[SOLVED] Xfce vs. Cinnamon

[dwarf]

So, got me wondering - has anyone (devs or users) tried Cinnamon with Backbox? Does it work? Is it stable?

The thing is, with my new laptop (Intel HD graphics + Nvidia GTX965M) I am not able to set the desirable workspace. What I want to achieve is that my external monitor would be the primary one, with panel, icon, being extended to the left - laptop display.

It seems, that even the last version of xfce is not capable of this setup, which is frustrating. Nvidia drivers are useless since my nvidia card is optimus one and drivers don't even recognize second display, xrandr/arandr can't make it either - with xfce 4.12 there is a "make primary" button, but is not working.

I tried Debian 8.2 with XFCE, Gnome, Gnome Classic, Cinnamon and Mate with XFCE being the only one (Mate could do it, leaving the icons on the secondary display) not capable of my setup which is a huge bummer (and from what I found on the internet it is a common xfce bug?).

Either way, knowing this is not Backbox developers' mistake, is there a way to set the xfce up in a way I described, or is installing Cinnamon possible withou making Backbox and it's tools/software unstable?

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

[dwarf]

Okay, so I installed Cinnamon to Backbox 4.3 and it runs surprisingly well - and I would say that probably means how well is Backbox built. But few things here on that:

- the backbox menu is not present (obviously), but there should be a way how to import backbox tools to the menu (there's a video on youtube of a guy doing it with Mate, but the script he's using for that is no longer available) - would anyone know how to do that?

- few of the settings is missing which some of them, of course, are xfce only - but for example Software & Updates is not there (although it's in the menu, but not in the settings tab), is it because Cinnamon comes from Mint and doesn't have that?

Other than that it's actually nice and works good and would be nice to keep it, but that depends. I'd like to keep xfce in the first place, but unfortunately it doesn't work how I'd like it to work, which is a bummer, because I don't want to stop using Backbox.

[ostendali]

Hi there,
even though the topic is not really related to BackBox as you stated yourself we will try to understand your problem.

I haven't reproduced this issue myself yet but I will do as soon as I got the chance to do with my laptop.

However, if your nvidia drivers are not compatible/working perfectly as you stated then just set to vesa you video configuration and you can use multiple screens in anyway you'd like to do.

Here is an example that a fellow did that using XFCE (but not setting vesa because he didn't have the driver problem, so keep it in mind that).

https://miguelmenendez.pro/en/articles/use-multiple-monitors-screens-xfce-extended-display-desktop-mirror.html

Furthermore, I am not very clear with you having 2 graphic cards (Intel HD graphics + Nvidia GTX965M) or maybe I am reading your post wrongly. If they are 2 separate cards then when you want to use one of them you have disable/blacklist the other one in order to make sure that you are performing your settings on the correct card. Otherwise, you will end up probably applying some settings on one and some other settings on another card by messing up the system.

So let us know about your configuration after trying vesa of course and we will see how their modules are loaded to kernel so we can understand the way kernel interacts with it.

It is not big deal to me and from my understanding here:
http://www.yourownlinux.com/2015/03/how-to-install-nvidia-346-47-stable-graphics-drivers-in-linux.html

And on nvidia web site as well the device seems to be perfectly compatible, so you might be doing something wrong there as well, but check the behavior between 2 cards first and see how kernel likes that.

Hope this will help.