 'Desktop menu > Settings > Mode > 'Presentation'.

For the more advanced configuration that i'm suggesting the list of required changes would basically be something like this:
1. Extra input fields for minimum and maximum 'Position' & 'Size' under 'Properties'-tab and a third state for the corresponding checkboxes on the 'Window Remember'-dialog.
2. An extra tab for 'Auto Maximize' Mode on the 'Window Remember'-dialog (basically a simplified version of the 'Properties'-tab with optional 'window decoration' type selection on per 'Window type' basis.).
3. Additional 'window decoration' options along the lines of: Ignore (off), Maximized (default), Edgeless(no border, but with titlebars), Borderless (without borders and titlebars), Fullscreen to dropdown-menu on 'Auto Maximize'-tab.
4. Under the hood mechanism for setting minimum and maximum window sizes and positions when the Properties-tabs checkboxes are on their third state and corresponding input fields are set to non-zero values.
5. While 'Auto Maximize' Mode is off, cap the maximum input for 'Size' & 'Position' to the sum of resolutions of all detected displays.
6. While 'Auto Maximize' Mode is on, use current display's resolution as the universal minimum and maximum.

Sure, since i'm new to Moksha i don't always know the best ways to do things, but the window management behavior is just so badly broken and inconsistent right know that despite already liking everything Bodhi has to offer, i'm still considering switching to MicroWatt or Mint every time i actually need to get something done and instead end up facing an endless barrage of bugs, such as this:
For a while today i thought i got 'Remember' to stick for Sakura & Terminology, but after rebooting i was once again back to where i started; After retracing my exact steps from before by ticking: 'Window type', 'Transience', 'Position', 'Size' & 'Keep current properties' and then restarting Sakura to untick 'Keep current properties' & 'Window type' as that is what worked until reboot the last time, i instead ended up with no visible window & ticked 'Borderless' box in the Right-click menu and it doesn't go away even after being clicked 3 times. After that i used 'Window > Maximize > Fullscreen' to get it temporarily visible again, at which point 'Fullscreen' box still wasn't showing up as ticked and when i then tried to tick/untick the Fullscreen box again the window became effectively stuck in 'Always on Top' mode despite the box for that remaining unticked, at which point i had to close Sakura from it's right-click menu before being able to do anything else; after which i even had trouble with unticking of the boxes in 'Window Remember'-dialog not sticking after Apply... ...So about an hour later i was once again right back to where i started.

I guess the above behavior should be fairly easily reproducible given that i've seen most of it on two eeePCs (32bit N280 with 5.1 legacy & 64bit N450 with 6.0 pre-alpha), although it all seems more frequent on 32bit. If my hunch about settings not sticking being a race condition bug is correct, then i guess having a single core CPU with hyper-threading might be a factor in reproducibility.

...and speaking of reproducibility, i just noticed that having 'Settings Panel > Windows > Window Geometry > Maximization >' 'Policy' set to 'Fullscreen' seems to be a major factor in reproducing the issue with 'Settings Panel', etc. loading up without window decorations.

I generally don't have multiple instances of any program running while attempting to alter it's behavior, as it would be difficult to keep track of the instances and the only way for me to know if a setting really sticks is to reboot, so it's not like i'd have the chance to compile stuff anyway.

Personally i prefer to just use multiple tabs in most programs that support them and Alt+Tab for switching between windows. 

I'll try to describe the steps to reproduce the problems as i discover them, but most of it seems totally random or just happens constantly even with fresh profiles.

While i do occasionally try setting up new profiles, i'm reluctant to try resetting all the profiles very often unless i know for sure how to reproduce the desired behaviors i've stumbled across along the way or am already reinstalling Bodhi from scratch anyway, which i might do on the 64bit one tomorrow.


Additionally, here's a tweak i found for a more desirable behavior for low resolution devices, which i also believe would be a better default setting: Tick the box at 'Desktop menu > Settings > Settings Panel > Menus > Menu settings > Miscellaneous > Smart Menu Orientation'.

Ok first of all I am unlocking this thread. For one thing I never commented on it and for another, I don't think it needs to be locked. This is a place for suggestions and nothing really wrong with a user making suggestions such as:


But at the same time I sort of agree with what enigma said:


So lets make things simple here and address the main feature request quoted above. And state that any of "Moksha's various GUI bugs" noted or suspected by nuihc88 need mentioned separately in a different thread elsewhere. Not everything users suspect of being a bug actually is a bug, sometimes it is user error and sometimes something else.

In the case of some apps opening up partially off screen or in some other way not playing well with Moksha window management, esp on small screens, that probably is on the app itself. Moksha is an Xorg window manager and an Xorg program does not have to respect anything "we try to impose" on windows size or placement. In fact an xorg app can completely take over the screen. If a particular app seems problematic feel free to bring it to our attention. Maybe we can do something about it and maybe we can't. If there are settings for that app that can be tweaked for your user case perhaps we can figure it out. If it is a bug with the app itself, most likely all we can do is  report it the developers. It may or may not get fixed. Reported a firefox bug over a month ago and it is still sitting there unfixed. If it is actually is a Moksha bug we will take note of it and may or may not fix it promptly. Moksha is a rather complex code base and it depends upon an ever more complex set of libraries that are ever changing and we only have two developers able and willing to try to fix issues or add feature and neither one of use wrote the original code. It is a learn what you need as you go experience for us both.

As to Moksha bugs mentioned such as the settings panel "that's often (randomly) missing it's window decorations (borders) thus requiring me to restart Moksha to to continue with configuration; similar thing also happens with 'Modules' & 'Shelves', etc." I have never observed this and can not duplicate it. Problems a developer can not duplicate are the hardest to debug, and may or may not actually be a problem. If you look at github and launchpad issues alot (Like I do) you will see many such issues dismissed by the developer(s). That can be frustrating if for example I am having THAT ISSUE and it was reported by someone else 2 or 3 years ago and dismissed by the developer because it was non-reproducible. So any such issue report in a separate thread. We may or may not get to the bottom of it but we are more likely to notice it if it is not buried in a wall of text and mentioned with a pile of other issues and suggestions.

I would say that you might want to look at any of the numerous tiling window managers out there that will facilitate what you are looking for. There is xmonad, awesome, qtile, dwm, etc that allow you to setup workspaces that correspond to your what application you are opening and open them there. I3 isn't as flexible as many of those and really isn't what you are wanting. The issue with that is, however, you will need to be able to program the config file to tell it how to do that. Two youtube/lbry people I watch that use tiling managers exclusively are odysee.com/@distrotube:2 or odysee.com/@brodierobertson:5 . I know distro tube has a gitlab repo that he has templates for all the tiling managers and has tons of videos for that. Unfortunately Moksha isn't really designed around workplaces as much as those system are and they already have, what I believe will solve some of your issues.