“Every major release of the 4.x series of Xfce has been pretty major. 4.0 was the result of over a years work, a major rewrite of the entire desktop. 4.2 saw the introduction of major features and enhancements that were incomplete for 4.0, and new developers as Xfce4 gained popularity. 4.4 is going to be a major upgrade to Xfce, with new components, major upgrades to old ones, and more tools for developers. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what’s coming.”
The new XFCE4 update looks pretty nice, as usual. Personally, I like this development/versioning style. You don’t see too many updates often, but when you do, they are generally large ones which you’ll notice some change. Along with that, they go up a large number, and don’t have many smaller version numbered releases (I think there was a 4.2.1 though for some bug? I forget though.) At any rate, I have some bias as this happens to be my particular favorite WM, or DE, whatever you wish to consider it. Well done, once again.
Not commenting on teh rview itself, but hat blurb alone contains the word “major” six times
Hehe…
“Every major release of the 4.x series of Xfce has been pretty major.”
Exactly!
Now, if only my comment wasn’t full of spelling errors, I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself
I have a few minor complaints about XFCE, but because the speed is so great, they are easy to forget.
I would like a few Gnomifications but not if it cost XFCE its speed.
“In addition, Xfwm has lost the ability to manage desktop wide shortcuts in order to move this feature to a more powerful and generalized shortcut tool.”
What tool do they mean? I have alt+f1 configured to launch xmag, alt+PrtSc to create a screenshot of a window, and PrtSc for a fullscreen screenshot. They’d better not take the ability to configure such shortcuts away from me, or I will refuse to upgrade.
Dammit, when I read that article, I can’t help but think it’s taking the GNOME route. Stuff like taking things apart gives me a nasty feeling.
What made XFCE cool, was that it’s such applications. There’s the panel, the window manager, the mcs manager, the desktop. Now, I have all that, PLUS each panel plugin being a new process, a separate shortcut manager, and god knows what else.
Might as well run GNOME, then
I’m dead serious though. Anyone else seeing how much XFCE is starting to look like GNOME?
“What tool do they mean?”
What we mean is that we’re taking the shortcut editor out of the WM. In short, we’re making the WM _smaller_ while not getting rid of that functionality _at all_
“Now, I have all that, PLUS each panel plugin being a new process, a separate shortcut manager”
Panel plugins don’t have to be external processes. It’s a one line change to the source and a one line change to a .desktop file to make them internal
Plugins crashed the panel all the time. Only the more complex plugins (like things other than the launcher, or things that do heavy IO) will be external. So, if you have 30 launchers, you won’t have 30 pointless processes.
However, if you have the weather plugin, it won’t hang the panel if your network is down
Lots of people don’t need the shortcut functionality. Moving it out allows them to minimize their desktop overhead (optionally) and makes the WM more stable.
How is this more Gnome like?
XFCE is in a nice spot. It can be either a basic windowmanager, or a full desktop environment. With just a basic install you have a decent WM. Load it up with all features and pop in a bunch of the applets and you have a full DE that is quickly becoming the “number three” DE.
No, I don’t see that XFCE is becoming like GNOME. All the changes mentioned seem to be inline with their philosophy, which I love.
The shortcut issue seems to be misinterpreted. I don’t think the functionality is changing. It will just be moved.
I’ve been using XFCE 4.x for a while and it does most of what I need. I don’t understand why Nautilus needs 20MiB of memory to display a wallpaper, ridiculous. I’d take XFCE over Gnome’s bloatware anyday.
well nautilus opens very fast and since it’s loaded to draw the desktop, thats like killing two birds with one stone.
Be careful when you call something “bloated” because nautilus starts faster than any filemanager, even on lower end machines like my mums. Xfce is nice I like it but it’s made for lower end machines, gnome takes more memory but has much more fuctionallity.
Be careful when you call something “bloated” because nautilus starts faster than any filemanager, even on lower end machines like my mums. Xfce is nice I like it but it’s made for lower end machines, gnome takes more memory but has much more fuctionallity.
