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XFce Desktop 4 Released

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the minimalist-approaches dept.

BladeMelbourne writes "After thorough RC testing, version 4.0 of my favourite 'lite' desktop environment has been released. Sporting purty eye candy, XFce is leaps and bounds ahead of the legacy XFce 3.8.18 release, whilst retaining it's performance. Release notes are available, as well as binary and source packages. Bring that PII back to life!" While it may not have all the bells and whistles, it's pretty clean looking.

10 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Any experience with this on a slow computer ? by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How funny, just last week I was wondering what desktop to put on an old P133 with 48mb of RAM. I stumbled on Xfce and I was going to try the 4.0 release candidates. Does anyone here use Xfce, and if so, how well would you expect it to run on this computer ? Any tips ?

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    1. Re:Any experience with this on a slow computer ? by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I started using Linux back in the Red Hat 5 days, and XFce was really the only good desktop available at the time. At one side of the spectrum was TWM (which, IMHO, is too minimalist), and at the other was GNOME (which defintely was too big and too buggy). XFce landed nicely in the middle, and actually hooked the entire family. My dad, mom, and sister all still use XFce when they use the Linux machine, so it's not impossible to convert people over. :)

  2. Re:lighter is better by phraktyl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I agree. I'm a big supporter of light. I use PWM. All keyboard shortcuts. No cute GUI stuff. And very fast...

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  3. Re:Cutest logo by devphaeton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I say we have 2 8-button mice in stereo... plus foot pedals on the floor.

    Fwiw i've been using XFCE4 for about 3 months now. I finally made the step up from Windowmaker or Blackbox to a "huge" Desktop Environment ;)

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  4. Re:lighter is better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Depends on what the box is like for me.

    My laptop? Blackbox. Small, sweet, sexy.

    My workstation? KDE3. My workstation has the beef to handle running it and anything else at the same time. Plus, there's the aesthetic advantage.

    I'm not talking about crazy eyecandy and sickening animated whatnots; rather, everything looks like it belongs on the desktop. I open up the mail program, it looks and feels the same as the browser. Et cetera.

    Can't really get that on 'light' wm's without all sorts of crazy hax0ring. (Or, installing a 'heavy' desktop environment and just using the apps.)

  5. Re:lighter is better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Use ratpoison - when that one app is the only app on the desktop, it fits in with everything else on screen.

    Personally, all i want is very little. Small title bar and window dressings, no icons (wtf are they for???), no "start up bar", and tabbed windows so i dont need twenty million separate windows and/or icons. My window dressings are so small they fit with everything else. My mail client (and most everything i do, minus web browsing) is via terminal windows, so my text can fit with anything. pekwm satisfies my needs.

  6. Re:Does it support a scrolling viewport? by SharpFang · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use Afterstep (it's Great!) for that, with desktop size like 7000x7000, and I often use more than 50% of it - in rather random pattern so that if it was smaller, things would get locally crowded. Afterstep has that great app of Pager that allows you to navigate the desktop quickly, move windows around, etc. Plus looks that beat most of the others. (say, Enlightenment was prettier, but Enlightenment wasn't something that one could use as a standalone DM.)

    I just never use "minimise" :)

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  7. Re:lighter is better by CommandNotFound · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not talking about crazy eyecandy and sickening animated whatnots; rather, everything looks like it belongs on the desktop. I open up the mail program, it looks and feels the same as the browser. Et cetera.

    XFCE4 uses the Gnome theme settings, so once you set the theme in XFCE, then Evolution, etc, all look the same. You can then set a similar theme in kcontrol for KDE, and everything looks unified.

    And BTW, I'm runnning this lightweight WM on a Dual Athlon 2600+ with a Gig of ram, and I can still feel the speed difference between it and KDE/Gnome. Regardless of the speed, my favorite feature is switching desktops with the scroll wheel. :)

  8. How about Cygwin support? by axxackall · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I use GNOME on Linux and I am happy with that. But on Cygwin there is no GNOME and KDE is not good for Cygwin either. That's why I have to use FVWM or WM, and I am not happy with either of them. That's why I am always open for some better alternative windows/destop manager that I can use on Cygwin.

    So, is it available for Cygwin yet? In other words - is it buildable and workable?

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  9. very cool by oohp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm using fluxbox, but I tried out XFCE and I really like it. It's very cool in terms of speed and very good looking too. My girlfriend loves it too, so I configured her user with XFCE running the Aqua theme. Maybe I could make Linux suck less for her, thanx to this nice DE.