There are a lot of issues with GTK3 version of lxpanel that makes it almost unusable. The following patches required to apply to fix an issues: * 02-Correct-icon-grid-width-under-GTK3.-Fixes-Github-29.patch * 03-Correct-panel-size-under-GTK3.-Fixes-Sourceforge-773.patch * 04-Support-HiDPI-on-GTK-3.patch * 05-Highlight-selected-workspace-in-pager.patch * 06-fix-alsa-volume-issue.patch * 07-Fix-division-by-zero-with-broken-batteries.patch * 08-Use-XkbRF_GetNamesProp-instead-of-xkb_symbols.patch This patches was taken from https://github.com/lxde-continued/lxpanel.git. You may look there for more patches/details. Mikhail Kshevetskiy
In reply to the proposed patches I want to submit that many problems in my LXpanel have been solved with the applied patches. I have applied the patches against 0.10.4-1 and named it 0.10.4-1.1. Please consider this as at present LXDE is totally unusable. After patching I get a working LXDE desktop with Desktop pager working (see link https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-powerpc-debian-wiki.2178457/post-32724685). I had to add libxkbfile-dev in Build-Depends in the control field. If you need more information I can provide it if needed. Please consider the following (from https://github.com/orgs/lxde-continued/discussions/4)----- There are still many LXDE users, as well as unresolved bugs and unmerged pull request. At the same time, most LXDE developers switched to LXQt. Nobody reviews and merges pull requests, nobody makes new releases with bug fixes. There is no activity in the repositories. The developers intentionally ignore LXDE, but at the same time they do not declare it obsolete and officially abandoned. Some time ago, one of them even wrote that "development continues." These words do not correspond to the facts. I've been trying to contact some of the developers to offer my help in reviewing the PRs. I didn't get any response. The only way to revive the project is to make copies of the repositories and start over with a new development team. In this regard, this "fork" should not be considered as a fork, but as a new official LXDE upstream instead of the old abandoned one. Everyone interested in working on LXDE are welcome. ------ I can speak for many users of LXDE, as I maintain a distribution for PowerPC and ppc64 based on Debian LXDE called MintPPC. Regards, Jeroen Diederen
I want to bring attention to a fork of lxpanel which solves most (if not all) of the bugs reported for 0.10.1-4. The switch to gtk3 introduced a couple of problems as can be seen in the bug reports. I built lxpanel 0.10.2.rc1 from lxde-continued [1] in sid and it solves most if not all the problems. I would like to ask the LXDE Team to switch to lxde-continued as new upstream source as the original developers abandoned the project and are now active for LXQt. There are still a lot of LXDE users who do not want to make the switch to LXQt as LXDE is lighter. Best regards, Jeroen Diederen MintPPC - a distribution based on sid and Linux Mint LXDE for powerpc and ppc64. [1] https://github.com/lxde-continued/lxpanel
Dear Jeroen, Thank you for the information regarding the LXDE-continued project. I concur with your suggestion to consider switching to a new upstream. However, the original LXDE project has not been declared obsolete or officially abandoned. Wearing my co-founder hat, I have included LXDE founder PCMan and upstream maintainer Andrej in this correspondence for their input. To my knowledge, Andrej currently lacks the time and needs our help. PCMan has been showing he is good at merging projects rather than forking them. I kindly request PCMan's assistance, if he still has access to the LXDE project and has the time to help us unify our efforts, allowing users and developers who care about the LXDE project to continue to work together. I don't mind the project will be still named LXDE or LXDE-continued. With my Debian developer hat, we needed to clearly define the upstream in our official packages and make our users happy. Warm regards, Andrew
Hi all, Sorry for the late reply. I no longer actively work on LXDE due to real life issues. However, I still have access to the project github. If others are interested in continuing the development, I'm more than happy to add them to the project to make things easier. Let's see how we can make this work! Best, Hong Jen-Yee
Hi! Well, in fact, I was too busy in last two years due to intensive life work. However, I believe I will be able to get to it in a month or two. Let me see if I can handle things right. And I do not think LXDE is dead. Especially since it is only DE which I like and use every day. It's stalled, right. It needs fresh blood, yes. But it is still alive. With best regards, Andriy.
Hi, As you might know, LXDE upstream want to support GTK2 for as long as possible [0], which is longer than Debian want to support GTK3 [1]. Due to this, we start to migrate to GTK3. However, several issues were reported [2] and it looks like current LXDE upstream does not work well with GTK3. Since the release is near, we need to decide how to fix the issues. The one option is to switch to lxde-continued [3], which could solve some problems in lxpanel. Any through? [0] https://www.mail-archive.com/lxde-list@lists.sourceforge.net/msg06616.html [1] https://bugs.debian.org/947713 [2] https://bugs.debian.org/1052050 [3] https://github.com/lxde-continued
As someone who tried lxpanel from lxde-continued, I had reported all my issues with it 1 year ago, here. Please have a look at bug 1052376 too. https://github.com/lxde-continued/lxpanel/issues/9 Tbh, and judging from the zero support the issues receive on their github page (regardless of distro) rolling back to gtk2 seems to be the only viable solution before the complete removal of lxde.
Hi, Looking at the upstream repositories on github, it should be obvious that development is anything but abandoned, and has been quite active since mid-2023. GTK+ 3 support in particular is being worked on intensively, even if it's pretty much a one-man show at the moment. Ingo
Hi Ingo, Thank you for been active on upstream work! Would you mind to rolling upstream releases when it's ready for GTK+ 3? @ALL Debian Trixe freeze dates already announced by release team: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2025/01/msg00004.html As it takes time for packages to be updated and transition from unstable to testing. To avoid LXDE get removal, let's pay attendation. And update the package once new upstream releases tarball available from now. Hopefully we can act quickly enough to get the LXDE with GTK+3 support in trixie release. Best regards,
Hi Andrew, Sure, that's the plan. GTK+ 3 support is almost done. That would be nice. Some of the packages have already been released some time ago, but are still not in testing, and some packages still point to outdated locations (like git.lxde.org or sf.net). Best regards, Ingo