Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window.
The same is true for GNOME, but KDE it is allowed. I expect this is a gtk thing.
If I understand your comment correctly, right click on the Panel --> Panel Preferences, Display tab. Checkmark "Keep panel above windows". This allows windows to use the panel section of the screen. Combine with "Automatically hide the panel: intelligently".
1. as root, edit /etc/environment and add: GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0
2. in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css add: .scrollbar.vertical slider, scrollbar.vertical slider {min-width: 10px;}
Thanks !
This is by far my favorite way to resize and I don't know why it's not an industry standard.
I use this so much once I found it, this solved my frustration with the tiny resize border on the window itself.
This setting can be found in Settings > Window Manager Tweaks > Accessibility > Key used to grab and move windows: Alt
And so I moved on to Mate.
I'm currently on popos (using GNOME) and enjoy the tilling of its GNOME extension. Actual tilling wms were too hackish for me whenever I tried them.
If you wanted something more lightweight and minimal, but complete with tiling, it's a good option.
In terms of being able to put your UI elements wherever you want, being simple, configurable and non-opinionated, it's all very similar. I would assume (could be wrong) that Xfce is under more active development than Mate.
I made the switch when Gnome 2 was killed overnight, and Mate didn't yet exist. My Xfce desktop looks a lot like my Gnome 2 desktops used to. I've never felt the need to switch to anything else or 'back' to Mate.