Anyway, it's all in the tutorial, but to save you the trouble the GTK+ and icons are Shiki-wise/Gnome-wise. If you run Debian...

sudo apt-get install shiki-wise-theme

The Emerald theme is komar-blue with the engine switched to truglass in the Emerald Theme Manager...
http://gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-f … ue.emerald

Q: How do I change the font for Notify OSD?

A: I'm not sure if this can be done for Openbox but it can for Xfce. Notify OSD takes it's font from Gnome settings, so you need to first install gconf-editor...

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

Then open the run dialog (Alt+F2) and enter...

gconf-editor

Now navigate to desktop>gnome>interface>font_name, double-click on "Value" and enter a new font (eg: Liberation Sans 10). You don't need to add "Bold" or "Regular", Notify OSD sets the title font-weight to bold and the body font-weight to normal by default. Logout/login to see the change.

I'm interested to know if tint2, Ipager or another pager draw multi-desktop ?
try the option taskbar_mode = multi_desktop to see if you get one taskbar by desktop (like in my previous screen).

I see what you mean now, I think the answer is no. As soon as I turn Compiz off tint2 shows only 1 taskbar and Xfce's number of workspaces gets set to 1. You can then set workspaces in terms of "horizontal size" (and vertical size, if you want). Tint2 then shows all open apps no matter the workspace. If you enable the Desktop Cube and Rotate Cube plugins, clicking an app's icon in tint2 will "spin" you to that workspace (cube is the name only, you can have more than 4 desks). With Expo enabled you "zoom" out to a view of all workspaces where you can drag windows to other workspaces or zoom back in or to another space.

Speaking of Compiz, if you enable the Animations plugin you may discover a bug... Notify Osd flickers when fading out (maybe when fading in too) To fix it, go to the Open Animation and Close Animation tabs in that plugin's settings, there will be 3 entries in each tab. Double-click the bottom entry in both and delete...

Notification |

and save the changes.

Animations can add some cool effects but they can affect how your computer "feels". I love the Zoom effect but if the duration is over 100 I get distracted by it. My settings now are the defaults with these changes: all durations set to 80, the bottom effect in both tabs set to "Zoom", and the 1 entry in the Minimize tab set to "None" (there is a little lag when my box draws an unminimized window compared to minimizing it, and with an animation added it just looks bad).

I've added "UI Tweaks" to this thread's title... in the 6 months that I've been exclusively using Xfce I've found the documention/community around it to be pretty sparse, so any tips anyone can list here in terms of UI tweaks or usability wouldn't hurt any!

One thing that I had to ask help for was switching the display of toolbars between text and icons, which pvsage told me was under Appearance>Settings. That browser font tweak was courtesy of the Arch wiki, but it's not on that wiki's Xfce page but on their font configuration page.

Here's one I haven't found an answer for... Is there a way for Thunar to recognize an audio cd? I can play one and I can rip one but I can't "see" it in Thunar, and if I install PCManFM I can see an icon for it, but if I click it I get a "location is not mountable" error. I've checked out the Xfce versions of sidux, PCLinuxOS,  openSUSE and Xubuntu, and it's the same in all of them. Put an audio CD in a Gnome setup and it happily gives you an icon on the desktop that you can browse. I guess this is an issue in thunar-volman?
http://gezeiten.org/post/2010/01/Thunar … ion-of-HAL

Here's how to delay tint2 from starting up... add it to your Autostart Applications with this command...

bash -c "sleep 10; tint2"

... where 10 is seconds and can be changed, but this gave compiz time to kick in so that tint2 started without shadows drawn if set that way. Of course, any program can be delayed using the same syntax (eg: bash -c "sleep 5; conky").

Thank you for taking the time to test and sharing the results

You're welcome:^)

Thanks, I'm afraid I've become addicted to those translucent windows with their lovely soft glow. They are my crack and I must smoke them, join my crackden. Muah ha ha ha ha ha!!!</evil laugh>

@fuminori, you got this working on your box? SCREENSHOT!

Thanks for mentioning this. Your markup should work but it didn't for me. The way I disabled the conky shadow was to remove...

normal |

The shadow dialog goes haywire when you enable transparency. I played with it for a couple of hours one day... you enter markup that the Compiz Wiki says should work, then look at the screen and your jaw goes slack as you say out loud "What the . . . ?" For me, I couldn't get it to recognize "!" at all... instead of diasabling a shadow I could only carefully enable them one by one. Your mileage may vary, of course, but remember what I said... "Don't argue!" |;-O

& !(name=Conky)

to the Shadow windows dialogue.

Edit: Both desktops look great btw 

I skipped downloading the language packs during installation and that cut the time to 7 minutes. The thing boots fast, runs solid and looks damn good.  Once everything was set up right, I barely noticed a difference, meaning once I trimmed the fat from Gnome's startup services.

Neither OS ran printer, power management or screensaver services. Gnome also had Bluetooth, Evolution notifications, file updating, remote desktop blah blah blah all shut off so that it would be close to the Xfce setup.

Yes, Xfce was lighter on RAM... if I just booted up and let the desktop idle, Conky reported 206MB being used by Ubuntu and 152 by Crunchbang.  During use, they felt practically identical, except for Nautilus drags a little more the first time you open it than Thunar does.

Gnome...

Xfce...

Anyway, CrunchBang can handle all the eyecandy and run a bit lighter doing it.

If anybody has success or failure with any of the steps outlined, let me know.

Ubuntu was 22 minutes, probably 21:30 of which was spent watching a progress bar.

This is about getting all the eyecandy that the Lucid Gnome environment can give you but using way less RAM and using Xfce programs which start faster than Gnome equivalents, resulting in a much snappier feeling OS. Conky is saying my RAM usage is 135MB at idle, what's a Lucid desktop like?.

It would be interesting to see a Ram comparison of this setup and a default Lucid. I have a few Lucid/Mint machines at work. I'll have a look

Out of curiosity which Xfce programs start faster than gnome ones in a xfce4/compiz session like this? I would think that Thunar would be one of these and the xfce4-terminal. How does using them in this setup compare to using them as defaults in a gnome session?

@thil77, Compiz has virtual desktops

I'm interested to know if tint2, Ipager or another pager draw multi-desktop ?
try the option taskbar_mode = multi_desktop to see if you get one taskbar by desktop (like in my previous screen).

Compiz is known (some years ago) to made a confusion between 'Virtual desktop' and 'Viewport'.
The 'desktop number' in compiz added 'Viewport' and doesn't manage 'Virtual desktop'.

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/153322
or http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=11943
or  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/150690

This bug is standing since the beginning of compiz.
But I would be very happy if it's fixed ... and Ipager/tint2 can show multi-desktop in compiz.

<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintfull</const>

...to...

<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
   <const>hintslight</const>

...and leave it there. (other available settings are hintmedium and hintnone )

You can install more matching Shiki/Gnome icons/GTK themes/wallpapers/GDM themes through Synaptic by installing arc-colors, gnome-colors and shiki-colors.

Of course, there are more themes and icons at...
http://gnome-look.org/

You can custom colorize certain icon sets using MagIcons...
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ … ent=120508

Download the Humanities icon set and try it out...
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ … ent=117230
Open MagIcons (it's under Graphics) and at the top (Select an iconset:) Choose "Install iconset"... from the dropdown list. Pick a color scheme or create/save one of your own, then "Apply this iconset" at the bottom. Close MagIcons, go to Settings>Appearance>Icons and choose MagIcons from the list.

You can get icons on your Documents/Downloads/Music/etc... folders by right clicking them, choosing "Properties" and assigning them emblems.

I can't think of anything else right now.