10 ms·

Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

103 points by mariuz 8y ago

k__ 8y ago
Did they go back to the roots and made it more lightweight again?
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  not sure if kde can be considered as having ever been lightweight. as far as I remember it was always one of the most heavy DE's around. edit: I'm rate-limted[x] from commenting for defending myself against people calling me a brown-nosed European and white supremacist so I can't really reply below to @Crinus: here reply inline: oh I didn't know about v1, I think the first version I used was kde2 and that was the heaviest option you could install back then (iirc). fwiw my comparison to i3 above isn't really fair. one is just a WM the other is a full-blown DE. [x] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128
  - Crinus 8y ago
    KDE1 was very fast and lightweight, i used it back when it was new via Caldera OpenLinux on a PMMX with 32MB RAM and i was very impressed not only with how fast it was but with how much stuff the CD came with (although that was largely due to the excellent - and unreplicated - work of the people behind COL)- and proceeded to do what every self respecting teenage nerd that learned about Linux does: install it on every friend and relative's computer, permission optional of course :-P No really, KDE1 was very fast - try COL 2.3 CD from archive.org[1] and put it in PCem or 86box with an emulated Pentium MMX at 166MHz and 32MB of RAM and see it for yourself. Later versions bulged and bloated and i do not think it ever felt as lightweight, but at least version 3 was rock solid. Of course this meant that KDE4 had to be rewritten from scratch and become a bloated buggy mess, as is tradition on the Linux desktop (also see GNOME 3 and i'm going to be very disappointed if XFCE doesn't become slower and bloated after it fully switches to GTK 3). [1] https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD
  - alex_duf 8y ago
    Kubuntu => KDE Xubuntu => xfce
    - phosphophyllite 8y ago
      Can linux-desktop stand more fragmentation?
      - mnbvkhgvmj 8y ago
        Xubuntu has existed for at least 8 years not. Possibly much longer.
        theandrewbailey 8y ago
        Since 2006[0]. I remember looking for a small user-friendly distro in 2008/9 that would fit my college-issued laptop's OEM emergency partition (5-ish GB). That partition was never used, as reimaging was the solution to almost every problem, yet they never bothered to delete it from the official images. In the time and machines since, I've kept using Xubuntu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu
        k__ 8y ago
        I used Xubuntu for many years, but somehow having my own Linux machine became less and less important, even as a developer. Now I just have Windows 10 and macOS Mojave. For Linux stuff, I spin up a Cloud9 EC2 instance.
        phosphophyllite 8y ago
        And? This is somehow solves fragmentation problem?
  - Zardoz84 8y ago
    You forgot Enlightenment. Back to later 90's/early 2000's was the most heavier thanks to the quantity of FXs(Without using GPUs or composition...) that it had.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      E17 had a compositor and hardware rendering before Xorg/XFree86 had (making it smoother and using the GPU instead of CPU). Its just that it was in an eternal state of beta.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    What is lightweight? This is actually a complex question. Back in the day KDE has the largest in memory footprint when you first started up, but once you launched a realistic set of apps: suddenly KDE (using only KDE apps) has by far the smallest memory footprint.
    - Crinus 8y ago
      My personal arbitrary definition is something that is usable without noticeable lag on a Raspberry Pi 1.
fareesh 8y ago
I've been using Kubuntu since 18.04. The performance has been good i.e. much better than Ubuntu w/ Gnome, and most things are relatively painless/intuitive to setup when needed. KDE has some decent themes as well to get it to look a little more polished than the default theme.
- s_kilk 8y ago
  I'm in a similar boat, I used to use Xubuntu extensively, but have been on Kubuntu for the last while. KDE _feels_ light, and the metrics in System Monitor agree. So while the new Xubuntu release has piqued my interest, I'm not sure I actually need it any more. Today's KDE seems to fit right into the pocket of relatively light and relatively featureful.
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    last time I used kde was in 2002. I loved especially kmail and konqueror. Though I have eventually been turned off by the dependency hell of big DE's (not unique to kde and probably only an issue if you compile the DE yourself, ... though also annoying if you have 100+ base-packages/dependencies pulled in just because you want 1 tool). after moving to i3 I find it hard to look back. the level of customization I can do with a tiling WM (also dwm, xmonad etc) is just insane. Makes more sense to me since most of the tools I use are lightweight, e.g. suckless (surf), a complete process tree after login now consists of: ?─┬─?───i3-wrapper───i3 ├─sh───xautolock ├─sh───unclutter ├─sh───dunst───2*[{dunst}] ├─sh───i3bar───sh───python───{python} ├─sh───x-terminal-emul─┬─3*[bash] │ ├─bash───pstree │ └─6*[{x-terminal-emul}] └─systemd─┬─at-spi-bus-laun─┬─dbus-daemon │ └─3*[{at-spi-bus-laun}] ├─at-spi2-registr───2*[{at-spi2-registr}] ├─dbus-daemon ├─dconf-service───2*[{dconf-service}] ├─dirmngr ├─gconfd-2 ├─gvfs-udisks2-vo───2*[{gvfs-udisks2-vo}] ├─gvfsd─┬─gvfsd-trash───2*[{gvfsd-trash}] │ └─2*[{gvfsd}] ├─gvfsd-metadata───2*[{gvfsd-metadata}] ├─pulseaudio───2*[{pulseaudio}] └─tracker-store───4*[{tracker-store}] $> sudo smem -c pss -t | tail -1 606032 ^^^^ as commenter below pointed out this includes processes from other users. the correct figure is smem -c pss -t | tail -1 220678 Use compton if you need some bells+whistles (transparency). If you want to get rid of X.org and use Wayland[0] just use sway[1] instead as drop-in replacement for i3. [0] The real story behind Wayland and X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ [1] https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/
