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My favorite new XFCE "feature" is that if you open the clock settings and then close it, the clock disappears.

I mean, el oh el but it's fucking 2018. How goddamn dumb is it that this kind of thing still happens.

one place called settings, and not in "Gnome tweeks", "software centre", "systems administration", "gay tweeking place", and "Other places carefully hidden so you won't find them"

An example of the asshattery you refer to: https://forum.xfce.org/viewtop...

I've been a fan of Mate for some time but had some problems with latest version (taking five minutes to return after the screen blanks and desktop icons disabled) that I tried out the alternatives. They all suck in one way or another. Both LXDE and XFCE, for example, put menu entries in alphabetical order. Who wouldn't want avidemux, mplayer and vlc without brasero and nautilus interleaved among them? Perhaps the workaround is to ad 00 10 20 in front of ... something? I don't know.

I do know that this just worked with alacarte on Gnome 2.

And don't get me started on GTK3 themes.

First, if they are moving from 7 to 10 they are learning a new OS

In what world? For the basic user very little at all has changed between 7 and 10. The interface looks a tiny bit different, "All Programs" is now called "All Apps" in the start menu but otherwise there's absolutely nothing about windows 10 that needs "learning".

To the extent that they're moving from Windows 7 to Linux, the learning curve may be less than that from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Things are less screwed up in the user interface, and probably more familiar to a Windows user.

If they're moving to a KDE or xfce distribution, there might be a (very small) learning curve. It might take longer if there's a highly customized xfce configuration (as we have). Similarly for Gnome distributions. Of course, I agree that the learning curve for Unity is quite long, and might require as much as a whole hour. Oh, and you can change the user interface later, if you want.

I use the command line extensively when I work on Linux. I usually install whatever "flavor of the month" Linux distro and the Blackbox windows manager to have several terminal windows and nothing else open. If I don't have time to fiddle around with setting up Blackbox, I'll install Xfce as the default windows manager. Coworkers at various jobs didn't like either windows managers when logging into one of my systems.

Isn't [Linux] the hacking OS that uses text on a black screen?

I'm sorry. You must have Linux confused with Windows Server Core.

I think you're looking for the Applications Menu panel plugin.

Well, have a better look before spreading lies. For kernel, web browser and libreoffice

Kernel:
Stable - 2.6
Testing - 3.2
Unstable - 3.2 (released July, 2012)
Current version - 3.8
Those 3.6/3.7 files seen in your link? Experimental. Yeah you could make it work, but then you aren't running Sid anymore. Not entirely. And if you run too much experimental for too long, something is going to end up horribly broken.

Firefox/Iceweasel:
Stable - 3.5
Testing - 10esr
Unstable - 10esr (released March 2012)
Current Version - 19.0

Libreoffice:
Stable - 3.5
Testing - 3.5
Unstable - 3.5 (released February 2012)
Current version - 4.0

YOU DO have very recent packages available, even right now, during the freeze of testing. I haven't checked DE and X, since I don't know what you run (eg: which graphic card, and which environment you like).

I run XFCE on testing, not that it matters.

XFCE:
Stable - 4.6
Testing - 4.8
Unstable - 4.8 (released Jan 2011)
Current Version - 4.10 (released April 2012)

Like I said, Sid isn't bleeding edge. Of the packages here, the newest in Sid is the kernel: 7 months old.

It's also worth noting that drivers receive unblock from the release team so that they can enter stable.

Well that's great (and I genuinely mean that), but a bleeding-edge enthusiast would only see that 3.2 != 3.8.

1080px is a bit low, especially if you want to use high dpi fonts. I used to have more in late '90s (1600x1200). But it can be just fine if you use low dpi and your system and apps use the screen estate efficiently. My favorite config for laptops is:
- a wide vertical panel like in: http://cdn.xfce.org/frontpage/slider-panel.jpg (the one on the right),
- two editor windows without toolbars maximized side by side.

http://www.xfce.org/
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources.

As opposed to KDE, Gnome,... which focus on being feature-rich and modern-looking, which often translates in bigger footprint and worse performance. Especially KDE has a reputation of being somewhat bloated. So one would be tempted to think XFCE would be faster...

LXMenuEditor works with XFCE, per this article on the XFCE wiki.

Hope that helps.

I can deal with some rough edges, and if more distros start picking them up as default and if the dev community is healthy, they'll soon pick up enough contributors to smooth those out.

