I3 Transparent Windows with Rounded Corners

[aronowski]

@i3confuze

My conclusion is that, for the Qubes unified desktop to work, the OS first draws a black background for a new VM window and then draws the actual application overtop. Hence, rounding corners or making windows transparent would reveal a black background rather than the desktop as expected. But I’m no expert so I’m likely wrong

An overview of the GUI implementation is described in the official docs here.

Once you get the overall idea, then see how all the stuff looks like from the point of view of a domain (from the inside): here’s a screenshot, which showcases it:

However, this screenshot showcases the point of view of an application inside a qube, rather than what happens in dom0. After reading the docs carefully on the communication between an AppVM and dom0, the conclusion is that the “final window drawn by dom0” is by dom0 to handle, hence the colorful borders with labels and other fancy stuff like making certain windows semi-transparent.

I believe the easiest way to witness this is to open the XFCE4 Window Manager Tweaks application and set the “Opacity of inactive windows” slider to some value lower than 100%.