Submitted by The Xfce development team is pleased to announce that the first release candiate of Xfce 4.4 is now available for download. A lot of bugs were fixed during the last two months and several new features were added. For example the brand new Xarchiver 0.4.0 is included, trash support was added to Thunar and xfdesktop, and the overall memory usage was reduced. See the ChangeLog for a complete list.
Xfce 4.4 Release Candidate 1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The day 4.4 final is released, I’ll probably switch away from Openbox for a while
Been running this beast since beta1 and current SVN is very stable indeed! I enjoy the speed of xfwm4 and the user friendliness of thunar file manager with desktop and trash support. I guess the only thing its missing now is SMB network browsing through Thunar but its in the works I think.
I used to be a die hard gnome fan but ever since i switched to 4.4 SVN of xfce I find gnome annoying – especially its window list / task bar thing how it randomly changes button sizes when title bar changes.
xfce has do it right.
thumbs up!
I’ve been running Thunar beta2 for quite some time myself. It only depends on exo + libxfce4util, which is really sweet. So far it hasn’t managed to break my habit of entering the console for most file operations, but neither did rox before it. Perhaps the full xfce interface will have more luck in this regard. I know I will slim it down to just xfwm + panel + thunar, and probably replace xfwm with openbox again eventually, so we’ll see
Then you’re not a true Openbox user. 😉 Seriously, I’m using XFCE currently but as soon as I’m able to switch I’m going back to Openbox.
“Then you’re not a true Openbox user. ”
That’s ridiculous. And anyway, WHO CARES? This is exactly the childlike behavior that makes a lot o the open source movement look dumb. Why can’t people use more than one thing? Must we all be fanatical about what we use on our COMPUTERS???
I must say the interface looks a lot more xfce’esque than the current file manager. It’s cleaner, more beautiful and undoubtly more user friendly.
I agree wholeheartedly. Traditionally xfce file managers have sucked, unfortunately. SUCKED! I say!
what I found rather neat about it (trying it on debian etch) is how it manages to associate appropriate icons with various executables, as in /usr/bin/amarok shows an icon of the howling wolf head, etc. not for everything of course, but still pretty nifty.
To my surprise (well, actually I just wasn’t paying attention) both Thunar and xarchiver 0.4.0 are already in the Arch repo. My first reaction is very positive. It’s a bit like nautilus, but done well
You mean in AUR, not in the main or extra repositories?
Can you use Thunar with Xfce-4.2.3 or you need to upgrade the whole xfce to the latest 4.4-RC1?
Both are in community. You don’t need to upgrade.
Last time I tried it I just could not warm up to thunar and did not want to install nautilus just to have a file manager I liked so it went bye-bye. Now thunar looks more like somethign I could live with. I will be trying this ASAP and may just move away from gnome….maybe!
VERY NICE XFCE GUYS!
I didn’t see fixes for some of the more irritating bugs in the beta, such as freezing all windows when using alt+tab to cycle. Hopefully this will be fixed before the final release so I can go back to my usual XFCE worship.
It’s supposed to be fixed. Do you still see the bug with RC1?
Edited 2006-09-03 21:22
Just finished installing rc1 and so far I’ve not been able to duplicate it. So consider me a happy XFCE’r. It just didn’t get listed in the CHANGELOG for whatever reason.
I would reccomend updating your system to the latest release candidate if you are a XFCE4 user. It is very cool. The installer GUI works well though it took about an hour on my system to compile and install.
Installer GUI: http://www.xfce.org/archive/xfce-4.3.99.1/installers/
I have a screenshot which shows off some of the new capabilites. Notice thunar has a trash icon in the sidebar panel now. Also, I set background windows to fade out using the transparency setting in the XFCE window tweaks section. Note if you have an Nvidia card you should install the Nvidia drivers to get the transparency effects to work. The destop widgets are Adesklets python applications which don’t have Gnome dependencies which complement XFCE4 nicely. The linux distro. is Fedora Core 6 Test 2. The sticky notes application is Xpad. The browser is SeaMonkey with the SeaFox GTK theme. The desktop theme is Clearlooks Graphite. The thunar icon on my launcher I hacked together from images on their site you can get it here:
Thunar hammer icon: http://markbokil.org/images/thunar-hammer.png
screenshot: http://markbokil.org/images/xfce4-4-rc1.png
Edited 2006-09-03 20:13
What’s that launcher-panel you’ve got in the bottom there? Looks nice..
