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XFCE Adds Icons, Switches to Thunar in v4.4

b100dian points out yesterday's release of XFCE 4.4, writing "If you have already followed the release candidates, you know that XFCE is really evolving. Besides adding desktop icons, introducing Thunar (in lieu of xffm) and MousePad, applications that are as simple as they are effective, and Terminal, which has built-in support for desktop composition (supported by the window manager out-of-the-box), it also introduced (finally!) a shortcut for the pop-up menu (you can see in the tour that Ctrl-Esc is bound to this menu). Congratulations for the lightest and slickest window manager ever:)" I've been using Thunar a lot lately (mostly under Gnome) because the renaming feature is powerful but reasonably intuitive -- very handy for cleaning up digicam photo names.

17 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Icons on the desktop and autostart programs on login!!!@!!!
    Did somebody show win95 to those guys finally?

    1. Re:Yay! by stavrosg · · Score: 3, Informative

      Autostart was in anyway. There is a nice GUI to manage it now, nothing more, nothing less.

  2. Lightest? by keesh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's hardly the lightest... My entire windowmanager fits in less space than one of those pretty icons they use. Sure, it's not as bloated as KDE or Gnome, but that doesn't make it light any more than a Hummer is fuel efficient because it uses less petrol than a 747.

    1. Re:Lightest? by stavrosg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed - the term 'Window Manager' is used wrongly here.
      You cannot argue though that as a desktop enviroment, Xfce *has* the smallest disk and memory footprint.

      And all this without leaving too much features, or configurability out

    2. Re:Lightest? by fistfullast33l · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, window manager is wrong, desktop environment is right, however XFCE is pretty cohesive and a great alternative to GNOME. I haven't used it in a while because I've been using E17 but I think the stability of XFCE is something to take into account. It's a great alternative for those who hate the bloat of GNOME and KDE but like the flexibility to use a great theme framework like GTK. Combined with multiple taskbars now you really have a powerful desktop in a fast framework. Kudos to XFCE.

    3. Re:Lightest? by CronoCloud · · Score: 2, Informative

        PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND

      fluxbox 0.9.13
      4668 CronoClo 0 0 2028 1376 972 S 312 0.0 4.5 0:19 fluxbox

      Enlightenment 16.999

      7398 CronoClo 0 0 11520 11M 4080 S 3312 1.7 37.7 0:34 enlightenmen

      XFCE 4.2.2

      7506 CronoClo 0 0 10200 9940 7056 S 5996 0.0 32.5 0:18 xfce4-panel
      7504 CronoClo 0 0 5980 5684 4124 S 3560 0.0 18.6 0:15 xfdesktop
      7502 CronoClo 0 0 4424 4036 3408 S 2532 0.0 13.2 0:01 xfwm4
      7497 CronoClo 0 0 2808 2412 2000 S 1868 0.0 7.9 0:00 xfce4-sessio
      7499 CronoClo 0 0 3100 1780 1312 S 1296 0.0 5.8 0:00 xfce-mcs-man

      KDE2.2.2

      7617 CronoClo 0 0 8192 7592 6848 S 6448 0.0 24.8 0:03 kdeinit
      7619 CronoClo 0 0 5368 4700 3668 S 3116 0.0 15.4 0:09 kdeinit
      7615 CronoClo 0 0 3428 2648 2252 S 2040 0.0 8.6 0:02 kdeinit
      7630 CronoClo 0 0 2272 1380 1128 S 944 0.0 4.5 0:00 kdeinit
      7598 CronoClo 0 0 2124 1324 1072 S 888 0.0 4.3 0:01 kdeinit
      7595 CronoClo 0 0 1916 1184 1004 S 860 0.0 3.8 0:00 kdeinit
      7614 CronoClo 0 0 1608 968 704 S 652 0.0 3.1 0:01 ksmserver
      7613 CronoClo 0 0 1876 708 508 S 412 0.0 2.3 0:00 kdeinit
      7589 CronoClo 0 0 1476 688 620 S 480 0.0 2.2 0:00 kdeinit
      7592 CronoClo 0 0 1372 588 456 S 372 0.0 1.9 0:00 kdeinit
      7632 CronoClo 0 0 1548 552 416 S 312 0.0 1.8 0:00 kdeinit


  3. Thunar... by albalbo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Although the link is incredibly informative, here's more info about Thunar.

