The XFce Team is pleased to announce the release 4.0.5 of the XFce 4 Desktop Environment and Development Platform. As usual, this is a maintenance release, aimed at bug-fixing; no new features are being added to the 4.0 branch. The main purpose of this release is compatibility with the recent GTK+ 2.4.x release along with other fixes. Download locations can be found on this page, and the changelog is available here.
XFce 4.0.5 Now 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
For people that want a clean, light desktop environment that does not try to provide a Nth text editor, a Nth broken web browser, and so on, XFCE4 is the way to go ! It just does one thing and does it well : it provide a fast, light, full functional desktop environment. With ROX2 as file manager that integrate well in XFCE4 (instead of XFFM and XFDesktop for the “root” window), you will get desktop icons an a powerfull desktop ! Just try it and you will be convinced
To use ROX2 instead of XFDesktop a “root” window manager (needed to have desktop icons), copy the xinitrc script provided with XFCE4 in your ~/.xfce4 folder, edit it and replace “xfdesktop &” with “rox -p xfce_desktop &”. Restart XFCE4 and enjoy !
Hummm… great, I’ll try ROX2, btw, do you have the link?
🙂
Well, I’m too using Rox for desktop icons. 🙂
XFce4 is very nice, light weight and nice looking. I’m running CVS versions, and it is much improved. Desktop menu (with menu editor) that is in CVS is great, and even it has panel plug-in to call it from panel.
Check it out:
http://pizurica.on.neobee.net/screenshot/xfce-cvs.png
Or for those of us that *hate* icons on the desktop, et al, use the stock xfdesktop. I even turn off the taskbar and run iconbox to provide a compact space to show minimized apps. To do that, comment out the xftaskbar4& line in xinitrc and add xfce4-iconbox&.
That’s why I love XFce4, it’s fast however you like your setup.
Amazing desktop…:-)
Carlos: you will find ROX2 at http://rox.sourceforge.net All you need is to have the share-mime-info package (see freedesktop.org to download the source archive) and GTK+2. I have to say that ROX1 didn’t really enjoy me, but ROX2 is a must have
And don’t worry about the default ROX icon theme ugliness, you can download others ROX themes.
yes – i have been using it now for 2/3 years … and i find it the best for just letting to get your work done. before that it was windowmaker…. but i never understood those counter-intuitive icons that kept appearing…
one thing i don’t like about xfce4 that xfce3 did … is that xfce3 lets you “shade” a window by right clicking on its title bar… all in one click… very handy for busy desktops… now i wish xfce4 could do that. instead it brings up a menu with options, one of which shades.. not exactly fluid workflow…
Merci, LiNuCe..:-) I’m now updating to 4.0.5 and after that I’ll get ROX2..muhahahaha..
“xfce3 lets you “shade” a window by right clicking on its title bar… all in one click… very handy for busy desktops… now i wish xfce4 could do that. instead it brings up a menu with options, one of which shades.. not exactly fluid workflow…”
Scroll the mouse wheel shade and unshade windows in XFCE4.
“xfce3 lets you “shade” a window by right clicking on its title bar… all in one click… very handy for busy desktops… now i wish xfce4 could do that.”
In settings choose windowmanager and set the double-click action to “shade”. Now you can double-click the title bar to shade or unshade it. It’s not exactly the same as one-click, I know, but better than nothing. 😉
I too love XFCE but I have a wishlist:
– Option to entirely disable taskbar (hiding it is not good enough it keeps opening up and taskbar is almost useless).
– The default gray background of the panel is ugly. I wish we could have a transparent or somewhat better looking panel (like Stardock ObjectDock for Windows).
You dont have to load the taskbar. XFCE4 is divided up into a bunch of parts, and you choose which ones to load.
Just don’t add xftaskbar4 to your xinitrc.
i use the scroll wheel of the mouse to shade/unshade windows in xfce4 — its very fast.
xfce4 is a very nice environment, i find myself managing fine without a gnome or kde.
@Nikola
Looking at your screenshot, how did you get the panel to display only one column of dots on the ends?
My panel shows two columns of dots on each end.
I like yours better. Is it a config setting?
@Nikola
Are there any changes to xffm in CVS version? The file browser that is open in the screenshot isn’t xffm — or is it?
atici : « Option to entirely disable taskbar (hiding it is not good enough it keeps opening up and taskbar is almost useless). »
Copy the xinitrc script provided with XFCE4 in your ~/.xfce4 folder, comment the “xftaskbar4 &” line and restart your XFCE4 desktop : the taskbar should not start. If you use xfce4-session, just after starting XFCE4, do not launch any applications : click on xfce4-icon’s notification icon, kill “xftaskbar4” client and save your session. Restart XFCE4 : the taskbar should not start.