Yes, be careful indeed. Kongqueror start at least twice as fast when running in a KDE environment, as Nautilus does when running in a Gnome desktop. At least thati is what happens on my old 500MHz PIII 512MB RAM.
You have got it wrong, kde doesn’t load gtk+, same goes for gnome doesn’t load qt so it take loads of time to load.
Comparing loading times when not in there own environment is like comparing apples and oranges. Also Konqueror there is a option to put it in memory loading a instances at startup, thats why it’s quick.
Yes, be careful indeed. Kongqueror start at least twice as fast when running in a KDE environment, as Nautilus does when running in a Gnome desktop. At least thati is what happens on my old 500MHz PIII 512MB RAM.
Wrong I did the experiment on my system (an old Celeron 700 MHz) using the time command from a terminal(Gnome-Terminal under Gnome and Konsole under KDE). Here are the results:
Nautilus Gnome 2.6.1
1.03user 0.34system 0:04.54elapsed 30%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (41major+2765minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Konueror KDE 3.2.3
4.36user 0.62system 0:10.82elapsed 46%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+8722minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Total time (user + system):
Nautilus = 1.37 seconds
Konqueror = 4.98 seconds
That is Nautilus loads in less than one third the time of Konqueror. Back in in the days of Gnome 1.4 I used to call Nautilus “the worlds slowest file manager” not any more
Yes, be careful indeed. Konqueror start at least twice as fast when running in a KDE environment, as Nautilus does when running in a Gnome desktop. At least thati is what happens on my old 500MHz PIII 512MB RAM.
————
Wrong I did the experiment on my system (an old Celeron 700 MHz) using the time command from a terminal(Gnome-Terminal under Gnome and Konsole under KDE). Here are the results:
Nautilus Gnome 2.6.1
1.03user 0.34system 0:04.54elapsed 30%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (41major+2765minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Konueror KDE 3.2.3
4.36user 0.62system 0:10.82elapsed 46%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+8722minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Total time (user + system):
Nautilus = 1.37 seconds
Konqueror = 4.98 seconds
That is Nautilus loads in less than one third the time of Konqueror.
I simply love people who present “benchmarks” that scream “flawed!” the second I see them as a fact. 30% and 46% CPU usage during startup? WTH? You just ran ‘time konqueror’, waited for the window to appear, then a random time (rather long, guessing from those 46%, you seem to have bad reaction time), so your benchmark also measures Konqueror doing nothing.
Guessing from those 30%CPU for the Nautilus benchmark that one is even worse, since you measured complete nonsense there. There’s always just one nautilus instance running, so I guess you just measured how long it takes to tell the running instance to open another window instead of measuring a real startup.
FWIW the startup time of both seems to be about the same here. And measuring this actually doesn’t make much sense anyway. GNOME users have Nautilus running all the time, KDE users usually have Konqueror preloaded.
Well thats one of the advantages of nautilus, not only does it draw the desktop, it loads the actual filemanager quicker so it’s not there doing nothing.
All three window managers have different fuctionallity and designed with different goals, xfce was designed with low memory in mind.
nautilus starts faster than any filemanager
Good joke ! Name one file manager slower that Nautilus. Frankly, I don’t see…
He’s simply confusing loading with opening a new window. Nautilus is already loaded to draw the desktop. It’s the same effect you for instance get with ROX-Filer by using the pinboard or a panel – by using the same program for something which is on your desktop the whole time, opening a filer window executes real fast.
How big is your desktop background as a bitmap?
“How big is your desktop background as a bitmap?”
If your talking to me than it’s 1280×1024.
why cant you increase the size of the icons in XFFM now?
Other than that, XFCE is one of the best,, some might say its what gnome should have been…
Once completed, Thunar should provide all those things you expect from a modern file manager, including desktop icons, and not being a web browser.
