Xfce 4.8 Released

PerlDudeXL writes "Today, after almost two years of work, we have the special pleasure of announcing the much awaited release of Xfce 4.8, the new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.6. [..] Xfce 4.8 is our attempt to update the Xfce code base to all the new desktop frameworks that were introduced in the past few years. We hope that our efforts to drop pieces like ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit will help bringing the Xfce desktop to modern distributions."

Comments

What functionality are we BSD users ...

[0x000000]

What functionality are we BSD users going to be missing? It didn't really say in the article at all other than that apparently there is a lot of Linux only stuff out there in the open source world. As a developer I am saddened by this fact, that what I have available for use on Linux won't work the same on FreeBSD for example making my life as a developer and porter much harder.

Where does the problem lie? Is it in the library developers or in the OS developers? What can be done to change the situation? Where are some places we can start looking?

Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I will tell you what can be done to fix this issue:

Merge. Free Software is powerful, but not that powerful, and we are split. Thousands of distros, Linux + 3 flavors of BSD, Android, ChromeOS, plus countless other half-dead projects like Hurd. We need to stop being dicks about it and merge it all down. A single Free Unix. Then we can have a few flavors of it, for example: Desktop, Server, Lightweight, Mobile, Realtime (but all coming from the same codebase). Then we would be unstoppable. But, instead, we have 100 variants of every possible component of a free system. We don't have a single professional linear video editor, but we have 30 that are getting there, sometime in the future, each with its own coders and users. Instead of having a single awesome WM (very customizable to each people's needs), we have 10 and they all are incomplete.
r
I know this has been said over and over, but it's still our biggest issue and it's worth repeating it.

And don't tell me that there is a single valid reason why FreeBSD should exist as a separate operating system, because there isn't (and the fact that people like Theo and Linus are jerks doesn't count).

Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...

[jjohnson]

the fact that people like Theo and Linus are jerks doesn't count

Why not? That's the main reason right that there are so many variants of basically the same thing. Everyone has their own idea about the best way it should be, few are sufficiently humble or diplomatic to accept consensus decisions, and so you get a million shades of red.

You can argue that the continual splintering is worthwhile--natural selection of projects, in effect--but you can't deny that the basic motive behind most forks is "fuck you if you won't do it my way".

Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...

[Tubal-Cain]

Our goals are varied and often incompatible.
Ubuntu wants to be up-to-date and user friendly, and will tolerate proprietary elements to make it happen. Debian sacrifices the cutting edge for the sake of stability, and user-friendliness for the sake of openness. Red Hat and Novell want to simplify support by controlling their codebases. DSL wants to be smaller than 50 MB, and Yellow Dog wants to run on PS3s.

Apt and Yum handle dependency resolution for you. Slackware hands you a pile of .tgz/.txz files and lets you figure out what you need for yourself. LFS has you compile every piece by hand.

KDE wants every config option to be controllable from the UI. Gnome gives you a UI for some config options, and a registry for the rest. XFCE gives you practically no UI config options whatsoever. The independent WMs are mostly adjusted by editing config files.

KDE uses the Qt toolkit. Gnome and XFCE use GTK. The independent WMs stay lean and fast by not using any toolkits.

GPL wants to ensure that what you write isn't simply forked into a proprietary product. BSD is less concerned about proprietary forks, as long as what they've built on their own is still available to whomever wants it.
This, incidentally, is why FreeBSD should exist: because there is a fundamental disagreement about what "free" software is, and FreeBSD is the largest project in the BSD camp. It's differences in principles such as this one that lead to, for example, Apple choosing to base itself on the FreeBSD kernel rather than Linux.

So we should have a Single Unified Unix, eh? That's great. Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, XFCE, CDE or LXDE? Or maybe BlackBox, OpenBox, Fluxbox, JWM, or IceWM, Ratpoison, FVWM, or xmonad? Yum, Apt or Emerge? Should there be any proprietary binaries (like drivers) in the default install? Should any proprietary binaries be available in the repos at all? Do we accept Mozilla's terms regarding their trademark, or do we fork it a la Iceweasel? BSD, GPL, or Apache license? Microkernel or Macrokernel? Benevolent Dictator for Life or democratically-selected project leaders? How do we accommodate companies like Canonical, Red Hat, and Novell?

Every possible combination will have supporters; how do you reconcile them?

Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...

[Lumpy]

Only bad designers will use a "registry"

Keep the configs in Config files where they belong.

DesktopIconSize=Large

is better than

{12433242354435435.3245324534253245.345456.5467345643567435643256.34256.3456.34562456324.2546.4356.4356} Option 0

Only a complete nutjob likes the former compared to the latter.

Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?

[shutdown -p now]

It's funny how the further Xfce develops, the more it resembles Gnome... the way it's meant to be - full-featured yet fast and configurable.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing. It means that, when Gnome goes for that crazy "shell" thing in 3.0, and what with KDE guys still trying to make their stuff not crash every other day, there will still be a sane DE to fall back to.