Here is an article that reviews the new features found in Xfce 4.4. Provides in details new features found in Thunar, new applets like Orage, and new abliities like built in compositing and ability to add desktop icons. Screenshots galore as well.
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2006-01-06
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I used to think X was slow till I tried some alternate DE's and realized the slowness of my UI on older hardware was not really the fault of X at all.
I have always been intrigued by the smaller footprint DE's like Fluxbox etc., but lack of icons, and Gnome/KDE like task management has always prevented me from using them for anything but my anemic little test PC.
I recently gave XFCE a spin, and although it took me a bit to consolidate the panels to the bottom like this ( http://www.xfce.org/images/about/screenshots/4.4-3.png)
I have to say that it does exactly what I have always wanted: A sane UI like KDE and Gnome but with a fraction of the size and system resources.
I think it's too bad they didn't select XFCE for the OLPC program.
For once using low end hardware does not mean I have to use ancient Win98se or pull my hair out in frustration trying to accomplish something in Fluxbox.
Good job XFCE!
Member since:2006-10-08
"I have to say that it does exactly what I have always wanted: A sane UI like KDE and Gnome but with a fraction of the size and system resources. [...] For once using low end hardware does not mean I have to use ancient Win98se or pull my hair out in frustration trying to accomplish something in Fluxbox."
I can confirm this. XFCE 4.4 is really nice, even on slower x86 machines. With "slow" I mean those with less than 1 GHz; test machine here: 333 MHz, 256 MB RAM, FreeBSD 6.2. The system is still usable (with applications like OpenOffice, Opera, Sylpheed and MPlayer), allthough I prefer XFCE 3 on these systems. But this example shows that implementations regarding efficiency are still around, this makes me happy because I think you can't relativate lack of programming knowledge with increased computer power. :-)
To say it again: Well done, XFCE team!
Member since:2005-11-11
//I can confirm this. XFCE 4.4 is really nice, even on slower x86 machines. With "slow" I mean those with less than 1 GHz; test machine here: 333 MHz, 256 MB RAM, FreeBSD 6.2. The system is still usable (with applications like OpenOffice, Opera, Sylpheed and MPlayer), allthough I prefer XFCE 3 on these systems. But this example shows that implementations regarding efficiency are still around, this makes me happy because I think you can't relativate lack of programming knowledge with increased computer power. :-) //
If you are interested in the combination of ease-of-use (via Xfce 4.4) and reasonable speed on older hardware, I would tentatively suggest this distribution might be worth a try:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03988#0
http://www.sam-linux.org/
http://sam.hipsurfer.com/news.php?readmore=7
It isn't quite ready for release yet, but it does come as a liveCD (which you can optionally install to hard disk) and it promises to be all of the things you might be looking for.
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2006-02-04
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so did he just not notice that you could drag and drop icons from thunar (and at least rox, probably any gtk) or the app finder?
If I recall correctly, ROX Filer cannot interact with the desktop at all unless you start it with the pinboard option turned on in which case, it "draws" a new root window and then you can drag and drop icons on it. If you set the pinboard to use the same wallpaper as your "real" root window then it sort of looks like having icons on the desktop.
It is a nice solution to use with icewm and have a fast and full featured file manager (seriously, the gap on functionality between Konqueror and ROX is not that much) and also icons on the desktop. But I like to use it with Windowmaker without the pinboard.
Donīt know if this is true when used together with the new XFCE release, though.
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Is SMB support in thunar still missing? That would be pretty disappointing (to me) because it's the one feature that keeps me in Nautilus..
other thing I can think of is the breadcrumb bar and tree list view in Nautilus, but it crashes so regularly that I can dispense with those.
Member since:2006-01-16
Use fusesmb and you can use whatever file manager you like with it.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/fusesmb/
Member since:2006-09-08