Frankly I like my DE to act like one giant application. In fact I’d like _more_ integration like if I double-click ona document a complete version of koffice or whatever should open in the next tab.
For those of you that like everything seperated then enjoy while I still fail to see anything attractive about it. If its useable and lightweight XFCE may make a decent features/performance compromise on my older systems.
“Frankly I like my DE to act like one giant application. In fact I’d like _more_ integration like if I double-click ona document a complete version of koffice or whatever should open in the next tab. ”
there’s a difference between acting like one program and being one program.
integration is fine, uber-applications not so much.
konqueror i like it as a file manager, but i prefer mozilla for the internet, great but that doesn’t mean i can get konqueror without the web browser bits.
so lets take konqueror merge it with Koffice kterm, and kdevelop, great now everything is integrated but i have to download 300 mb just to get a word processor.
or in ion3 i can set kwrite to be my default word processor and when i double click on a file in konqueror kwrite opens in a new tab, but it’s the window managers tab not the applications. you could probably trick pekwm into the same thing. and with proper drag drop and clipboard they could interact fine with out actually relying on each other.
other problems with uber-applications it’s an interface limiter, i don’t need the same menus/options/toolbars in kpaint as i do i a web browser. so either have a piss poor general interface or have a drastic gui change in between tabs (at which point whats the use of having them in the program). same thing happens with keyboard shortcuts, crtl+b is bold font in one app and bookmark in another.
basically apps that do different jobs have different needs and it’s stupid to compromise those needs for the sake of integration (read monolithic).
i can still drag and drop play lists and mp3s from xffm (and konqueror) to bmp while inside openbox, or drag a text file to gedit, or images to gimp. but none of them requir each other or cause performance hits in each other.
If you like your desktop to act like one big application, why aren’t you using Windows? Everything is integrated and works more tightly than any desktop environment available today (Gnome, for example, doesn’t even have a clipboard). The UNIX tradition is to have specialized, modular components that make up the desktop as a whole.
The UNIX tradition is to have specialized, modular components that make up the desktop as a whole.
I think KDE is more unified than Windows especially with KParts etc. And I disagree about being unified being unUnix-like. Having all your applications linked together is like having pipes between bash commands inseatd of writiing everything to a file and processing every seperately. I think the concept of Unix is to unify and work together seemlessly (e.g. NFS mounts behave like a local harddrive).
Frankly who cares how “UNIX-like” something is? What matters is what’s most convenient for people to actually use, not worrying about how something compares to an anachronistic snapshot of behavior.
It’s not anachronistic, it’s just one way of doing things. Either you have systems that attempt to do everything as an all-in-one solution, or you have small modular linkable programs that do one thing and do it well.
KDE more or less follows the small modular linkable programs idea- the supposed bloat seems to come from the fact that they include small modular programs for every purpose under the sun, that they distribute in large bunches. Well, that and the way that all the interconnected libraries, once loaded, take up a lot of room.
The UNIX mechanism of redirecting untyped data through pipes and massaging it as text through a number of intermediaries is anachronistic. Component-oriented development has evolved considerably on all platforms, including both Windows and KDE. Suggesting that a methodology is valid because it’s “UNIX-like” (that can either mean any historical snapshot of the platform’s lifetime since the ’70s or it can continually change meaning as the platform evolves) is stupid, whereas justifying it based upon advantages is quite sensible. If I said component-oriented development was great because it was Windows-like, I think you’d see the obvious silliness a bit better.
“The UNIX tradition is to have specialized, modular components that make up the desktop as a whole.”
This goes for the underlying programs itself, not for the gui-stuff. Where one program might do it for a lot of people, one user interface won’t do it. So the good thing about the unix-stuff is that under the hood they are trying to have the same stuff. But how every thing is implemented in a gui, that’s more for other people to decide, than the programmers. I think that’s something that’s been worked on in KDE as well, having the programmers create the underhood stuff, and artists and users create the gui. For example every burning application in linux is using the same program to burn it, but just has a different gui. That’s the strength of it. Sorry my english is bad, but I hope I made my point clear.
