Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 15th Sep 2008 18:46 UTC, submitted by Michael Larabel
It's been nearly 18 months since the last major Xfce release - Xfce 4.4, to be exact. Xfce 4.6 was supposed to go final this month, but the Xfce team didn't meet the deadline. Instead, they released the first alpha release of Xfce 4.6, and Phoronix summarises the most important changes, including a number of screenshots.
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RE[2]: Comment by diego
by BluenoseJake on Mon 15th Sep 2008 22:11
in reply to "RE: Comment by diego"
Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2006-03-12
erm It doesn't really work like that. Modern Desktop environments are made up of many loosely tied applications so occupy little as opposed to hard disk space...but even that is not true. Its just more complicated than that, especially as much of the lifting is done elsewhere Linux; X and a whole host of other *stuff*
RE[3]: Comment by diego
by Ethyriel on Tue 16th Sep 2008 02:19
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by diego"
Member since:2005-07-07
He never said KDE and Gnome are bloated, just that they use more resources. Which they do, you said it yourself.
I would debate that KDE and Gnome could offer these features while using fewer resources, and I believe XFCE has been doing that as they add features, but that wasn't what the comment you replied to claimed.
RE[3]: Comment by diego
by Isolationist on Tue 16th Sep 2008 08:11
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by diego"
Member since:2006-05-28
"It's known that GNOME and KDE3 are resource hogs
uh, not really true. Gnome and KDE3 have more features, therefore use more resources. One man's bloat is another man's useful feature. "
Completely agree, and I was surprised to find that when I tried XFCE 4.4.2 it wasn't any faster or responsive than KDE 3.5.8.
RE[2]: Comment by diego
by Isolationist on Tue 16th Sep 2008 07:52
in reply to "RE: Comment by diego"
Member since:2006-05-28
It's known that GNOME and KDE3 are resource hogs and fluxbox is somewhat 'too' lightweight for some people's tastes.
That statement doesn't hold true as far as KDE3 is concerned. My laptop takes exactly 24 seconds to boot to a KDM prompt, and then takes a further 4 seconds to get to a working desktop.
All the KDE applications that I use are quick to load, very responsive, and feature rich. I have 512MB of RAM, and my KDE environment rarely uses the swap space; unless I am scanning images using a high DPI setting.
I have used XFCE4 on this laptop and it wasn't any different to KDE3 in terms of performance, responsiveness, etc. This made me go back to KDE3 because I get more features and the same performance.
Member since:2007-03-26
It's known that GNOME and KDE3 are resource hogs and fluxbox is somewhat 'too' lightweight for some people's tastes.
That's quite a generalised statment.
I know people who are happy with Aero in Vista (they find it responsive enough for their needs as well as they like the looks).
I also know people (myself included) who find Aero anything but useful.
Personally I'm happy with KDE4 + compiz; everything runs at a good speed for me and (as vain as it might sound) it looks pretty. However 7 years ago I shunned both KDE and GNOME for fluxbox (due to it's minimalistic approach).
My point is this: KDE and GNOME maybe larger packages, but that's not specifically bloat. Sometimes the very features that make a project larger is the very features that attracts the user to said project.
Plus, compared to Aero - KDE / GNOME don't feel all that slow, so there can't be that high of a fat to meat ratio in KDE / GNOME.
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Member since:
2008-06-24
Looks aren't what they're really aiming for. XFCE's goal is to make something as useful as the leading X managers, but keep resource useage to a minimum. It's known that GNOME and KDE3 are resource hogs and fluxbox is somewhat 'too' lightweight for some people's tastes. XFCE lies somewhat in the middle of these projects.
However, KDE4's goal now is to become a lot lighterweight, thus bringing on some big competition for XFCE. It will be very interesting to see how XFCE comes along with another X manager with similar goals.