http://www.osnews.com/story/4405/Installing_XFce-4_on_SuSE_8_2 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:45:33 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? XFCe-4 is ubber tight and fast. Though installing by source on OpenBSD took a bit of time; I now have a useable yet lightweight desktop environment for my laptop.

Yay! Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OMIGOD! Why would anyone in his right mind move from Portland, OR to Houston! I'd heard the economy sucked in OR but take it from a former transplant from the mid-west better to live a ditch anywhere than in Houston. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I know it is trite but how about a screenshot.

I was originally planning to install XFce 4 on my old Mandrake 8.2 setup and had downloaded the GTK 2 files to do a build from source. I have held off temporarily, as for other reasons I have decided it is time to upgrade to Mandrake 9.1.

I am planning to install XFce 4 immediately after the upgrade, as XFce is my default desktop (my wife only knows how to use XFce). I see Robert Follett did an rpm installation on SuSE 8.2. Are there any rpm's around for Mandrake 9.1 - anyone tried it ?

Or should I stick with going for a source build. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >I know it is trite but how about a screenshot.

The xfce site has *plenty*, and here is one more, mine from inside the latest redhat: http://img.osnews.com/img/4091/xfce4.png Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I thought you'd be using the theme you designed Eugenia? "Today", right? I like it. :-D Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It probably took me just as long on my FreeBSD install (nearly forever). Ran into a few problems with pkg-config, eww, became rather messy. Have it all sorted out now and I absolutely love it!
It's *so* clean, *hugs his desktop*! Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @chemicalscum
Are there any rpm's around for Mandrake 9.1 - anyone tried it ?
Since you ask this question, you apprently doesn't know how
to use urpmi. ( "$ urpmq xfce " will give you the answer )
So, go to http://plf.zarb.org/ , read the FAQ, the
"How do I use urpmi" article, and do the "Easy urpmi" setup.

It's a MUST. Once you know that, (des)installing programs
become trivial. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thanks Eugenia for the link. I see you are using the "slick" XFwm4 theme rather than the "today" theme based on your design.

I have had a look the screenshots on the XFce site and very impressive they are. I feel a bit guilty in being so slow to try out XFce 4, either in a beta or RC version. Especially so when I have taken every opportunity to push the merits of XFce as the best DE available (except possibly for OSX which I have not tried). But with a nice well configured system that does everything I wanted, I have been loath to mess with it.

XFce 3.8 has served me well as a great DE, but I guess its time to move on to a newer and better version. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 16:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >I see you are using the "slick" XFwm4 theme rather than the "today" theme based on your design.

I don't really "use" it. I change themes regularly, as I dont really use XFce for production work, just testing it out and change stuff on it all the time. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 16:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thanks for the advice on urmpi, I did try it once, but I have got out of the habit using rpm's after finding that the rpm available at the time for abiword on Mandrake 8.2 was useless junk - it looked pretty on installation but it crashed if you tried to save a file as .rtf or .doc and crashed if you tried to print.

I built abiword from source and it worked a treat - no crashes. All I had to do was deuglify the fonts. So from then on I have mostly installed from source.

I am therefore a little dubious of a lot of rpms and that is why I asked if anyone had tried installing XFce 4 on Mandrake 9.1 from rpm. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 16:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? rpm -Uvh --nodeps ... installation order ... adding xfce to the kdm menu ...

And why not using a real linux distro, which can do all of of this in one single command line ? Tue, 02 Sep 2003 16:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It is really more of a how-to regarding installation of any window manager on KDE than it is a discussion of XFCE4. This is not meant as a disagreement with the thrust of the article.

I've installed XFCE4 from ports and from source on FreeBSD, and it was pretty easy either way. It's a very nice window manager from a size/resource use vs. functionality standpoint, the only one other than Blackbox/Fluxbox that is getting any serious time on my machine these days. Tue, 02 Sep 2003 17:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? nd why not using a real linux distro, which can do all of of this in one single command line ?

Why don't you just try RC3,it should add it self to kdm/gdm/wdm menus (on SuSE 8.2), and it can be installed with apt4rpm Tue, 02 Sep 2003 19:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Good read.