If you like your desktop to act like one big application, why aren’t you using Windows? Everything is integrated and works more tightly than any desktop environment available today (Gnome, for example, doesn’t even have a clipboard). The UNIX tradition is to have specialized, modular components that make up the desktop as a whole.
So integration and ease-of-use have no place on the *nx desktop, and the only alternative is Windows ?
A good DE should match the user’s requirements, not the other way aorund. Xfce likely won’t appeal to the kde crowd and vice versa, but there’s certainly enough room at the table for both and more. Choice and freedom is good, isn’t that the LINUX tradition?
Actually, I can’t stand Gnome (trying to change the default application for opening files or really anything at all was a royal pain, and I eventually switched to Kubuntu), but for a lightweight desktop I love XFCE4.
I resurrected a Pentium II 333 Mhz machine (that had Gentoo and Fluxbox on it, running extremely crippled for security/obscurity reasons) to run XFCE4, and it runs nearly as fast as the other Windows machines around it- which are also dog slow: Pentium III 500 Mhz machines…
That’s
I hate super-sensitive mouse buttons.
“That’s what XFCE seems to be really good at- providing a simple, but effective modern-looking, desktop for older computers”
I’d also like to note that I miss the XFCE 4.0 task bar at the top of the screen, where applications took up fractions of the entire bar available. It was weird, but distinctive, and I miss it.
True to a certain extent, but it isn’t about integration, it is about expandability – everything has a plugin interface; there is no need to have the functionality loaded all the time; load it when required, and when the function is no longer required, unload the plugin.
The key to saving memory is re-using components; create a tool kit of components and re-use them again and again; don’t have a different rendering engine for each application, re-use the same engine again and again.
That is where Mozilla came unstuck, they tried to do everything when what they should have done, was simply create a core; rendering engine, JS Support etc. then provide interfaces where by people can embed the core into applications – without the need to carry around the XUL bloat, which quite frankly, is a waste of time and has yet to be proven, outside of Mozilla, as a viable development platform for commercial applications, both locally hosted and remote.
I miss the days when XFCE worked as a CDE clone. Icons minimized to the desktop, and the maximize/minimize buttons were on the opposite side of the titlebar than the close button. Is there any way to mimick this behaviour?
I like XFCE for what it is, a lightweight alternative to GNOME, but I’d like to see the file manager take after the file manager in e17.
For some themes you can change the order of the buttons on the titlebar. To change it look at the window manager control preferences.
I agree; I hate that taskbar! I’d rather get rid of it and go back to old style pining to the desktop.
No problem.
Type “killall xfce4-taskbar” (approximately) in a x-term and then close xfce and ask it to save the session.
Start xfce4 next time and enjoy!
I agree to 😀
There is nothing wrong with CDE; all that is required is anti-aliased fonts; everything else is great – stick to the CDE HIG guidelines, re-create it, and simply work on fixing bugs and updating as the CDE specification is updated.
Some of us love the old school GUI’s, they weren’t necessarily sexy, but they got the job done with minimum fuss and bother.
You can still kill the taskbar and use the iconbox to emulate the CDE behavior.
True, but the menu layout; is that like CDE?
The menu layout? I assume you mean the application menus, which detect any FDO-compliant applications? Those can be editted…within reason.
😉
Na, I mean, how the help menu is always on the extreme right hand side of the window
Lol…Got it…well, it’s OSS, so instead of bitching, you should fix it yourself!
Just to make it clear…I’m joking.
LOL 😛
Na, I’m not overly concerned; it is nice, however, to see a desktop that is working on functionality AND speed rather than throwing all that to the wind in favour of ensuring buzz word compliancy.
(Gnome, for example, doesn’t even have a clipboard)
Sorry?
Sorry?
He is right, Gnome does not have a clipboard. Try opening two applications in Gnome, copy from one, close that app, and then paste into the other one after closing the first one. It doesn’t work, whereas in KDE it does.