The launcher panel is part of Adesklets destop widgets. It is called YAB (yet another bar).
Adesklets web site: http://adesklets.sourceforge.net/
this wm is ugly as fck! i don’t understand why people prefer this instead of gnome, kde or aqua…
beats me. even fluxbox is much nicer.
i don’t understand why people prefer this instead of gnome, kde or aqua…
Here’s a good reason: it uses about half the memory of Gnome making it faster on older systems. Keep in mind there are many themes you can select if you don’t like the default look.
Edited 2006-09-03 20:14
yeah right. but it still is UGLY and UNPOLISHED. too bad for people with old machines. but hey, they can always use fluxbox, etc.
UGLY….?!
Can’t agree with you on that. I think it’s quite nice, being so simple but yet very smart and creativly made. Kinda like something between BeOS, Gnome and Amiga, not too many features but you get things done. Fewer features and layers also means less bugs and more efficient code. On the various systems I’ve tried XFCE has run faster than Fluxbox, and looked quite a lot better with the default themes. Am using it now on my laptop with XGL and Compiz, and both me and many other people think it’s esthetic, clean and easy to use.
Not only that, but even when I was running it on my PC with a gig of memory; I don’t like the idea of the desktop being the dominant fixture; I run applications on my computer, thats what should be dominating the lime light, not mindless bling from the desktop.
Except SMB support there is one feature, that I’d like to see in Thunar, and that is tabs. I find them very handy, fortunately not a must-have. But maybe, someday…
I agree with you that tabs would be a nice feature for Thunar. I like the way Thunar is nice and simple and fast right now. It would be great to be able to switch tabs without opening several thunar windows.
Yes they are handy. And lack of tabs was one of the main reasons I’ve switched from Xubuntu to Kubuntu. And I’ve missed Konqueror badly
The lack of tabs in thunar is considered by [at least some of] the devels to be a usability feature, not a lack of a feature. See http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/thunar-dev/2006-August/003386.htm…
(for the record, I agree)
just for your information, perhaps you might try the pcman file manager (look for it in gnome files, but I think it is something like http://pcmanfm.sf.net). It has a Thunar-like interface, with Tabs. Last time I checked it missed some Thunar’s features, though.
I think is time to put the mouse logo in XFCE topics.
Does the bottom panel still stay on top of all open windows?
Does the bottom panel still stay on top of all open windows?
This is an important question. I used to be a happy Xfce 3.x user when they went to 4 this new limited behaviour of the panel was the main reason I went back to Gnome.
If you think file associations are nifty, you’ll wet your pants over Konqueror or Nautilus!
Welcome to the 90’s 🙂
Come on, “candiate”?
Plz spell check at the minimum please.
Thanks.
I think that was the submitter’s error. I saw it spelled that way on their site. Cut and paste typos, how wonderful.
“- Implement borderless full maximization (Bug #1750).”
YESSS! Lack of borderless maximize was one of the few issues I had left with Xfce
The only thing that prevents me from using XFCE is internationalization support. I couldn’t find a way to configure any languages but English and ability to switch between them easyly.
check your locale setting
There is a xfce4-xkb-plugin but it is not part of the official distribution AFAIK. I’m not sure if it is as usable as the GNOME xkb applet too (things like per window or per application settings). I keep trying XFCE and I’m impressed with their improvements. It’s still “not there” in my opinion but it is very, very close. Keep up the good work!
I really like the way in which Xfce has been progressing. It is both lightweight as well as have most of the features found in its heavy weight counterparts Gnome and Kde.