But the xfce dev community doesn't really seem healthy. Instead, it seems to be composed of maladjusted 13-year-olds. Calling your project's utility for connecting additional filesystems a male prostitute "because it mounts what it is told to" may seem like a great laugh in the middle school locker room, but it's immature, offensive, and unprofessional, will turn users away from the project, and will guarantee its rejection for e.g. corporate desktop use.

I have been a fan of xfce in the past, used it quite a bit in the 3.x days, and have an xubuntu vm I use on occasion. But if it's to be a serious contender in the desktop space they have to consider that this isn't just for their own dogfood use and start considering the needs and sensibilities of their users rather than filling it with crass inside jokes between the developers.

The next best thing would be if they made Dolphin look, feel, and behave like Thunar. Maybe better would be to throw Dolphin out the fucking window. The way it displays files and directories sucks shite (and NO, none of the Dolphin view options is worth a wet sack of monkey shit). Say what you will about the Windows Explorer look and feel, but Thunar is the most usable of any of the Linux GUI file managers

That's odd, I run XFCE and pop open Dolphin whenever I want some GUI file managment. 99% of the time, Bash does everything I need. For that 1% of the time left, I'm probably doing something that needs 2 panes. Thunar is so simplistic as to be essentially useless, you might as well use the Windows 3.1 File Manager.

I was a Dolphin skeptic back when they first deprecated Konqueror. But they've made it good and featureful, and took the best from both single pane and orthodox file managers. My only regret is that I have to load KDE libs to use it.

If you feel Gnome 3 is too much but you don't want to part with your GTK+ apps you might be willing to try XFCE or Cinnamon.

I have a love-hate relationship with Gnome 3 right now. There's some things about it that i love and others i loathe. Working with multiple windows, for example, is a pain in the ass. I might go back to XFCE soon, which in many ways is Gnome 2 without all the Gnome crud.

The difference is that Microsoft can deliberately drop support for the older Windows operating system, forcing users to migrate to newer, vastly inferior Windows operating systems. And since their shit is proprietary, no one can "adopt" redevelopment of the abandonware they don't want any more.

But with open source systems, the codebase for Gnome2 can't be made to disappear just because the original developers have developed collective insanity and moved on to the execrable Gnome3. In fact, Gnome2 has indeed been adopted by a new set of developers. Or people can just use a perfectly good replacement. Because with open source systems you're not locked into an official One Way of doing things.

Even the XFCE window manager doesn't work properly

Can you elaborate on that? (preferably file a bug at https://bugzilla.xfce.org/ or just describe it here).

I run Debian 6 on both physical hardware and VMs that have less resources than you've described, and it works perfectly fine. For desktop environments, I use either plain Gnome or XFCE. For the VMs, I access their desktops by running FreeNX, and on both my LAN and over the Internet it's almost as fast as a native desktop. These machines are routinely used for web browsing, email, and office documents.

http://www.xfce.org/

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

I'll give you a counter proposal: Ubuntu minimal. If you hit f4 and choose command line, you'll get a base install, afterwards you can simply apt-get install xfce4 or whatever.

Whats the point? PPAs, The single thing Debian is sorely missing. PPAs in a Debian distro are like addons in a Mozilla browser, simply addicting.

The minimal installer is just 22MiB, and will save you from downloading a large ISO and then updates, so you can do more in less time.

The idea of a sudoer instead of root + user is an (expert) option of the Debian Installer, say no when it asks you if you want a root account. You might hate it, but others find it useful.

There are no "Ubuntu's wizards", It is called Network Manager and can be installed in Debian as well, or uninstalled/ignored in Ubuntu. Network Manager will not manage any device you define in /etc/network/interfaces by default, so you can go back to ifup/ifdown or direct ifconfig. Network Manager is very good with 3g modems so i don't agree with you in getting rid of it. Some people prefer wicd for wifi, its an option as well.

Like Linus, I also switched to XFCE. Sure it needs more polishing, but the more of us using it will make sure this happens. XFCE is actually better than gnome in some aspects: Window buttons to the right or left? You choose it with a drag and drop gui, not a cryptic gconf thing. How could gnome miss simple things like that?

After screwing around moving from Unity to KDE 4.6 the other day, and finding that simply RESIZING A TERMINAL WINDOW stiffed my whole laptop, I tried xfce and my god - I forgot that's how the desktop used to work! The compositing & whizzy effects didn't work very well on an Apple last time I tried, so god knows why GNOME & KDE folks want to copy it. I'm back to a simple window manager and shell that works, and I'm not going to be talked out of them again for a while.

