"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."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since: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).
Member since: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... :-)
Member since:2005-07-11
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?
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
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?