lousken 8y ago
was the clipboard bug when copying high resolution pictures resolved?
- viraptor 8y ago
  Do you know the launchpad bug for this one?
  - lousken 8y ago
    no, only xfce https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537 https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
virtualpain 8y ago
I'm not sure whether Xubuntu includes KDE's stuff or people here confused between Xubuntu and Kubuntu?
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Yeah, this is weird, I guess some people mistake X for K.
- StevePerkins 8y ago
  This thread is baffling. Most of the comment replies are about KDE, for which Kubuntu (with a "K") is a completely separate spin. The XFCE-based Xubuntu spin includes nothing of KDE by default, and neither KDE or Kubuntu are mentioned in the linked article at all. Call me cynical, I just don't think most people clicked the link or even took a close enough look at the title here.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Alternative: People know exactly what they're talking about. Kubuntu is just an interesting, related topic and a valid comparison.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  There are no KDE apps or libraries in Xubuntu. I'm pretty sure that I would have noticed in the 10 years of using Xubuntu and updating it with Synaptic.
  - ktpsns 8y ago
    Technically, that's not correct: Xubuntu is just an ubuntu package (https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/xubuntu-desktop https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/xubuntu-desktop). You can install any other Ubuntu (Debian) packages.
willvarfar 8y ago
Whaoo I can't wait! Where does Xubuntu and Kubuntu stand, install-base-wise, compared to the default Ubuntu? And other distros, for that matter? I'm one of many people who left Ubuntu as soon as they started doing their big UI changes. I went to Xubuntu. But I have no bigger idea of which distro is hot anymore; once I settled on Xubuntu, I haven't really been shopping around for alternatives.
- dalai 8y ago
  I have been trying mx linux the last two weeks or so. It is similar to Xubuntu, based on Debian Stable (which was a plus for me) with a polished XFCE desktop. So far I like it, especially some of the tools they have developed on top of Debian.
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  I've used Xubuntu for years as a weekend OS for side projects. It seems to work well.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  I've been on Xubuntu since the Unity move too, so there's at least 2 of us :) I've dabbled, but never found a good reason to use anything different, simplicity and stability are all I care about.
  - spaced-out 8y ago
    Same here. XFCE is highly configurable, stable, and has a small memory footprint, which you notice if you're doing any processor-intensive or memory-intensive work. There are also plenty of easy-to-install themes that look quite nice. I don't see what any other DE gives me other than glossy animations that I don't even want.
- hedora 8y ago
  After Unity forced me to shop around, I jumped from Ubuntu all the way to devuan after trying debian, and elementaryos. Both debian and elementaryos had significant system stability issues because of systemd. For instance, logind would wig out. I very nearly switched to a BSD, but the learning curve was a bit too high (I like apt).
noir_lord 8y ago
I switch from Xubuntu to Fedora/Cinnamon. I really like fedora and Cinnamon is kind what I imagine XFCE would be if they rebuilt it from scratch. It's nice to have choices that fit my workflow though.
paulcarroty 8y ago
I'm prefer Fedora 'cause better stability & great contact with developers. Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people communities and greedy enterprise desktops.
- 2038AD 8y ago
  >Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people communities Little funny for me as I'm running Xubuntu with the XP desktop background (bliss). I'm not exactly old though.
pojntfx 8y ago
XFCE is great but OSTree really is the future. I don't see any reason for still using the dinosaur Ubuntu in a world where one can have Fedora Silverblue.
- westmeal 8y ago
  Isn't ostree for upgrades? Its not a DE like XFCE right?
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  As someone without any knowledge of OSTree or Fedora Silverblue, can you go into more detail?
- oblio 8y ago
  What does OSTree have to do with XFCE? OSTree: https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/ https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/ -> The underlying architecture might be summarized as "git for operating system binaries" vs XFCE: https://www.xfce.org/ https://www.xfce.org/ -> Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. Also that Silverblue thing, assuming it's this site: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ doesn't really do a good job at explaining what it is...
  - danieldk 8y ago