XFCE is suffering (through no fault of their own) from the same mindset that seems to want to restrict open source to Linux-only. From the 4.8 release :

"We hope that everyone will enjoy this release as much as we do. Sadly, this will not be the case as the folks using any of the BSD systems will notice a sudden loss of features. We think that this announcement is a good opportunity to express our disagreement with the recent "Linux-only" developments in the open source ecosystem, especially with regards to the utilities we need in desktop environments."

More info here.

Start by giving XFCE a try.
Open you horizons, as stated in a number of previous posts.

There's always Xfce for those of you who still want a traditional, stable environment. Uses the same Gtk+ themes that Gnome used, and the panel is flexible enough to emulate Gnome 2.x, KDE/Windows, or CDE.

I know, they turned their back on the *BSD's with Xfce 4.8, but it's still the only desktop environment worth using anymore.

Oh yeah, and they plan on sticking with Gtk+ 2.2 for the next couple of years.

(emphasis mine)

um...going by the difference in market share between gnome and xfce, I'd suggest the majority of people disagree with you.

There's always Xfce for those of you who still want a traditional, stable environment. Uses the same Gtk+ themes that Gnome used, and the panel is flexible enough to emulate Gnome 2.x, KDE/Windows, or CDE.

I know, they turned their back on the *BSD's with Xfce 4.8, but it's still the only desktop environment worth using anymore.

Oh yeah, and they plan on sticking with Gtk+ 2.2 for the next couple of years.

just look at linux GUI's just a rip of, of Windows.

-1 uninformed, at best
Classic Gnome with customization
Gnome Shell (useful screenshot)
Enlightenment (no screenshots on official site)
GNUstep
Fluxbox
Xfce

To continue on-topic: wasn't it just last week when we noted that the Windows Phone marketplace specifically excludes GPL software?

What's with the double line spacing, /.?

You really couldn't try http://www.xfce.org/ ?

Anyway, it's a middle-weight DE based on Gtk.

The problem I have with comparing Linux to Windows on the desktop is that I think Windows stinks on the desktop.

Agreed.

I want an operating system to run applications.

Seconded.

It should be a kernel, drivers, codecs and the base API, with a singular update manager, and text configuration files.

The word you are looking for is "Debian". Seriously, I just switched back from Ubuntu to Debian on my main laptop, and it's so nice to be rid of the bloat, the stupid UI tweaks, the indecipherable decisions to break what already works well. I will grant you that the default desktop install of Debian installs GNOME, but you can easily install LXDE ('sudo tasksel install lxde-desktop') or XFCE ('sudo tasksel install xfce-desktop') or Fluxbox, Openbox, wmii, ratpoison, etc.

Augh. I borked that link pretty bad. Should have been as so:

I use Gentoo Linux every day. I use the tools provided in portage daily to do the computer-y things I like to do. I use XFCE for my desktop environment, Firefox (mostly) for web browsing, various text editors, etc. etc... but my favorite tool is the command line. I can do so many more things in a lot less time at the command line than with a GUI - even web browsing (love links).

Anyone notice Linux share the same syntax of UNIX?

Yup.

Do you know how old UNIX is?

Yup. Developed in 1969; making it 41 years old. Linux was developed in 1991.. Linux today is a far cry from Linux back then.

To start Linux even old people like me need to know some history of XENIX, UNIX, SCO, NFS ... some of those things remain unformatted text base, console type (not VT100). GUI is good, but the back is still those things, that why Mac OSX hide them all. Linux need to clean up those history and simplified those things.

I don't know if you are referring to using a Linux distro or programming on the Linux kernel.

I use Gentoo Linux every day. I use the tools provided in portage daily to do the computer-y things I like to do. I use XFCE for my desktop environment, Firefox (mostly) for web browsing, various text editors, etc. etc... but my favorite tool is the command line. I can do so many more things in a lot less time at the command line than with a GUI - even web browsing (love links).

I was born in 1988; 21 years of age. I've been using Linux since 2001 or so.

My fiancee also uses Gentoo Linux, as I got fed up with supporting WinXP and all the junk that accumulated on it. She's been using it fine for the past few years, running a very similar setup to mine. We are the same age.

I don't do any kernel programming, however I do various application- and web-level programming. Never anything past user-space... and that is simply because that is where my interests lay... I've always been more into building programs that do stuff for me, rather than kernel programming / hardware interfacing (at the kernel level).

The most interesting thing to me about Gnome these days is that it's memory footprint is still ridiculously fatter than Xfce's, even though Xfce has caught up with Gnome's basic features.

My "family computer" has been running default Ubuntu with Gnome, and my non-technical wife has been happy with it. However, it's starting to show its age, and with each major software update it gets a little slower and slower. So for the hell of it last month I thought I'd experiment with Xfce and see if I could postpone the next computer purchase until the holiday season.

