Havoc Pennington outlined recently the steps required to bring the freedesktop.org effort –to unite the specs/protocols of the X11-based DEs for better interoperability– closer to its goal. Read more of the discussion in their list. On other X11 news, XFCE 4.0-RC2 was released for testing. UPDATE: Here is a screenshot of XFCE 4-RC2 running on Red Hat Linux “Severn” beta.
Getting freedesktop.org to the Next Level; XFCE 4.0-RC2 Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I saw XFCE 4 for the first time on OSNews a while back, and it’s been my desktop of choice ever since. It’s got a bunch of nice themes builtin, and it’s much more responsive than Gnome and KDE. It also has a theme modelled after Eugenia’s GUI that she presented in an article a while back. If you like the idea of a DE without the bloat, check it out.
Use FreeBSD 5.1 :] You think I’m joking? Try it yourself…I was shocked.
I have to agree that XFCE does rock. I switched from Gnome to XFCE because it is so much faster and does everything I need it to.
Hmmm, I will definitely install this and give it a whirl. The default theme is nice and clean, but I’d need to try some others to see if I can make it look as gorgeous as the latest KDE stuff.
Only trouble is, it just reminds me of CDE. That panel is obviously very evocative of that. I guess I’ll have to ignore that, try it and who knows, perhaps be converted.
I have a very powerful machine, but I’m still forced to admit that KDE is slow compared to Window$ 2000. Maybe XFCE could give me that super-snappy feeling again?
I have loaded XFCE in the past, but I hate it because it is too CDE-ish. So I would like to ask, other than the CDE asthetics that some obviously find pleasing, what does XFCE do for you that Window Maker and Fluxbox don’t?
I’ve noticed that too.
I’d love to try one, if the whole distro was optimized
with expectation of being used with XFCE, at least as long
as it all looked as nice as the screenshots here..
Morphix – Light GUI uses XFCE4 as its Window Manager. Morphix is a nice distro too.
Its based off of Debian.
is XFCE gnome aware. Meaning – does it menu point to Gnome apps that can be run while in XFCE?
It should. AFAIK it understands KDE and Gnome hints and incorporates their menu choices. On Debian it also incoroporates the Debian system menu, which catches the rest 😉
Wether you like Pennington or not, it is a good idea. I don’t care for a desktop sourceforge, but if it allows better support for this idea, i am all for it.
>>My proposal is that we do a versioned release that defines the
expected shared underpinnings of the desktops, toolkits, and major
applications. This will let us depend on simply “desktop platform
release 3.0” for example, rather than specifying a lot of individual
components. It will also mean we test things as a whole, and users can
install them in one go. Finally, it gives us a central place to define
what platform the major desktop projects are expecting users to
install.<<
XFCE uses the Panel, it has no “Start Menu” like KDE/GNOME. So no, it won’t import your menu, because it doesnt have one.
I suggest you get a program called MENU MAKER. Its a great program that will scan your system and automatically generate and install a XFCE Menu with all your programs in it. It saves you a lot of work. It also works w/ Windowmaker and Fluxbox.
The quote is taken from Pennington, of course.
> Morphix – Light GUI uses XFCE4 as its Window Manager.
> Morphix is a nice distro too.
> Its based off of Debian.
It’s a life CD with the Autoconfig of Knoppix. Should work out of the box.
But what I like most is the “Install to Harddisk” MenuItem.
So if you like it – you can install it.
“I suggest you get a program called MENU MAKER.”
I’ve never heard of this so i did a “menu maker” xfce on google but nothing showed up. sure you have the name correct? Id be interested in this for both xfce and fluxbox since I’m still not sure which to use heh
Heres a link:
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/sf/m/menumaker/MenuMaker-0.11.ta…
http://menumaker.sourceforge.net/
To use it: “mmaker XFdesktop4”. This will generate the menu for XFCE4
For the other options, just type “mmaker” in a command line.
Agreed!
“It also has a theme modelled after Eugenia’s GUI that she presented in an article a while back. If you like the idea of a DE without the bloat, check it out.”
Where do I find that theme and how do I use it. I know how to change the icon “theme” for the panel and the colours of windows, but that’s it.
Hey contrasutra I’d love to find that menu maker too.
