XFCE wallpaper changer doesn't work

christophe60_fr

Hello everyone,
This is what I get when I click on desktop settings :

How to fix this?
Many thanks.

Robin

Xfce stores wallpapers in it's own directory (and since 4.20 it created a different one). You can change the folder in which you want Xfce to look for wallpapers. I put all mine in a folder I created, and direct Xfce to /home/pictures/wallpapers.

vimanuelt

XFCE is trying to access a wallpaper directory, but the path it's trying to use is null (i.e., not set or invalid). This usually happens after an upgrade or config reset where the image directory got lost or was never properly set.

christophe60_fr

Thanks for everything, folks.
The problem still exists : creating a new directory and redirecting Xfce to it doesn't change anything.
I'm probably going about this the wrong way...

vimanuelt

You might have a missing file or corrupt binary. To resolve this, do the following:

sudo pkg autoremove
sudo pkg update -f
sudo pkg upgrade -f

Robin

vimanuelt

Doing those commands reveals quite a bit... Lots of unmaintained packages, lots of depreciated ones.

christophe60_fr

Always the same message from desktop settings.
Despairing. Am I the only one with this problem ?

vimanuelt

christophe60_fr
As you can see, XFCE desktop environment is not an official desktop environment offering in GhostBSD, but rather a community-supported initiative. This means that updates may occasionally introduce regressions that require quick fixes. Addressing such issues takes dedicated effort from community members. If the GhostBSD Community is unable to resolve a particular problem, it must then be escalated—first to the FreeBSD maintainer, and potentially further to the XFCE development team.

This is not the case with the MATE desktop environment. Eric Turgeon, the Project Owner of GhostBSD, also serves as the maintainer for both GhostBSD and FreeBSD in relation to MATE. He works directly with the MATE team, ensuring efficient communication and timely resolution of issues.

Asking Eric to maintain XFCE would be too much. It is up to community member to step up and get involved when supporting XFCE or any other desktop environment on GhostBSD.

kd-sf-94107

vimanuelt
FYI, the exact same issue exists in FreeBSD in 13.5, 14.2, and current following fresh installs of each.

Robin

That is completely reasonable. Just for grins and giggles I installed MATE (and all the GhostBSD settings, and such) to give it a test drive. Very nice!

MATE may have different implementations from one OS to another, but GhostBSD's defaults are quite nice. I thought to try launching my "one slow app" in a MATE session to see if maybe that ongoing issue was unique to Xfce, but it apparently is not.

vimanuelt

Robin Thanks for the feedback! With a Ryzen 5900 (circa 2021), it’s definitely harder to notice the app slowness you mentioned. That’s why hearing experiences like yours is so valuable, especially as more users migrate from Linux to GhostBSD. There’s a clear and growing need to support older hardware, like dual-core CPUs and pre-2012 GPUs, and that’s something we need to keep in mind moving forward.

In the past, I might’ve suggested upgrading, but in the current economic climate, that’s just not a realistic ask anymore.

christophe60_fr

Thanks to both of you for pointing me in the direction of some leads.
It's always interesting to poke your nose into places where things usually work without problems and try to learn a little more.
For now, I'm still struggling, but I'm not giving up hope !

vimanuelt

christophe60_fr Since none of the XFCE experts here have chimed in yet, you might want to check the official XFCE documentation: https://docs.xfce.org/

If you don’t find a clear answer there, consider asking the XFCE developers directly on Matrix: #xfce:matrix.org. They’re generally helpful and may be able to point you in the right direction.

brianthehughes

christophe60_fr

I am around in Telegram (a lot) and IRC (often).

First things first, assuming that you're using GhostBSD 25.* let's try something safe, like reinstalling the GhostBSD-xfce-settings package.

In a Terminal

> sudo pkg autoremove
> sudo pkg install -f ghostbsd-xfce-settings

You can do this in a terminal in XFCE or from a console (Ctrl-Alt-F2), either way, I'd suggest rebooting afterward to see if it was successful before moving on to more serious resetting...

Remember to Backup your system / data appropriately before making system changes!

This will destroy your XFCE desktop, if it doesn't work. 🙂

I would approach this by resetting the GhostBSD-XFCE4 meta package and GhostBSD-xfce-settings package.

Log out of XFCE and go to command prompt with Ctrl-Alt-F2

The following sequence of pkg commands should delete, clean, and reinstall the GhostBSD-XFCE packages and settings.

Ctrl-Alt-F2 - Login and...

Cleanup

> sudo pkg delete ghostbsd-xfce4 
> sudo pkg delete ghostbsd-xfce-settings
> sudo pkg delete xfce4-goodies
> sudo pkg autoremove

Install

> sudo pkg install -f ghostbsd-xfce4 ghostbsd-xfce-settings
> sudo reboot

Strictly speaking, if you're Logged Out before you go to Consol (Ctrl-Alt-F2) you can return to the Display Manager (Ctrl-Alt-F9) and login. When you login you'll be running a new xfce4-session with clean GhostBSD-XFCE4 packages. Or just reboot.

christophe60_fr

I'm using GhostBSD 25.
After reinstalling :
Good news : my XFCE desktop isn't destroyed.
Bad news : I still can't use the wallpaper.

Additional question:
I'm using the SCFB driver because my laptop's two graphics cards don't allow me to install GhostBSD (it freezes before the desktop appears).
A possible report ?

vimanuelt

What is the background image file type?

christophe60_fr

type : image/svg +xml

vimanuelt

christophe60_fr
My understanding is XFCE does not natively support SVG (image/svg+xml) files as desktop wallpapers in most versions, at least not without converting them first.

Here's why:

XFCE’s xfdesktop, the component that handles wallpapers, traditionally only supports raster formats like:
- .jpg, .jpeg
- .png
- .bmp
While SVGs can be displayed in other parts of XFCE (like in Thunar or image viewers), they typically won’t render properly as desktop backgrounds via the settings dialog.

You can convert the SVG to a high-resolution PNG and set that as your wallpaper.