Xfce is an easy-to-use and easy-to-configure environment for X11 based on GTK2. In 4.0.3 a leak in the window manager was fixed, so upgrading is highly recommended. Various file manager bugs were fixed. Translation updates were made. Support for the KDE system tray was added.
XFce 4.0.3 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m currently running it, and all is good. I’m running Rudolf Kastl’s FC1 rpms, and it is all great.
Even better, I found a FC1 xlockmore rpm, and I got rid of the superbloat xscreensaver. Woo-hoo!
Are there Fedora Core 1 RPMs?
Yeah, the one’s I’m using are packaged by Rudolf Kastl. Go here:
http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/index.php?section=2
Add his yum/apt line, and do a “yum install xfce4” or the like. That package is a meta-package that’ll get the base down. He also has lots of the extras and panel applets as well.
So now XFCE are working about the buggy (ie non-spec compliant) system tray support in KDE?
The basic problem here is folks that KDE is willing to accept tray icons docked with the XEMBED protocol, but the KDE frameworks don’t actually *generate* them.
This, as you might imagine, is massively crap, and is basically a bug in KDE they apparently can’t be bothered fixing. Where is the standards love guys?
I belive that KDE will be using the http://freedesktop.org/ in their next version of KDE…
I am compiling the source as I write this.
I run Fedora Core 1 with the default Gnome desktop. It will be interesting to see if I notice any significant speed increase.
By the way, how do you start Nautilus without loading the gnome desktop? There is some argument to launch Nautilus this way from the command line.
You can start nautilus without the desktop with the following command:
nautilus –no-desktop
And you will notice a speed increase, xfce4 rocks !!
I took a look at XFCE a while back, at least 2 years ago, possibly 3 years and I thought it was pretty lousy back then. This is the first time I have looked at since then and it certainly seems to have come a long ways.
Why doesn’t the taskbar “snap” to the bottom/top/sides though? The free floating task bar thing is kind of strange in my opinion. And the file manager was real awkward to me. But the config tools seem very good and that’s definitely a big plus. A lot of window managers I’ve played with have lousy config tools or none at all. Personally editing text files to change my window manager settings is a little too low tech for me.
Indeed it has come a long way. As far as the snapping taskbar, if I remember correctly, it does snap to the middle of the edge of the screen. (Though I don’t believe older versions did this) I’m not big on the filemanager, either. I never feel like I can “see enough” with it. I use Rox-Filer instead. If you like having desktop icons, it can do it. If not, you can leave it out. I’ve also heard that running Nautilus without the desktop can be good, but it seems to me that it has too many requirements to install. I figure if you’re going to install that much, you may as well go out and install all of Gnome. *shrug* But perhaps that’s just the perception of my 26k dialup connection…
If you’re interrested in FC1 rpms, please QA https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1090
(I’ll update to 4.0.3 soon)
How does one setup keybindings (like minimize, maximize, launch particular applications)? I’ve used xfce4 a number of times and though I’m always impressed, I’ve never found a way to establish those kind of keybindings, so I always make my way back to Enlightenment, gnome, or KDE.
Adam
Adam, that be FAQ #9. Check here:
http://xfce.org/index.php?page=documentation#faq
or, if you are offline:
9. How do I change keyboard shortcuts in XFce 4?
Although xfwm4 was not designed as a general keyboard handling application you can define 10 keyboard shortcuts.
If you need more consider using a specialized application like xbindkeys.
This is how to create a personal key theme :
$ mkdir -p ~/.themes/xfwm4/custom.keys/
$ cp /usr/local/share/xfwm4/themes/default.keys/keythemerc ~/.themes/xfwm4/custom.keys/
$ ${EDITOR} ~/.themes/xfwm4/custom.keys/keythemerc
Then open the window manager settings dialog, go to the ‘keyboard and focus’ tab and choose your new key theme.
Note: The location of the default theme depends on your installation prefix. The example shows the default when building from source.
Thank! 🙂