Another tips : if you find that XFCE4 give you too big font sizes (for example, 10 points font size look greater than if you use another GTK+2 applications with another desktop/window manager but GNOME), copy the xinitrc provided by XFCE4 in your ~/.xfce4 folder, locate the “Xft.dpi: 96” line and set it with the resolution reported by your X server (xdpyinfo | grep “resolution:”). For my 800×600 screen, I have to replace 96 with 72 to get correct font sizes. I don’t really know why XFCE4 set resolution to 96dpi (in fact, I don’t really know why XFCE modify it) but IMHO, this is a bad thing.
It’s hardcoded. The cvs version of the panel now uses one column.
the color of the panel is dependent on the gtk2 theme you’re using.
I had a few complaints with XFce, for instance window possitions where always at 0,0 rather then last placement, something I have come to expect from window managers. It’s strange the things that will annoy you that you don’t even notice until they are gone..
XFce however is very nice, I don’t experience much performance improvements over GNOME or KDE on my hardware, but it has a lot of little things that I liked that are lacking from GNOME (right click application menu, mousing to edge of screen switches VD). In my opinion it’s prolly the best GTK based desktop, although lack of remembering last position of Window is the reason I don’t currently use it…
Also, on a side note, why doesn’t OSNews.com use the cute lil cat logo for XFce? Its just using the X logo right now, which is rather borin to say the least…
Rox works like a charm, really amazing..:-)
My desktop ROX_XFCE: http://img1.photobucket.com/albums/0903/RedPinguim/desktop/rox_xfce…
Thanks a lot…:-)
Carlos: how’d you get your fonts to look so nice?
Carlos: Note that you can also install ROX icon themes and installation instruction at http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/ThemeGallery ! The most complete one is the “Gnome mime icons” theme : it provided icons for most mime type.
Xfce rocks. I actually noticed improvement over KDE on my Athlon XP 1800+ system. Mostly in application load times.
And on my laptop it’s much quicker than Gnome.
I love it. I wonder if the taskbar can be disabled.
Yea, they talked about that above… You don’t have to load it, and you can kill it once it starts too. Either way.
You can use your scroll wheel to shade and unshade, very cool.
XFce is indeed pretty great as far as light window-managers (desktop environment?) are concerned. I used to use it exclusively on my ancient hardware, but now that kernel 2.6.x and KDE 3.2.x are faster than their predecessors I tend to use them instead of XFce.
Still, I have no problem recommending it to people who like speed, simplicity and a nice interface. Especially with ROX as a file manager.
Looks nice, acts nice. Got one on my ancient router, just to play with it via VNC. Im going to get new workstation at work, and instead of getting KDE just to run VIm and Mozilla I’ll get that. I hope iso-8859-2 fonts are non-issue here. I kinda like my Polish fonts. :-p
One of the reasons why I love XFCE so much is because it does not have desktop clutter icons crap .. And what do I see here, people putting icons on their xfce desktop *shudders*.
… but would be nicer if I can merge taskbar and panel togheter like in eg. IceWM/Gnome/KDE: One panel for starter icons *and* taskbar
Or is there a plugin for panel where I can have a taskbar integrated?
Thanx for answers!!
This would be the choice and Desktop #1 for comfortable work and speed!
thanks to all those who answered my call re: shading! the scroll button is a excellent design decision by xfce! i now no longer long for xfce3! xfec4 does everyhting i want now! i even like the abilityt to force windows to stay on top or at the bottom, as well as “stick” through the different desktops!
i don’t use icons, drag’n’drop or anything like that. i simply keep a gkrellm running and always start a few aterms (which are nice with the low-resource transparent settings). i used to have to start gnome-font-properties in order for mozilla/evolution to use nicer fonts settigns.. but this is no longer necessary!
anyone point me to nice xfce themes.. i prefer the minimal clean ones…
You know, that’s funny. Read comments. Everything is possitive and nice. I wish to read similar stuff when KDE/Gnome news is posted. 🙂
Not all, I complain about taskbar into panel. Ok, I can use Gnome-Panel instead of XFCE’s one. But at every step my Desktop getting bloated.
1st, I use IceWM, then added ROX2. No speed benefits from ROX2, but no (easy) configurable panel.
Now, I try XFCE+ROX… but it’s like a mouse marathon and xfce panel is always at front of my windows (where should I place it next seconds) or behind it (this is one thing I don’t like, I tend to forget time)
[quote]Also, on a side note, why doesn’t OSNews.com use the cute lil cat logo for XFce? Its just using the X logo right now, which is rather borin to say the least…[/quote]
it’s a mouse!!!
“xfce panel is always at front of my windows (where should I place it next seconds) or behind it (this is one thing I don’t like, I tend to forget time)”
I believe the mouse scroll wheel is again your best answer. You can make the panel visible and hide it again by using the mouse scroll wheel over your active application.
XFce is a fantastic desktop ( I wrote a review with a screenshot here < http://thelinuxbox.org/Xfce_4_0.html > ). The one major blemish that mars XFce is a good file manager. Xffm will drive you nuts if you try to use ut for more than ten minutes, Rox is ugly and does not integrate well, I really liked Velocity but it has become a dead project and is still a little buggy, Nautilus and Konqueror are to bloated to use with such an elegant desktop. Does someone have a good recomendation (screenshots are appreciated).