    The charitable reading is that they meant 'Xubuntu'. They probably argue that Xubuntu is nice, but not the future because it does not do atomic upgrades with rollbacks. (I largely agree that OSTree-based systems are better, but Ubuntu is so popular that it is unlikely that Silverblue replaces it soon. By the way, Silverblue fans should look at Nix ;).)
- imglorp 8y ago
  Thank you for pointing out an interesting project. Ubuntu has the full force of upstream Debian behind it, while Centos/Fedora has Red Hat upstream, which just got bought by Oracle. Is anyone in the Centos/Fedora ecosystem concerned about the sale? What happens if management simply quits making public RH streams available? What if the lawyers come out as usual?
yagodragon 8y ago
What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change the fonts dpi settings. Chrome and some other apps look good but the menus, file manager and firefox are still upscaled. 4. I manually change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx in about:config to make firefox look good. Finally, the result looks very unpolished. The menus are still largely upscaled and some apps like vlc won't even scale at all. My laptop's screen can't be used as a secondary screen because everything is upscaled, not to mention that i have to manually undo all those steps to revert everything back to "normal" for my 15.6" laptop screen. I eventually wrote some scripts with dconf to automate the proccess but it's just not good. Does anyone have experience with external monitors and linux desktops? How does xfce or kde handle this? I tried gnome that supports fractional scaling and it's way better than mate. Now the problem is that i only have 8GB of ram and gnome shell is known to be a ram hog.
- AlexeyBrin 8y ago
  KDE is a bit better with high resolution displays, try it with a live Kubuntu image and see if it works for your setup.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    Yeah with KDE i have no problems. I plug my laptop into a tv regularly, it auto connects and scales properly and gives me the option of mirroring or extending the screen from any side to the tv. I didn't have to configure anything.
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  I have the same issue with Mate (which I love otherwise). I've settled for manually setting the font dpi when I switch from external monitor to my laptop screen. It's not ideal, but I couldn't find a way around it. I'm using Compiz, fwiw.
- 8y ago
le-mark 8y ago
Anyone know when xfce screensaver will make it in? I'd upgrade for that!
JasonFruit 8y ago
I was struck by something reading this article: almost none of the applications have names that express their function. If you haven't used it, what does Thunar do? Parole? GIMP? Gigolo, Garcon, or Ristretto? I don't see what's wrong with a name that has something to say about what your program does.
- Soft 8y ago
  I think it is useful for projects to have a searchable unique names. Also, I think the desktop files for those programs also include a generic name describing program's function that an application launcher can decide to show instead. For example, my KDE application menu refers to applications using these generic description ("Web Browser" instead of Firefox, "Music Player" instead of Spotify).
  - II2II 8y ago
    Agreed on the ability to search for programs, add to that the difficulty in creating a meaningful name that won't confuse at least some users and doesn't step on trademarks or other project names. Even popular software titles have naming issues, with brand recognition being the main distinguishing factor that helps people figure out what the software does: - Excel, says absolutely nothing about what the product does. - PowerPoint is only tangentially related to what the product does. - Internet Explorer vs. Windows Explorer confuses many users. To avoid singling out just Microsoft, look at Apple: - Numbers basically depends upon people associating spreadsheets with any form of quantitative analysis. - Keynote is only tangentially related to what the product does. - Safari says absolutely nothing about what the program does. Contrast that to the brilliantly named GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is clearly a program for enhancing photographs of gnu's! Okay, maybe it's not so brilliant. Yet it does demonstrate that naming is hard even when the name states what the program is.
- bluedino 8y ago
  You're not alone. My boss was trying to research some Python stuff. Bottle, Celery..."who came up with these terms!"
- 8y ago
cdaringe 8y ago
Excellent job! These little patches here and there make a big difference. I'm super grateful for your work (if you're reading this thread :))
FrozenVoid 8y ago
> Xfce Quick Launcher Plugin has been removed from the Debian and Ubuntu archives due to it no longer being supported. Its the fastest option to quickly load scripts, and its convinient to have it always on the taskbar for frequently launched stuff. Whats the rationale for removing it?
- ac29 8y ago
  >removed [...] due to it no longer being supported
  - FrozenVoid 8y ago
    Thats an excuse to not update code. The plugin is extremely useful.
bklaasen 8y ago
No mention of having fixed screen tearing in videos. I'm a longtime Xubuntu user because it just gets out of my way and is rock solid, but the apparently unfixable screen tearing makes me weep. Seemingly Manjaro XFCE edition[1] solves the screen tearing by using a different compositor[2]. [1] https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/ https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/ [2] https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-surprise-entroware-ares-review-choose-linux-7/ https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-surprise...

