Edge of windows disappears every few months (XFCE)

7 posts were split to a new topic: XFCE Desktop disappears (becomes grey)

I think the issue might be this one:

Iā€™ve also renamed the thread to make it more concise.

It has happened again. Two days ago, suddenly, after a couple of hours of usual work, my computer slowed down and the Internet was not working. I decided to reboot it. Clicking shutdown gave me a small window with a warning (I forgot what it said). I couldnā€™t reboot. I went to Dom0 terminal and put ā€˜sudo shutdown nowā€™ to turn off the computer. I turned it back on.

And the problem described above was present. See the images that I took two days ago.

The windows were without borders. The background reverted back to the original Qubes image (the background / desktop image that I had put was no longer there). There was only one desktop instead of 4. The network interface of sys-net did not launch. The Dom0 file manager was not accessible. I couldnā€™t shutdown an AppVM (see in the image my attempt).

I was able to launch AppVM applications via alt+f3. But I could use only one window at a time as I could not switch between windows.

And worst of all. I could not back up using the Qubes Backup utility because I could not type a password. I couldnā€™t put the cursor in the password field.

This is the 3rd or 4th Lenovo thinkpad laptop where this happened. So itā€™s not a hardware issue. And I hadnā€™t installed anything to Dom0. I had only downloaded the updates for the templates I had (I think all templates updated that day). My laptop is 512GB and I have lots of space left.

I opened this thread on my phone and first, tried @svenā€™s suggestion. Windows Manager Tweak didnā€™t launch (nor did any of the settings).

As per @marmarekā€™s suggestion, I typed ā€˜xfwm4 --replaceā€™ and the problem was SOLVED. It did show lines around the edges, so I went to the Compositor, disabled it, then enabled it. And things became normal. (Only issue was that the FnLock was reset. I typed Fn+Esc to be able to use Alt+F3 and Alt+F4 again.)

I am posting this to say that ā€˜xfwm4 --replaceā€™ is a solution to this problem. However, I am also putting the information here to ask why this is happening regularly with me, and across 3 or 4 different hardware. Is anyone else experiencing this? I am not an IT guy and havenā€™t modified any code in the system. Thanks!

Itā€™s very strange indeed. Iā€™ve mention this fact on the related github issue in the hope it catches the developerā€™s eyes.

This might have now been fixed by @Demi. @oijawyuh please do re-open that issue or comment on this thread if it ever happens again (note the fix might only be available on the next Qubes release - 4.1 ā€“ not sure).

My workspace shifts outside the screen by a few mm every few minutes to hours or days. Iā€™ve only been using Qubes for a couple weeks. My temporary fix is to change the screen resolution and change it back to 4k. I have a 4k display but the OS thinks it can do 4096x2160. This has always been a problem,with every os in some way such as waking to the wrong resolution or when I do some diagnosis in the bootup or DOS screen because the text on the left side are outside the sceen and I canā€™t see it. I think it has to do with my integrated video HD530.

@oijawyuh the associated issue has now been closed please let me know if it ever happens again.