Thanks
Sean Parsons
“Now, I try XFCE+ROX… but it’s like a mouse marathon and xfce panel is always at front of my windows (where should I place it next seconds) or behind it (this is one thing I don’t like, I tend to forget time) ”
What I tend to do is place the panel at the bottom of the screen (the default config) and adjust the workspace margins, which can be easily done via the settings manager.
Screenshot:
http://www.loculus.nl/xfce/documentation/xfwm4.html#workspace-margi…
For a 1024×768 screen, setting the bottom boundary to 41 (pixels, I think) works just perfect.
Hum… About fonts, I’m using gentoo and emerged M$ set fonts that are present in Portage: /usr/portage/media-fonts/corefonts.
The link to SourgeForge Corefonts: http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
Another thing is to compile FreeType, enabling before “ByteCode Interpreter”
And the last but not least, I’m using Xfree 4.4…:-)
Sean: You probably use ROX1. You must try ROX2 that is a GTK+2 application like the XFCE4 desktop. Read previous comments : I explain where to find and install icon themes (I agree with you that the default ROX2 icon theme is ugly) and to integrate ROX2 into XFCE4 by using ROX2 to manage the root window (instead of xfdesktop). Believe me, take time to install and use it, and follow my previous instructions : you won’t be disapointed
If you use Linux Slackware 9.1, I can even provide you my ROX2 packages (rox2 + shared-mime-info).
I kinda like Gentoo (not the distro) as a filemanager. It works well, not too bad looking, and it has pretty much all the features I need. I just think it cannot show thumbnails of image files and those kind of modern filemanagers features… which I personally don’t really care about… I can always launch konqueror if I really need those features for some reason..
I’ve been using FileRunner for years. It’s butt ugly, but for pure file operations it’s hard to beat. It’s a twin window (Midnight Commander) type fm with a pretty easy to understand configuration. None of this icon/thumbnail bs to slow you down when all you want to do is move files around. The icons that come with it are atrocious, so you might want to change them. I use a nice black folder with a flame job I found at Digital Garage.
… it was a nice day with xfce+rox2 today, but I’m back to icewm+rox2 because I think it works better together.
Haven’t had the xfce menu (right mouse button) if I start rox2. with icewm&rox2 I can choose who “win’s” or have the rox2-right-mouse-button on rox icons and the rest of the desktop I can work with the right mouse button from icewm
And I tried xfce really a lot the last year (after a new release), I can’t get warm with a panal *AND* a taskbar (want to have both on one place = integrated)
But xfce has really potential if future development integrates some user wishes.
From what I have read in xfce-dev mailing list and the developper weblog, in the near futur, a panel plugin that provide a window list will be provided. I must agree that a panel and a taskbar on a 800×600 screen monitor is not really a good thing
And as I don’t use XFDesktop (I use ROX2 to manager my root window to get desktop icons), I don’t have the XFDesktop windows list, so I have to use XFTaskbar. But once the window list plugin will be released, I will get ride of XFTaskbar.
Hi,
if you like Tabs like Fluxbox provides them visit http://www.tecneeq.de/tabs/ .
Karsten
RE: directhex
Haha, foreal? Makes sense though I guess… umm, my bad, still its cute
RE: Emil
People don’t complain about XFce because there is nothing to really complain about, its just nice… I mean, sure I would rather the window placement was remembered, but seriously, thats the only complaint I had about it! Thats not bad going at all!
I really hope XFce 4.2 will correct the window placement thing, then it will pretty much be the perfect desktop. GNOME is too simplistic and dull, KDE is perhaps a little cluttered, XFce is featurefull and still fast as fuck. You really can’t complain about this desktop, and thats not something you can say about most.
Anyone know of a XFce CVS update (simular to KDE-CVS-Digest) so users can keep tabs on the goings on of the project more easily then reading through all the mailing list entries?
It’s the other way round as well, MS ripping of many things from the opensource community.
I like XFCE4 but the filemanager is indeed a pain. I’ll try the ROX2 when I boot to slackware. I’m in win2000 now ,it took me a long time to find all apps that I use now in windows and just started with linux I haven’t found any good alternatives for Miranda IM (GAIM is terrible), Mailwasher, Qtracker, Foxmail, K-Meleon (all browsers in Linux seem so bloated), Textpad, Irfanview yet =/
XFCE is 1 of the best desktop I’ve seen yet , as it fits in my view of how programs should be. Fast, beautiful, unbloated, but still good featured
.
It’s really noticeable how this discussion of xfce seems to put people in a good mood! Everyone’s being helpful, polite and friendly – and no modded down comments! What is it about xfce that has the power to contribute to world peace?
I agree that xffm is not so good.
I was using xfe which is quite windows explorerish. It is good looking and professional.
My current distro doesn’t package it though and now I am using emelfm which is a 2 pane jobby. I like it. It seems to be geared more towards the ‘power user’.
the only filemanager i need is an xterm
🙂