I have been using this window manager for quite some time now. Some things which the xfce team could improve on are:
* The position of the windows of applications should be made persistent across reboots. (As of Xfce4.0 – the one which I use – it is not).
* Care should be taken to maintain the lightweightedness of the window manager even while including more features – an obvious factor to switch from gnome and kde.
Is adding a launcher to the panel as inconvenient and clickety-clicky as it was in the early alphas and betas? How many clicks does it take? Can you drag-n-drop launchers on(to) the panel now?
I’m unlikely to switch from Gnome, but I’m curious anyway, since there were times I was very fond of Xfce…
Yeah, it is still a lot of clicks to add a launcher, but I think it’s improved some since early betas. At least since pre-beta svn builds.
right click > add new item
double click launcher, it automatically opens a properties window and leaves the applet menu open for more additions
enter your properties, alt-c to accept and close
It’s really not too bad for an advanced user, but it’s the kind of thing that will confuse Windows converts.
You can and can’t drag and drop icons. You can not drag files to the panel to create a launcher, and I wouldn’t really see the point of that. /usr/bin would be hell to navigate in a file manager. You can’t just click, drag, and drop a launcher within the panel, which is good since that leads to accidental movement of launchers in other panels out there. Instead you right click, choose move, drag, and drop. It’s nearly as easy and less accident prone.
Well, I certainly didn’t mean navigating /usr/bin 🙂 I just remember there was something like application chooser in XFCE, so I was wondering if you can drag-n-drop an app from it directly to the panel, without opening add launcher dialog. This is IMO a very logical thing to do – though even more logical would be drag-n-dropping from the menu to the panel.
Is it possible to search from the GUI now?
Is it possible to rightclick on the desktop to create a new folder now?
Is it possible to search from the GUI now?
There’s a web search panel applet, but no sort of desktop search.
Is it possible to right click on the desktop to create a new folder now?
No, that really doesn’t fit into the Xfce dynamic. Desktops aren’t file managers, I don’t understand why anyone wants icons there at all.
2)
Did you actually use 4.4RC1? or even beta2?
It IS possible to create new folders on desktop but you have to right click on an existing icon there, clicking anywhere on desktop doesn’t work.
heres a screenshot:
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/3096/xfce44rc1rh8.png
Edited 2006-09-04 11:55
I haven’t used the packaged releases, but I’ve been using svn builds for, oh, maybe the last 18 months.
Sorry I missed that, I usually run a clean desktop and just turned on file/launcher icons and disabled the program menu on right click to test. I didn’t try clicking an existing icon, though I guess that’s consistent with the panel behavior.
I like to use the search GUI that comes with XFCE4. In a shell type xfglob4. Keep in mind you could also use Beagle on XFCE4 if you installed it. On Fedora you just type “yum install beagle”. I rarely use it since I have most of my files categorized into directories.
I think it is kind of funny reading some of these comments. XFCE4 doesn’t have this and that feature… If you are using linux you can combine desktop features. This is not Windows. So, if you want to use gnome’s panel then open a shell and type “gnome-panel”. Kill the XFCE4 panel. Run Konqueror if you must have a file manager with Tabs. I tend not to use the Gnome or KDE applications since they consume a lot of memory. That is the beauty with Linux – mix and match until your OS fits your hand like a glove. You just need to know how to use the shell and be familiar with the linux applications available.
Edited 2006-09-04 13:12
Yeah, but… I didn’t write that I “must have a file manager with Tabs”. I only wrote, that this is one feature I’d like to see in Thunar. This is freedom. Free to use Thunar, free to say I’d like Thunar with tabs.
As for pcman, been there, for me it’s UI is far too messy.
Something I completely forgot about in my first post, but you reminded me of, is that Xfce actually has a panel applet (not in the default distro I don’t think) that acts as a container for gnome panel applets. I’m not sure if it works perfectly with everything, but I’d guess at least one of the Gnome search applets will work.
It’s called xfapplet and allows you to use gnome panel applets in xfce (e.g. tomboy, deskbar-applet).