Desktop icons rearranging themselves on resolution change

rkelsen · 01-28-2012, 03:32 AM

My desktop icons are rearranging themselves whenever I change resolution and revert back. I like to play older games and tinker with things like Dosbox, ScummVM, etc. When I launch these programs in fullscreen mode, my icons will have moved when I exit back to xorg.

This happens in XFCE and KDE, and, despite an afternoon's hacking at the /etc/xorg.conf file, I have no clue as to what is causing it. I've tried specifying modes, specifying the size of the virtual desktop, and a few other things. Nothing seems to help.

It started happening when I switched from Slackware 12.0 to 13.1 and continues to occur under 13.37.

Has anyone seen this before? How did you solve it?

solarfields · 01-28-2012, 04:28 AM

It's been like this in XFCE since they introduced desktop icons support. I am also curious if there is a solution. About KDE -- I am surprised to hear it. I stopped using it when it became KDE4, but I remember KDE3.5.* handled resolution changes very well when playing a game in full screen mode, for example...

rkelsen · 01-28-2012, 04:59 PM

Solarfields: It's interesting to hear that this has always been the case in XFCE. I didn't know that. I agree that KDE 3.x was much better at resolution changes.

I'm still not 100% sure what is causing it, but I've read that many Windows users had the same problem when using certain versions of NVidia's drivers. Could that be my problem? I'll have to do some more experimenting and report back. I'm not holding my breath though, given Solarfields' advice above.

If they fix it in XFCE, I think that will cause me to switch over after 12 years' faithful use of KDE.

Slackovado · 01-28-2012, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkelsen

My desktop icons are rearranging themselves whenever I change resolution and revert back. I like to play older games and tinker with things like Dosbox, ScummVM, etc. When I launch these programs in fullscreen mode, my icons will have moved when I exit back to xorg.

This happens in XFCE and KDE, and, despite an afternoon's hacking at the /etc/xorg.conf file, I have no clue as to what is causing it. I've tried specifying modes, specifying the size of the virtual desktop, and a few other things. Nothing seems to help.

It started happening when I switched from Slackware 12.0 to 13.1 and continues to occur under 13.37.

Has anyone seen this before? How did you solve it?

I have that happening too. Every time I play Unreal Tournament 2004 and exit the game back to Xfce desktop, all my icons are aligned on the left side of the screen.
But it was not happening initially after I installed Slackware 13.37 ( I've never used 13.1, skipped that version).
I suspect it might be the Nvidia driver, since I did two version upgrades and it started happening around that time.
I've given up on fixing it and created a script that copies the config files and reloads desktop

Code:

#! /bin/sh
cp ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/icons.screen0.rc.bak ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/icons.screen0.rc
xfdesktop --reload

Quick double-click on it repositions icons to my custom setup.
If anyone finds a solution or better alternative to my script then please let us know.

solarfields · 01-29-2012, 02:29 AM

Quote:

all my icons are aligned on the left side of the screen

exactly... i have an old ATI radeon card on my laptop and an intel integrated card on my PC. Happens on both computers, even if I just change the resolution. My "workaround" is to disable the desktop icons prior to any resolution change. After I come back to the default resolution i re-enable them and the icons appear where they used to be.

heh... i am a bit lazy for this...