As well thought-out as Gnome is, it absolutely blew my mind when I realized that there wasn’t a clipboard. Fortunately, it was on the to-do list for 2.12, which I believe should be out any day now…
Gnome 2.12 will address that with a superiour way to that of any WM. Also gnome now has drag preview of text without the need to us copy at all.
The iconbox and taskbar are currently being subsumed inside this new panel framework, and will become instances of the panel, increasing flexibility, and reducing the effort to maintain the bunch.
I’m glad to hear that Lil’Box and the XfTaskbar are going to share more code with the panel, but wouldn’t it be better to make them regular panel plugins?
Thunar sounds like my cup of tea – maybe it will even replace my beloved rox-filer (not that I really use a file manager all that often).
I’m looking forward to trying out XFCE 4.4 when it’s released.
Yes, the iconbox and taskbar are becoming panel plugins.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear
Yes, the iconbox and taskbar are becoming panel plugins.
Ah, I understood it differently. I’m glad this was what you meant as this will be a great usability improvement in my eyes
Xfce 4.0.x was my default DE for more than one year, then I used the betas of xfce 4.2 but switched to gnome 2.10 less than two months after the final 4.2 release.
I think I’ll try xfce 4.4: they’re going to add a better light-weight file manager, and if they’ll add a bit of UTOPIA (hal, dbus, CD/USB-stick auto-mounting, etc. etc.) maybe I’ll become an happy Xfce user again.
You could always just run gnome-volume-manager on Xfce, it has little in the way of GNOME dependencies (in fact, in Mandriva, we use it on KDE, because it does the job and KDE doesn’t have such an app yet). Or ivman, for that matter.
Looks like as if Gnome hasn’t progressed through the years,and could have been indeed what xfce is now.XFCE has a lot fuctionality but is significant faster and doesn’t paint it’s windows.
Since when has gnome ever tried to be CDE-like?
Sorry, had to get that in
-bytecoder
I’ll be sure to give it a go by the time it’s out. PyXFCE sounds like something I’d like to test
in fact, in Mandriva, we use it on KDE, because it does the job and KDE doesn’t have such an app yet
KDE has support for this if you build the kioslaves with hal support.
Xfce 4.2 is a really nice desktop here – fast, never bugs out, dependable, fairly modest requirements, does what I need, neat, clean graphics. It’s a great alternative to Gnome and KDE where the bugs just keep on coming and your HD is sprayed with apps you’ll probably never need. And then there is KBear, the crashprone app that should come with a free scrip for prozac. Both Gnome and KDE seem to have gotten so sprawling that the teams can’t Q&A them properly anymore.
If XFCe 4.4 is a good as 4.2, it deserves to do really well. Looking forward to it.
I have read many times in this forum, especially in the last few days, that “Linux is ugly”
Well, if you can’t find a DE or Window Manager you like out of the *huge* choice that linux offers, I don’t know where you are going to find one…
Does this DE have a LiveCD?
Yes it does.
http://www.xfld.de/Xfld/en/index.html
Screenshot’s plz, from 4.4.
If you go into Konqueror’s preferences and set it to “pre-load an instance on KDE startup”, then it indeed opens up faster than Nautilus. In fact, it seems to open as fast as the OS X Finder. Unfortunately, this isn’t the default setting.
It dont still load as fast as nautilus and your forgetting doing that you lose memory. KDE already uses atleast 40Mb more, but thats the price of more fuctioinallity. By the way, browser mode in nautilus does tend to load slower, the other mode loads much faster on a low end machine.
All I want is some work to be done on the built in compositor. It seems to be a direct copy from xcompmgr, but its buggier and it lacks my favorite effect (fading windows).
I guess I have to wait for KDE 3.5 to FINALLY get an updated compmgr!
I have to say, as a KDE fan with a general preference for QT apps over those based on other toolkits (most notably GTK), XFCE impresses the hell out of me.