    --
    "Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
  4. "Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment..." by xtracto · · Score: 3, Informative

    Finally a Proper envieronment!.I love Xfce. I use it mainly via Xubuntu. From the release visual tour I can see this version is really nice. However, "niceties" require processsing power to display (like the fancy icons or alpha blending). I am afraid Xfce could end like firefox (which started as the "lightweight" version of Mozilla and now is itself bloated).

    The text editor (mousepad) is very nice, simply that, an easy to use text editor (without :icryptic^M^Mkey combinations^[:wq! required to edit a file).
    Recently I had to "downgrade" a notebook to only 256 MB and decided to install Xubuntu. It runs really fine and does whatever I need it to do.

    --
    Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
  5. XFCE - whazzat?? by rueger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let me be the first to ask that posters include a couple of words when posting about relatively obscure software.

    Like "If you have already followed the release candidates, you know that XFCE, COMMA THE BLAH BLAH SOFTWARE PACKAGE COMMA is really evolving."

    I have no clue what it is, or Thunar for that matter, and doubt that most others do.

    1. Re:XFCE - whazzat?? by JanneM · · Score: 2, Funny

      A couple of words? OK, I'll try:

      "If you have already followed the release candidates, you know that XFCE, COMMA THE elasticity offputting nigirisushi SOFTWARE PACKAGE COMMA is really evolving."

      Nope, can't see how it would help you. Perhaps try Google? Some people say it's really nifty for this kind of thing. Kids today, you know how they are.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    2. Re:XFCE - whazzat?? by shirizaki · · Score: 2, Informative

      XFCE is a desktop environment like KDE and Gnome.

      Desktop environment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment

      But unlike Gnome and KDE, XFCE tries to be lighter than those 2 GUI's.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
  6. Looks very good by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have to say, XFCE is looking very impressive. Thunar is, IMHO, a significant improvement over the earlier file manager. The desktop in general is also looking more robust and featureful - XFCE is starting to look like good competition for GNOME and KDE, and in the space of resource light desktops it looks like a clear winner. Better yet, due to freedesktop.org standards it interacts with GNOME and KDE just fine. For a while I had been hoping E17 would provide the impressive option for light desktops but, with interminable delays and XFCE now looking like a perfectly good alternative to GNOME or KDE regardless of whether you are interested in a light desktop or not, it looks as if XFCE is the clear winner.

  7. Backported .debs for Edgy? by petabyte · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So I guess this would be a place to ask. I spent a bit of time this morning searching for .debs for edgy. I guess I could do the compile route but I'd like to be able to drop the gnome cruft and go back to XFCE now that 4.4 is done.

    Anyone know of any backported .debs for Edgy?

  8. Re:Biased Drivel by KillerBob · · Score: 3, Informative
    What a load of biased drive! After considering Fluxbox, Icewm, wmaker and a slew of other window managers; Xfce doesn't even come close to being the "lightest." Granted, it is light in comparison to GNOME/KDE but come on people lets be a tad more objective.


    XFCE isn't actually a window manager. It includes a window manager, but it's a desktop environment. There's a difference. XFCE adds features that you simply won't see in any of the ones you mentionned, because they *aren't* dekstop environments.

    TFA isn't biased, it's just ignorant.
    --
    If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
  9. Re:Thunar... lacks SMB/NFS/Network support by armanoid57 · · Score: 2, Informative
    --
    fopen("/dev/null", O_TRUNC) and write ("hole")
  10. Re:Thunar... lacks SMB/NFS/Network support by stavrosg · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That's the only (IMHO) problem with Thunar. It would be easy to integrate it with SMBCLIENT (like xffm does, by the way) but apparently they are too lazy to do that.

    Nope, this feature was intentionally held back for a proper and transparent implementation instead of some hackish solution that would happen to work for some.

    The idea is that the file manager does not have to be able to access anything else apart from a standard filesystem.
    Need access to a remote share? OK, mount it somewhere, and presto! Everything can access it, without any special care taken.

    Thunar (or some plugin) will get there, eventually.

  11. Re:Does it to automagic USBKeys yet? by Constantine+XVI · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes it does. Well, it does on Xubuntu anyways

    --
    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."