I might postpone a lot further out than that! Thanks to Canonical's packaging of Xfce, it looked pretty much the same as Gnome right out of the box. After 5 minutes of tweaking the panel icons and theme settings, it was almost indistinguishable from my machine's previous setup. My wife didn't notice at all until three weeks later when she went to copy some files from a USB drive, and noticed that the file manager was Thunar rather than Nautilus. She turned out to be happier with Thunar though, because it doesn't randomly freeze up during drag-and-drop operations.

For years now, Gnome's "niche" has been with those who want something more feature-rich than Fluxbox, yet simpler and more lightweight than KDE. However, Gnome's basic functionality has been pretty stagnant for a long time, and lighter-weight desktop environments are catching up with the core expected feature set. Right now, I don't know of any compelling reason to run Gnome other than wanting to use a lot of Compiz visual effects, and Xfce is almost caught up with that too.

Well, you did say most people don't really care about 3D. People running Compiz clearly do, even if they don't realize it. Intel GPUs really aren't that bad. If I misunderstood your intent, I apologize.

xfwm4 has had compositing since September 2004. Not sure about metacity, but it's probably been at least half that long.

Personally I prefer Xfce. It's bloody fast, looks quite nice, and includes all of the features I'd expect a modern operating system to have.

A lot of the backend stuff of GNOME eventually makes its way over to Xfce after it's had time to mature.

I can also personally attest that it's fast and lean on older machines.

Er, I don't quite understand why 10,000 is such a big deal. Xfce is at 29,994, and that's just for version 4, which was started around... 2001 or 2002 or so? Version 3 adds another 1181 commits to that, and I'm sure v2 and v1 would add a bit more if their history was still around.

I'm not saying this to brag (hell, KDE has over 125k, and I'm sure GNOME is comparable to that); I doubt it'll be a big deal when Xfce hits 30k commits, even. I'm just wondering why PLplot (arguably something of an obscure project) gets a /. article for what seems to be not much of a milestone.

Er, I don't quite understand why 10,000 is such a big deal. Xfce is at 29,994, and that's just for version 4, which was started around... 2001 or 2002 or so? Version 3 adds another 1181 commits to that, and I'm sure v2 and v1 would add a bit more if their history was still around.

I'm not saying this to brag (hell, KDE has over 125k, and I'm sure GNOME is comparable to that); I doubt it'll be a big deal when Xfce hits 30k commits, even. I'm just wondering why PLplot (arguably something of an obscure project) gets a /. article for what seems to be not much of a milestone.

Try out Xfce. It is an excellent desktop environment based on GTK, as is Gnome, but without all the bloat. It is reasonably pretty and configurable, complies with (possibly a subset of) the FreeDesktop.org standards, and is an excellent combination of lightweight and feature-heavy. It is available in Debian, Gentoo, and most likely your distribution of choice.

Shame on you Firefox/Chrome user, XFCE less is more .. :)

XFCE >>> fluxbox :: fluxbox == much much more.

Shame on you Firefox/Chrome user, XFCE less is more .. :)

Because i am familiar with the install process, its oh so small footprint, the excellent FAQs and manual pages; I have OpenBSD installed on my eeepc 901 netbook. It originally came with Xandros which I used for a while before installing Ubuntu on the extra 16gb disk. I couldn't get the wireless card to work with Ubuntu and I wasn't particularly pleased with the amount of screen real-estate used up by gnome et el. And even after upgrading the memory to 2gig I still found the time it took to launch apps a tad too slow. So early this year I installed my preferred Unix OS, OpenBSD on the 4gig disk and use the 16gig disk for /home. I find OpenBSD and xfce4 are perfect for this little netbook. Wifi works with the ral(4) driver and i get the usual 8hours battery life.

Here is my dmesg(8) and sysctl(8).