Which begs the question, when will we see a DE with the same goals as XFCE based on QT?
Never
XFCE is old; it has been going on for a long, long time and has built its momentum. At one time it was even based on lesstif. So you can see this is not really a DE riding on the tail wave of GTK/GNOME but a DE in its own right.
I don’t think a project that wants to be XFCE to KDE will survive, there was something like that at one time, and it didn’t make it. Take a look here:
http://xwinman.org/
Personally I think the DE market is full. We have KDE (big, powerful, configurable, and a tiny bit like windows), GNOME (almost as big, shedding its power and configurability for usability, and tying to be just a bit like Mac) filing the big positions. Then we have XFCE (small, fast, and a tiny bit like CDE, also fills the spot for lots of GNOME people on less powerful on server systems (ubuntu)), E17 (powerful, fast, and flashy, will satisfy al your hedonistic needs), and EDE (small and windows like, still has some way to go but likely to get some users, those that would use FVWM98, XPDE or similar). Last but not least there is GNUStep, it would probably have no chance in hell if there wouldn’t be MacOSX. There are lots of nice Objective-C apps out there now that could make GNUStep as big as KDE and GNOME once it gets its stride. With all those players there is practically no room no air no food for another DE to have a chance. And there are enough others (ROX, JD4X, Magic Desktop Environment, and so on).
I agree with the fact that there is already a wide range of desktop environment/desktop shell/WM alternatives for Linux, and further efforts should better be concentrated on existing projects than used to start new ones.
However, I think that in the Linux world all these players can well survive – such world has already been characterized by freedom, and the availability of so many choices for desktop/window management is just another sign of that trend.
More than that, I also think existing projects could offer a decent amount of interoperability (and things like freedesktop.org or the OpenDocument standard are made just for that) and focus each one on a particular application context/target user model (i.e. think of E17 as the best candidate for multimedia content management). Or at least, these are my hopes for the future scenario… 🙂
There was an initiative that could have delivered something like this. The project was named [url=http://mockup.org/]Mockup[/url], but was canceled (IIRC) when the author joined Novell. This was supposed to be a BeOS inspired desktop based on the Linux kernel, X11 and Qt 4. It wasn’t developed as a pure DE however. It was supposed to be a complete system, with the base modified from a standard Linux system, I never quite catched why though.
Creating a non-bloated Qt desktop could be a good idea. I don’t quite agree with the other replier, who says the DE market is full. There’s always room for creating something better, it just takes alot of effort to get a new DE to a usable state. There’s always people that argue that this effort is better spent supporting GNOME/KDE, but isn’t that a bit like telling everybody to support Windows?
The good points about this future release are definately Thunar related. it looks great, and if it’s faster than nautilus with similar functionality – i’ll switch over.
nautilus is just too slow, even on a P4 with 1Gb of ram it takes 2 seconds to open my home folder. that might sound picky, but it should be instant – it is on most other os’s.
bad things about xfce? it just doesn’t LOOK nice/sexy. gnome looks good, and is polished. xfce needs to use stock icons everywhere, a sexier more os x like panel would be nice. it just doesn’t have the ‘wow factor’ for me. but maybe i’m not the target user.
Forum admins, pretty please add an edit function and the URL UBB tag.
I have been using Fedora with XFCE4 since Fedora 2 came out. I really like XFCE since it my applications appear to startup quicker than when I am running Gnome or KDE. I currently use Nautilus to run the desktop but I am looking forward to The new Thunar file manager that comes with 4.4 XFCE. The themes in XFCE4 are also very nice looking and clean. If you are a minimalist but you like to use GUI applications then XFCE4 is a great compromise. After using XFCE for the last two years I can’t imagine going back to Gnome or KDE. I would miss all the speed and low overhead of XFCE4.
well.. i’m in love with xfce 4.2.2
but i’m a new debian user.. so please help me !!!
where is xfce 4.4?