Slashdot Mirror
Xfce: Alternative to GNOME/KDE
tintin writes "While GNOME and KDE get most of the attention from the user and distributions, other alternatives should not be left out. The interview with Olivier Fourdan of Xfce points out one lightweight alternative, XFce.
To get more information on Xfce, go to xfce home page"
Actually, given the nature of open source, each time somebody reinvents the wheel, it just gives another option for our car.
Or, to put it in precise, real-world terms: each time somebody writes a new window manager, we have another option for our desktop.
I've been using KDE 2.0 since the early alphas. The very early versions (out of CVS) were buggy, and a buggy WM can knock you out. (POI - I was using some KDE 1.1 apps, some KDE 2.0 apps - they coexist just fine).
So, what did I do? I switched the Window Manager to BlackBox, a very nice lightweight WM that works wonderfully. I'll stay in it until KDE 2.0 is officially released, and possibly afterwards: I happen to like it.
Of course, most people would agree that the KDE Window Manager is much more advanced... it allows fancy theming (BlackBox just allows some nice color gradiants), and a nice launch bar and other such "modern" GUI features.
But tastes vary, and I happen to have gotten used to BlackBox, and may very well keep using it one KDE 2.0 final comes out.
To use your analogy: I bought a KDE car... but tricked it out with nice custom alloy wheels.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
More choice is always a good thing...
...because three holy wars are better than one!
I disagree.
As someone already pointed out, it is the developer who chooses. So you end up with some apps for GNOME and some apps for KDE. This helps to spread our resources out thinner so that we are less effective at combatting big evil expensive systems.
Of course, someone counters that you can run GNOME apps under KDE and vice versa.
This just shows how out of touch the programmers are with what users want. (The abysmal user interface of most non-GNOME and non-KDE apps, and even of some GNOME and KDE apps, already make this abundantly clear, but that's a different topic.)
It is not just a matter of which widget set a program is written with. I want the applications to be deeply integrated togerher. I want to cut and paste between apps. I want to grab some cells from my spreadsheet and embed them into my word processor, or charting application, and still keep those cells as "live" references back to the spreadsheet. I want component embedding. I want drag and drop between applications, where the receiving application is aware of the kind of data being dragged to it and can act accordingly. I want powerful scripting of all of the applications, but in an integrated way. Other fluff, like themeability where all the apps obey the theme -- not just the window decorations around the apps, but things that affect how the content of the app is presented, that is nice too.
Despite all the bitching and moaning that only stupid end users want such things, make no mistake that this kind of an environment makes programmers more productive too.
Me thinks it is a case of sour grapes. (Windows has it, we don't, so we make noises like we don't like it or want it. But then when it materializes, everyone will say "Of course, I was always in favor of Unix having such a rich and productive application environment.")
Everytime I read about yet another new "lightweight" desktop environment, I read it as meaning "feature deprived". Other people seem to read "feature rich" as "bloat" or "heavyweight".
I suppose that is why choice is good. At least I can choose either GNOME or KDE, while others can choose twm.
I can understand where some people who cry "bloatware" come from. When I need to use under-powered hardware, I am glad to have icewm, and happy to use it. But most of the time I don't need to run on under-powered hardware.
Mostly I use my "productivity" machine. The computer is supposed to make me productive, not the other way around, like in the 70's. How many megahertz and megabytes it requires be damned! Moore's Law and all that.
There are plenty of "lightweight" desktops or widow managers out there. Why do we need yet another one? This question seems to go perpetually unanswered.
I can imagine why some of them get written. It is fun to program. And such a project is quite a learning experience. I and don't begrudge anyone from building their own flavor of window manager just for the fun/learning of it. Maybe that's all that's happening here. I suppose yet another "lightweight" window manager isn't going to deplete resources from either KDE or GNOME. Serious developers porting from Windows will probably look mostly at GNOME or KDE. So I suppose I should quit ranting now.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
For me, the point is that it is small.
While I like GNOME a lot, and KDE 2 looks great, if I had a machine with less than 48M I wouldn't try to run either. Windowmaker, Afterstep, and XFce are all good options in such a case.
it's refreshing to find a desktop that conserves memory and lets my applications run faster. Netscape is distinctly faster than it was with Gnome. XFCE is stylish without being distracting, and it does what I need without a lot of tweaking.
I'll stick to my desktop, but for those who need it's strengths XFce provides a needed alternative for them.
Bruce
Bruce
I am the real Bruce Perens.
This is your problem, you think someone wants to dominate the market, get more users, stablish itself as the standard and all the other usual crap. Has someone ever told you that programming is fun? That you scratch an itch you are feeling? That no everything has has to be determined in terms of corporate acceptance.
Had I moderator points, would have marked the original post as "troll".
This is what I love about Unix,Linux,BSD is that you have the of how you want things to look and if you do not like how it looks you can change it easier that if you want to change windows or mac. Choices is what is going to keep unix around for a long time.
KDE and Gnome is also a paradigm in user interface and design. I don't see XFce quite as grandeur in mission.
... maybe not even that.
I believe that XFce would be better compared with Enlightenment, WindowMaker, etc.
XFce is a FAST alternative to Gnome/KDE/Bloat and runs very very well on older hardware.
I might add that Gnome supports XFce as a alternative window manager.
--------------------