JackTulli/Linux-explorer v1.36.0

1.36.0: faster panels, the Modern Start menu fixed, smoother animations, safer disks and logons

on GitHub

Changed

• Faster to open. The Start menu opens in about 60 ms instead of 620: the program list is kept until a folder changes, and icon lookups are indexed. Display Properties no longer re-probes every monitor or decodes the whole wallpaper before its window appears (300 ms down to 94 ms with a camera photo). Network Connections, Disk Cleanup and Device Manager do their slow work after the window is up.
• Smoother animations. Menu and combo-box slides no longer flash or grow an empty box, and the minimise flight no longer freezes the screen or flies over the window it came from. Dragging a window no longer rebuilds its frame's shape at every step, and clicks reach programs without waiting for the shell.
• A quieter shell. Without a sound server the shell no longer restarts pactl hundreds of times a second. It no longer rebuilds the wallpaper on every Apply or wakes every two seconds to look at the Recycle Bin.

Fixed

• The XP-style Start menu in Modern Light and Modern Dark. Log Off and Turn Off Computer are readable (they were white on white), the name has no smeared shadow, and the dividing rules and the search box show properly. Submenu and drop-down arrows point the right way.

• Dialogs stay with their window. Clicking a program's window no longer buries its dialog; a modal dialog takes the focus, and dialogs minimise and come back with their window.

• Changing the look re-lays out open windows. Every frame used to keep the old size, with the new caption half under the program.

• Window management. Full-screen windows cover the taskbar only while in use. Show Desktop brings windows back in their order. Snapping a maximised window, dropping a dragged window, updates restarting the shell, and monitors being switched off all behave. Task buttons light under the pointer in the themed looks, the Start orb glows, and the clock follows a new time zone.

• Disk Management. Before changing anything it checks that the disk and partition are still the ones on screen, so a swapped USB stick cannot lead to the wrong disk being wiped. It refuses partitions the system is using — the EFI partition, RAID and ZFS members, anything in /etc/fstab — and says why. Disks with 4 KB sectors are drawn correctly.

• The logon screen. It no longer hangs on odd files in a user's home, and it decodes users' pictures as that user rather than as root. Stopping it or shutting down closes the login session properly. Logging off no longer makes it fail and wait for a restart.

• Files. Paste's Replace, Rename, Undo and the Hidden box no longer destroy other files. Documents on exFAT and NTFS sticks open in their program instead of being run. Save As asks before replacing, Notepad keeps symlinks, and the Recycle Bin is written as other desktops expect.

• Display Properties. Unapplied changes survive another program's Apply, and saving no longer undoes other programs' settings. OK no longer closes after a refused Apply, and Cancel puts back the scaler filter.

• Task Manager no longer jumps back to the top every second or shows impossible CPU figures. Paint undoes correctly across layers, fills without holes and asks before quitting. A colour typed in hex is kept.

• Safety. A picture that crashed the viewer — and the logon screen, as root — opens safely. The installer command now uses https only, and the Wi-Fi key no longer appears on a command line.

  curl -fsSL https://jacktulli.github.io/w2k | sh