OpenBSD 4.4-current (GENERIC) #1671: Wed Feb 4 01:28:11 MST 2009
todd@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 1.61 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF,SSE3,MWAIT,DS-CPL,EST,TM2,xTPR
real mem = 2138271744 (2039MB)
avail mem = 2059341824 (1963MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 10/03/08, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xf0010, SMBIOS rev. 2.5 @ 0xf0710 (30 entries)
bios0: vendor American Megatrends Inc. version "1603" date 10/03/2008
bios0: ASUSTeK Computer INC. 901
acpi0 at bios0: rev 0
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC MCFG OEMB HPET SSDT
acpi0: wakeup devices P0P2(S4) P0P1(S4) P0P4(S4) P0P6(S4) P0P7(S4) P0P8(S4) P0P9(S4)
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: apic clock running at 133MHz
cpu at mainbus0: not configured
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 2 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 1, remapped to apid 2
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 5 (P0P4)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 3 (P0P6)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 1 (P0P7)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus -1 (P0P8)
acpiprt5 at acpi0: bus -1 (P0P9)
acpiprt6 at acpi0: bus 4 (P0P5)
acpiec0 at acpi0
acpicpu0 at acpi0
acpitz0 at acpi0: critical temperature 90 degC
acpibat0 at acpi0: BAT0 model "901" serial type LION oem "ASUS"
acpiac0 at acpi0: AC unit online
acpiasus0 at acpi0
acpibtn0 at acpi0: LID_
acpibtn1 at acpi0: SLPB
acpibtn2 at acpi0: PWRB
acpivideo at acpi0 not configured
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xec00!
cpu0: unknown Enhanced SpeedStep CPU, msr 0x060f0c2206000c22
cpu0: using only highest and lowest power states
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 1600 MHz (1244 mV): speeds: 1600, 800 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82945GME Host" rev 0x03
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel 82945GME Video" rev 0x03
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
intagp0 at vga1
agp0 at intagp0: aperture at 0xd0000000, size 0x10000000
inteldrm0 at vga1: apic 2 int 16 (irq 3)
drm0 at inteldrm0
"Intel 82945GM Video" rev 0x03 at pci0 dev 2 function 1 not configured
azalia0 at pci0 dev 27 function 0 "Intel 82801GB HD Audio" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 16 (irq 3)

Personally, I would like to see a new WM/GUI that doesn't load 240 interdependent libraries, but still provide all the features

.

Tried XFCE?

Are you a KDE or Gnome user? For me it's Xfce or fluxbox, less is more .. :)

XFCE would be very nice except for the horrible memory leak in xfdesktop and xfce4-menu-plugin. It basically defeats the main purpose of xfce, which is to be a low-memory desktop. This REALLY needs to be fixed.

http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3812

KDE3 was bloated to a fault, and had an unhealthy obsession with identical-looking blue toolbar icons. It was also due for an architectural revamp.

GNOME started going down the "less is more" minimalistic path a few years ago, encouraged by Apple's similar philosophy that seemed to go over well with consumers. Unfortunately, many feel that they stripped a bit too much out (still, I prefer this approach, and was a rabid Xfce user for quite some time).

KDE4 on the other hand, doesn't feel like it was designed with a minimalistic philosophy in mind. Granted, there was a clear and commendable goal to cut out most of the cruft from KDE3, but it currently still feels a bit incomplete

Do you think that's a fair assesment?

What you describe sounds suspiciously like KDE exactly as it is, but with a gnome-like skin on top.

Come on. QT isn't "better" than GTK, nor is GTK "better" than QT.

Although it'd be nice to unify the two projects, they have extremely different mindsets. While KDE is set on becoming as feature-rich as possible (sometimes to a fault), the GNOME folks like to keep things as simple as possible (sometimes to a fault).

Also, nobody ever said that GNOME or GTK can't be lightweight. I'd personally like to see the essential parts of the GNOME suite stripped down, and incorporated into Xfce like was done when Mozilla transitioned from SeaMonkey to Firefox. XFce is easily the most noticably fast and "snappy" desktop environment I've used in years. It looks pretty nice too.

Honestly, I think its in the best benefit of both projects for the other one to exist. If you want to, you can run KDE apps in Gnome and vice versa. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, and it keeps a little competition going.

Binding one language to another is also a messy affair, and C++ isn't terribly popular for Unix apps outside of the KDE world. The two projects *have* come together on issues where the two projects already had some common ground (See freedesktop.org)

At the time most X users still thought CDE was a pretty neat idea.

That's ironic, since some people *still* think it's a neat idea...

Quick Launch seems to do pretty much the same thing as Xfce's Quicklauncher plugin though, so you might want to give that a try first.

I still like xfce for over this. It looks alot like windows 9x for some reason. http://www.xfce.org/ I dunno. I'm the enlightenment/fluxbox type, but if I want a DE so i can use compiz as the window manager, I always got lost in deciding Gnome or KDE, but as soon as I found xfce I decided its the best. The number of tray plugins are sortof limited, but all it needs is more developers willing to help out with that end.

When are you forking Xfce?

Nah, I have it skinned to look better than any Gnome setup I've ever seen. Mine looks sort of like this with the striped toolbars and transparency, but it's themed to look like Human.