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XFce Desktop 4 Released
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.
I vote for xfce as having the dang cutest logo yet.
*squeeee* lil rodent
It's incredible, really. Here I was reading slashdot, trying to procrastinate doing some work, but it's the same stories I read earlier.... just when I am almost forced to stop reading /. and actually do some work, along comes slashdot not only with a new story for me to procrastinate more, but a story that involves looking at pictures of other people doing work! Thank you slashdot!!
I run TWM on my server and OpenBox on my iBook. Smaller window managers leave more ram and more proc. time for the processes that matter.
Try comparing compile times of the kernel between TWM and KDE3, no surprise which will win.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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 ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
unless its being slashdotted.
The desktop environment / window manager is irrelevant in this case. You want X to take care of that. man XF86Config and do a search ('/') for "Virtual"... It'll make the virtual desktop as large as your video card can handle (usually the same as the video card's max resolution). You'll get your movable window.
I've been keeping up with XFCE for a while now, and I've really enjoyed using it. I typically use either it or fluxbox when I'm in the mood for a minimal window manager. Anyhow, if you'd like to edit your keyboard shortcuts in XFCE (one of the first things I do when I install a new WM), you can do that in the following file: /usr/share/xfwm4/themes/default.keys/keythemerc
--It's Pimptastic!--
It's been in the tree ( or at least the ~x86 tree ) since at least thismorning.
;-)
-----------
curious@clyde x11-wm$ emerge -s xfce4-base
Searching...
[ Results for search key : xfce4-base ]
[ Applications found : 1 ]
* xfce-base/xfce4-base
Latest version available: 4.0.0
Latest version installed: 3.99.4
-----------
I'll probably be excommunicated from the Gentoo community now for being 0.00.6 of a release behind.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I advise all RedHat users (downloading XFce RPMs) not to download and install gtk2-2.2.4-1rh9.i386.rpm from the XFce SourceForge page - it prevented my gdm graphical greeter from loading the login screen.
/etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf for half an hour like me, changing gdm greeter themes.
The error message was: "The theme for the graphical greeter is corrupt. It does not contain definition for the username/password entry element." I clicked OK several times, but the error message stayed there.
If you run into troubles, revert to an older package like gtk2-2.2.2-0.ximian.6.3.i386.rpm or gtk2-2.2.1-4.i386.rpm
Dont play with
Mike
I really wish they'd make a nice light desktop for Windows XP.
Not gonna happen. Even if it didn't cost them anything, if fact I suspect if they wanted to they could adapt their PDA window manager which I suspect is fairly lightweight. There are two reasons why (I can think of). One is upgrade cycle. Most people who get a new computer do so because their old one gets old and slow. When they buy a new one they also buy a new OS and other software along with it not to mention the other software they buy seperately to go with their new computer. Offering a light WM would allow people to extend their computers life cycle and slow the upgrade cycle, assuming it was free of course but even if it isn't MS would just be taking a slice of their future pie.
Another reason is variety, right now one of MS's biggest advantage is people don't have experience with variety. If they get used to a utilitarian WM without the flashy features they may start to wonder if it wouldn't be easy for someone other then MS to make a good WM and start looking around.
The main rule I've learned about when a corporation gets to be a monopoly is what is good for the corporation is very often not what is good for the consumer.
I stole this Sig
Ah, the power of a good Slashdotting. :-)
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Here is a mirror for the png's.
XFce screens
LiteStep, GeoShell, bb4win, and countless others are available as shell replacements for windows. I have been using LiteStep for about 5 years, and it even made win98 look stable. Very fast, very configurable, modular, and much prettier than the plain default explorer startmenu.
ShellFront and Desktopian are great places to start.
It works just fine under XP as a shell. If you want to test it without replacing your current shell, just launch it from the command line with the -desktop option.
This is actually a good point. MS, by promoting a ruthlessly standardized desktop environment, has managed to get large numbers of people quite used to doing things one way (the MS way, that is). It really is a struggle for some of the more ossified types to even change to another browser simply because the buttons have slightly different icons from IE.
By eleminating diversity, the MS designers have quite neatly gotten a psychological lock into the minds of many people. Gamers tend to switch more easily because games don't follow the MS standard interface, but non-gamers are very used to/addicted to the MS look and feel.
Not, mind you, that standardization doesn't have its place. When every program makes the scrollbars look and behave differently even the most flexible of mind can get a bit worn out. I wonder if there's a happy medium between over-compliance with a standard UI, and over-diversity in UI look and feel?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
There are a few:
There's also progman.exe*, shipped with windows. I've heard tell of a "winfile" also supposedly built in, but I don't know anything about that.
I've tried a few of these, but some of them (Blackbox) seemed to take more resources than Explorer! Another caveat, the ports of *nix windows managers retain the *nix settings system, so setting them up can be a pain if you don't have experience with them.
*Yes, that is progman of Win16 fame.
"While it may not have all the bells and whistles, it's pretty clean looking."
Bells, whistles!?!, i've been tring to write c apps that would generate those tone for years!! When is someone going to release code with bells and whistles... damnit!!! i want to see the source so i know what i've been doing wrong!
What is slashdot?
What hasn't been mentioned yet is the xfce plugin for fvwm. I kinda liked xfce, but really liked fvwm but didn't want to spend the time customizing, and then I find that there's a plugin to load into fvwm and suddenly I have the xfce taskbar. It's really the best of both worlds. Fvwm's efficient management of the desktop, and a nice toolbar to keep everything organized. Although I suppose the fact that three of the buttons on the taskbar get set to different sizes and colors of xterms says something about me....
Oh yes, XFCE is not a desktop. So what?
;-)
I have migrated from KDE to XFCE. KDE is fine, but it has lots of functionalities I never use; the presence of icons on the desktop disturbs me (and KDE keeps creating them at every restart when I remove them), and all I need is a good menu system with some buttons for the apps I use most often (Opera, xterm, XMMS, xterm, kmail, xterm, the Gimp, xterm, SciTE and xterm). The printer? Less than one minute to configure my remote Samba printer. And everything runs faster now, because
I more free memory! XFCE has been a gift from Heaven for my poor 64MB-laptop.
So, although I respect your choice of KDE/Gnome, and I may enjoy some friendly waste of time with you discussing about the definition of the term "Desktop", give my XFCE if you want me happy.
Oh, by the way: I am sorry to let you down in this particular issue, but I am NOT calling you a troll. Please find someone else for that
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
..the Fonts look a little mangled, no?
SCNR
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I've used 3 before using xfce4/cvs and xfree 4.(2/3? can't remember) and the hardest part was getting the /etc/X11/XF86Config file right to make everything happy. Once I got that working, I had a complaint that overlays/opengl don't behave due to my graphics card (damn you matrox) but everything else was happy.
s0be
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
This comment must have been written by someone (and modded up by
someone else) who doesn't know much about XFCE. XFCE is not just a
window manager, but a fully integrated, mouse-configurable desktop
including wm, panel (with panel applets), taskbar, pager and graphical
file manager (including Samba browsing support), extensive drag'n'drop
capabilities including for printing, central configuration menus
including sound and mouse setup. It's based on Gtk 2.x and
freedesktop.org standards (and thus with a high degree especially of
Gnome and KDE interoperability).
Think of XFCE as a desktop environment without the redundant middleware
layers (DCOP/KParts/arts etc. in KDE, Corba/Bonobo/esd/Gconf etc.i in
Gnome) that make both KDE and Gnome bloated and slow, and which are
hardly used by third party applications outside main Gnome and KDE
distributions at all.
So it amazes me that the previous commentator thinks XFCE is "not a
desktop". On the contrary, XFCE is a desktop done architecturally right,
similar to, for example, the desktops of AmigaOS, RiscOS, Macintosh
Classic and BeOS. While both the XFCE panel (with its legacy to the user
interface of the CDE panel) and new file manager could still need some
usability improvement, the architectural foundation is excellent.
XFCE is also the proof that a X11- and GNU/Linux-/BSD-based desktop
computer can be as fast and efficient as one would normally expect from
a Unix-like system. In other words, it's as fast as a basic window
manager setup with Window Maker/icewm/fvwm2 while providing a fully
integrated desktop that doesn't require users to run the shell or edit
configuration files.
(A prominent XFCE user and supporter is, btw., Alan Cox.)
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
It's all matter of scrolling distance setup. If you have edgescroll set to 50-100%, it's real pain in the ass. Set scroll to 5% and the fact that your screen shifts when you touch the edge with your cursor becomes a great feature instead of a problem.
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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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"XFce", great. See, it's attention to pronouncable and memorable names such as "Ex-Eff-Cee-Eee" that endears open source projects to tens of users worldwide ;)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So, is it available for Cygwin yet? In other words - is it buildable and workable?
Less is more !
I used to run XFCE 3.x on a P120 w/120 megs of RAM. KDE wouldn't run, but XFCE acted like it belonged there. Oh, and use FreeBSD. It's a bit more mem efficient.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I use it everywhere. It works, it does just the things one wants a desktop environment to do, out of the box, and it's light and fast, as advertised. It's basically Macintosh simplicity come to Linux, without the sluggishness and memory usage of Macintosh system software. XFCE3 looked a bit too much like CDE, but XFCE4 looks nicer in addition to working well.
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.