[Gnome 3.8] Don't have Nemo draw the desktop background, make the desktop window transparent instead

[mtwebster]

Currently, nemo draws the desktop background over the existing background when it starts up. This is unnecessary, and it causes occasional X window errors/crashes (especially with the gnome transitioning wallpaper).

This makes the desktop window transparent instead, utilizing the already-rendered desktop to overlay the container on.

[mtwebster]

I took a look at g-s-d and it would be pretty simple to bring the background plugin into cinnamon, to handle setting the background image. The only change I think (and may not actually be necessary) would be to use a different gsettings key for the background image uri.

[faidoc]

This commit makes Nemo only usable with cinnamon installed. Is there any way to make it usable without cinnamon?

[City-busz]

It's too complex. It can be handled in a much simpler way:

GSettingsSchemaSource *schema_source;
schema_source = g_settings_schema_source_get_default();
if (g_settings_schema_source_lookup (schema_source, "org.cinnamon.background", FALSE)) {
  cinnamon_background_preferences = g_settings_new ("org.cinnamon.background");
} else {
  cinnamon_background_preferences = g_settings_new ("org.gnome.desktop.background");
}

[perost]

I've been using Xfce with nemo as a replacement for xfdesktop, but since nemo 1.8 I get a black background (or gray if I enable compositing for xfwm4). I've tried setting a background with e.g. feh, but the background is only visible if nemo doesn't handle the desktop. I've seen some suggestions that this might be an issue with the gtk3 theme, but none of my themes (including Adwaita) makes a difference. Is there any way of making nemo work well with Xfce?

[mtwebster]

You could try this patch - essentially it prevents Nemo from drawing the background and just has its desktop 'window' transparent, revealing whatever is beneath.

[perost]

Sorry, I'm not so familiar with git and mistakenly thought this was included in nemo 1.8. Upon further investigation it turns out that it actually is though, since I'm using ArchLinux where this patch is applied to nemo 1.8. If I build nemo-git from AUR without the remove-desktop-background.patch it works, so it seems like these changes are the cause of the issue I'm seeing. I also tried starting X with only a terminal, and then setting the background with feh and starting nemo, which resulted in the same black background. In cinnamon the background is set correctly though.