Ignore the silly question of how to access themes. I found that. But still interested in which theme is modeled on Eugenia’s GUI
The theme “Today” is based off of Eugenias. It is included w/ XFCE4.
Download the Gnome version of the theme from here:
http://slider.rack66.net/~mechanix/software/MCity-Today.tar.gz
Eugenia
Gnome2.2 from the latest build in gentoo is relatively slow on g3 600 hardware. I’ve heard xfce rocks. Performance wise it’s a combo of flux and gnome. I already downloaded the latest cvs build. What i was wondering if where i could get a batter app.. for xfce for my lappy.
Well, i tried it once but the file manager is not that usable.
I guessed it wants to be a big tree but the indentation is everything but visible. And the icons are too big, though it might be adjustible (didn’t try).
I liked xfce3’s file manager a lot better.
And it is really irritating that the panel can be focused with alt+tab (both in xfce3 and xfce4).
No, in the newest build it doesn’t not focus the panel with alt-tab anymore.
But I agree, that the filemanager is not the very best one, but still better than nautilus, and the whole system flies with xfce 4 – and it’s so modular that you can really remove the file manager without any problems.
XFce rocks!
You can click anywhere on the desktop for a fluxbox-style menu. In debian it contains all apps registered with the menu system. The apps you use the most are easily added to one of the menu’s of the panel. IMHO it is a fine approach. I personally am very much annoyed by all the windows-style menu. It is so inefficient, cluttered, mouse-movement-inhibiting, yuk! How the hell did this become everyones favorite?
Same goes for Linux 2.6 – the difference is highly noticable.
but not quite there yet. I work in a production environment and right away I see some problems with the configuration tools.
Configuration popups missing:
– Cancel button to restore previous state.
– Default button to set default values.
I also haven’t found any documentation on how to set up key bindings for things like hot key desktop changing (help on that anyone?)
If these issues are fixed I’d push for our production to ditch kde in a heartbeat. With redhat 8 and 9 a kde install won’t run in less that 256M.
KDE3.1.2 runs fine on my PIII-650 with 128 MB with Debian SID, even if I have several Konqueror, Mathematica and XEmacs Windows open. I really don’t understand why so many people seem to have problems with KDE3 with less then 256 MB. Are the memory requirements of RedHat so much higher than those of Debian? I cannot believe this!
I also tried Kernel 2.6 and KDE seems really much more responsive with the new Kernel. I am really looking forward.
“I personally am very much annoyed by all the windows-style menu. It is so inefficient, cluttered, mouse-movement-inhibiting, yuk! How the hell did this become everyones favorite?”
I was going to write a big rant comparing the methods, but decided, no. The windows style of menu is efficient in several cases where low resolutions restrict the ability to have the desktop visible at all times. Once everybody starts using 19″+ monitors at 1280×1024 or greater resolutions, the single “start button” will be a lot less useful.
Anyway, very happy with XFCE4 so far. The File manager is a bit of a pain. the speed of the interface is great compared to KDE. Some really nice work.
>I also haven’t found any documentation on how to set up key >bindings for things like hot key desktop changing (help on >that anyone?)
I am also looking for a solution to this. I can’t be productive in XFCE4 if I cannot set up key bindings. I switch desktops many times during the day. It is the one thing that kept me away from XFCE4.
The laptop Plugin can be found here:
https://developer.berlios.de/projects/xfce-goodies/
XFCE 4 is awsome, the filemanager has got to be my favorite one ever, and it’s so fast… I hated the XFCE3, but XFCE 4 really hit me as a “wow this is awsome” DE.
Hi
There is no Cancel and Default buttons. It’s on purpose, part of the UI design (HIG, GNOME2 does the same)
Cheers,
Olivier.
> There is no Cancel and Default buttons. It’s on purpose, part of the UI design.
Well, I think it’s a bad thing. Just by screwing with the keyboard settings I was able to totally mess things up on the desktop. The only way to get it back to a decently working default condition was to whack the whole config and redo it.
You should see what these production people can do to the configuration…
Why do so many linux gui’s have left- and right-click menus ? You can only use these when you’ve not opened any applications yet, or else you have to minimize all your apps to start another one ! It just doesn’t make sense.
is xfce all about the mouse or is it k/b freindly ?