Definitely agree w/ the comments on the Portland to Houston, move, though. ;-) Tue, 02 Sep 2003 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? chemicalscum wrote: ...So from then on I have mostly installed from source.

I am therefore a little dubious of a lot of rpms and that is why I asked if anyone had tried installing XFce 4 on Mandrake 9.1 from rpm.
---

FYI:
RPMS for 9.1 are available almost as fast as the release becomes a release. Reports are that they work "just fine".
From Todd S: " Mandrake 9.1 rpm's at same bat-site: http://clevername.homeip.net/xfce4/ "


To build from source on Mandrake you will have to:
a) modify some of the XFce4 spec files to "Require" "gtk+2" rather than "gtk2" then use rpm -bs to build a new SRPM(or go for broke and use rpm -ba ...:)
*or*
b) modify and build GTK+ package (gtk+2...mdk) to use the "virtual" package(s) "gtk2"
*or*
c) use the MDK 9.2 RC1 which is supposed to have the "virtual" (RH compatible) "gtk2" packages already in the gtk+2 RPM.(i have not tried it yet but that's what the gtk+2.2.3...mdk changelog states...)

Personally, I have been using XFce4 with MDK 9.0 since Beta 1 and took the "b" method since it allowed the most flexibility for multiple installs of XFce4 without having to change the spec files everytime. Also allowed me to use CVS...

XFce4 works great but Session Management is missing from the XFce 4.0 release and will not be available until sometime later(supposedly, @ 4.2). The xfce4-session can be used but it is still alpha quality, at least it has been here; YMMV.


And, BTW, there are still a number of unresolved issues with MDK 9.1 -> you may be better off with MDK 9.2RC1, or to just wait a few more weeks for the 9.2 release. Wed, 03 Sep 2003 01:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I will go on using Xfce 3 for my root session (yes, I use a GUI for my root session), as Xfce 4 does not have session management yet.
I installed the beta, though perhaps not the latest, but it's quite recent, as I bumped on the new dm scheme of gdm.
I cannot work without Session Management and virtual desktops anymore, that's why I can't use any desktop that do not support these.
So, no session management is a too big step backward for me.

Next, if the article was meant as a tutorial, it is soon to become obsolete, as the files describing a login session will soon be changed (actually, they are already if you use gdm for gnome 4), so that gdm and kdm will both use the same files (in /etc/dm if you leave the default).
These files are simpler anyway (can create one in seconds), but if you want custom apps launched at login prompt, you need to edit some other global config files, dependant on the login manager. Wed, 03 Sep 2003 10:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yes, I miss Oregon. I didn't choose Texas cause I don't like Oregon. However, the last time I looked there were an estimated 6.2 jillion IT people out of work in Oregon.

When I pulled into Houston, I got a job right away and had other opportunities lining up as well.

As far as renaming the document, I agree that it could be retitled "Adding Window managers to KDM" but even so, I wrote the document because I wanted to add a Window Manager to KDM. Since Xfce4 was that Window Manager, the document is properly titled.

Further, I wanted to bring some much needed attention to a wonderful Open Source project and great Window Manager.

Thank you Eugenia and OSNews for posting this document, and I hope that the readers find it useful. Wed, 03 Sep 2003 15:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Whilst I do not SuSE (tried it, but hated it, thats MY personal opinion), just because a window manager requires a bit of setting up does not mean that a distro is not ready.

SuSE like most distros use either Gnome or KDE as the default enviroment and those are setup, all the other window managers and other desktops are generally used by people in the know.

Can you image a windows user trying to use say fluxbox or sawfish??
So great install Windows and use that then try to get say a 3rd party funky new desktop installed and running LiteStep? Thats not as easy is it.....
So based on you're silly remark, Windows is not ready for the desktop either... Thu, 04 Sep 2003 10:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? After installing a windowmanager you can easily add it to KDM through kde's login manager configuration within kde control panel.
I dont see why complicate it modifying hard to find configuration files Thu, 04 Sep 2003 16:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments