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Xfce 4.2.0 Released
kelnos copies and pastes: "The Xfce Team is pleased to announce the availability of Xfce 4.2.0, the next major version of the Xfce Desktop Environment and Development Framework for Unix and Unix-like platforms. Xfce 4.2.0 can be downloaded here. Xfce 4.2.0 includes new applications like a session manager and an application finder, a new and beautiful icon theme, support for bleeding-edge features (like the X.org Composite extension), usability and performance improvements, better support for multihead desktops, new and updated translations, additional themes, and various other improvements over the previous stable releases. See this page for a complete list of changes between Xfce 4.0 and Xfce 4.2. Furthermore, Xfce 4.2 is the first desktop environment to ship with an easy-to-use and platform-independent graphical installation wizard, which takes care of compiling and installing Xfce on your system. Visit the os-cillation installers website for download links and instructions. If you want to try Xfce 4.2.0 first, without installing anything on your system, you might want to try the Xfce Live Demo 0.2, provided by os-cillation, to discover the power and efficiency of Xfce."
I've been a Window Maker user for 7 or 8 years and I've tried XFCE 4.0 and the RC's of 4.2. I used 4.0 for a good 2 weeks at home and at work and then 4.2 RC for another week but I'm back using Window Maker again. XFCE is very nice and the developers have done a great job making a nice light WM, but the reason I switched back is the same reason I don't use KDE or Gnome. They all redraw funny. The GUI doesn't feel "solid" like MS Windows, OS X or Window Maker does. I'm not talking about stability. I wish I could explain it better and I hope someone else can chime and explain it. Here's how I reproduce it:
When I have 4+ desktops (or even one loaded up with applications) and I switch desktops or alt-tab, with XFCE (or Gnome, KDE) it takes longer than it should to redraw the screen or window. I notice this even on fast machines with fast video cards running recent Xorg releases.
Does anybody else experience this?
To anyone who thinks this sounds like the best alternative to the bloated KDE and Gnome, it is. Go the their website and check out the flash demos. They show how well (and how fast) it works better than any description. The window manager has about a bazillion styles from simple to extreme. If you want to compile it yourself, the graphical installers are fabulous. Translations into 40 languages! Xfce simply rocks.
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down your computer properly by selecting Shut Down from the Start Menu.
here's the torrent of it
~/.sig: No such file or directory
You could try enlightenment, its not exactly "lightweight" but it could serve that purpose and doesn't have many external dependencies. But really, there is no point of running X without either Gtk or Qt as most apps use one of those.
thisnukes4u.net
Is this release substantially slower/more bloated than the 4.0 release, and less so than the 4.1 release? When I went from the 4.0 release to the 4.1 release, my system couldn't take it and still remain reasonable (I have a junker running FreeBSD). So how does 4.2 run, for those who went right ahead and installed the release? I wonder if there will even be packages built for this version for the 4.x tree.
Are there any good WMs which don't have any gtk+ or Qt dependencies?
fluxbox
Find free books.
From the download page of the Xfld.org website:
They have an obligation to do exactly that--keep the licensing straight--so they aren't distributing something they don't have a license to distribute. Perhaps it is time to comb the distribution and make sure the licensing is correct.
Digital Citizen
For any decent-sized drive (128MB and up) on any computer built within the past ten years, XFCE would be fine.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Do yourselves a favor; try ion for 15 minutes and you'll be hooked.
It's a classic. Reposted countless times on Slashdot and other websites since it's first appearance in 1998. The poster had enough sense to change the claimed Mac model from 8600/300 to G5, which is better than your average canned post troll can do, but it's still a six-year-old repost.
(see http://www.kottke.org/98/11/ for a nearly word-for-word identical post made 6 years ago)
0 1 - just my two bits
I run a lab of thin clients hanging off a rack of Dell servers. I really wasn't too keen on umpteen Gnome sessions running, or even half a dozen bloaty nautiluses. So I stripped them out, and made XFCE the only option.
Its slick, light, windowsy-enough to not scare newbies too much, and the lab has run for over a term with no problems.
I set the servers up to give the users a choice of connecting to the Linux boxes or Windows boxes, and 95% of the connections are to the Linux boxes....
Baz
Yes. Settings Manager -> Window Manager -> Focus -> Automatically give focus to newly created windows is what I believe you are looking for.
All operating systems' origins can be traced back to the 1960s, when they invented operating systems. OS development is largely "punctuated evolution" - incremental accelerated by occasional revolutionary changes. So OS'es with older, more direct roots have the advantage of maturity, meaning that many problems which OS'es address have been solved, in order to survive enough to contribute to the next generation. Truly new OS'es, like PalmOS, aren't even tested enough in many scenarios to predict how they'll fail, the most imporant property of using an OS. Some OS'es, like Windows, are trapped in both worlds: significant new, untested tech combined with lots of obsolete legacy apps to support, often in mutually exclusive modes or subsystems. Of all these lineages, Linux probably has the best deal, being a rebirth of pedigreed Unix architectures, without the old apps or users to hold back innovation, combined with its essential self-modifying toolchain and community.
--
make install -not war
--For the easily infuriated, here is the direct link to the Debian package repository for XFCE 4:
http://www.os-works.com/view/debian/
--For the impatient:
deb http://www.os-works.com/debian testing main
deb-src http://www.os-works.com/debian testing main
--I spent like 10 minutes going round the bend with their stupid circular links to find that!!
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Seriously, give it a whirl, specially if you're unenchanted with KDE/GNOME's last offerings or have older hardware and want to run something better looking than Fluxbox. XFCE has got an increased number of users since version 4, and with good reason. It's great.
The 4.2 version fixes a number of issues with the previous 4.x ones - namely, session management, better configuration options and interface polish, specially in stuff like the taskbar and the panel. The only thing i imagine lacking from XFCE are desktop icons, and they're scheduled for a future version.
IceWM is my favorite.
I don't know who you are but you are not an Xfce developer. You're posting history also shows a high amount of downmodded posts.
... too bad you are taking credit for something you didn't help out with. Perhaps you would like to make it up and send us some donation$ ?
/. crowd: the server isn't even getting warn yet... bring it on more!
Too bad. I'm one of the people who puts a lot of time in xfce
PS oh yeah to the
PS2 thx to the xfce.org crew... now get back to work for 4.4.0 !