103 points by mariuz 8y ago

k__ 8y ago

Did they go back to the roots and made it more lightweight again?

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
not sure if kde can be considered as having ever been lightweight. as far as I remember it was always one of the most heavy DE's around. edit: I'm rate-limted[x] from commenting for defending myself against people calling me a brown-nosed European and white supremacist so I can't really reply below to @Crinus: here reply inline: oh I didn't know about v1, I think the first version I used was kde2 and that was the heaviest option you could install back then (iirc). fwiw my comparison to i3 above isn't really fair. one is just a WM the other is a full-blown DE. [x] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128
- Crinus 8y ago
  KDE1 was very fast and lightweight, i used it back when it was new via Caldera OpenLinux on a PMMX with 32MB RAM and i was very impressed not only with how fast it was but with how much stuff the CD came with (although that was largely due to the excellent - and unreplicated - work of the people behind COL)- and proceeded to do what every self respecting teenage nerd that learned about Linux does: install it on every friend and relative's computer, permission optional of course :-P No really, KDE1 was very fast - try COL 2.3 CD from archive.org[1] and put it in PCem or 86box with an emulated Pentium MMX at 166MHz and 32MB of RAM and see it for yourself. Later versions bulged and bloated and i do not think it ever felt as lightweight, but at least version 3 was rock solid. Of course this meant that KDE4 had to be rewritten from scratch and become a bloated buggy mess, as is tradition on the Linux desktop (also see GNOME 3 and i'm going to be very disappointed if XFCE doesn't become slower and bloated after it fully switches to GTK 3). [1] https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD
- alex_duf 8y ago
  Kubuntu => KDE Xubuntu => xfce
  - phosphophyllite 8y ago
    Can linux-desktop stand more fragmentation?
    - mnbvkhgvmj 8y ago
      Xubuntu has existed for at least 8 years not. Possibly much longer.
      - theandrewbailey 8y ago
        Since 2006[0]. I remember looking for a small user-friendly distro in 2008/9 that would fit my college-issued laptop's OEM emergency partition (5-ish GB). That partition was never used, as reimaging was the solution to almost every problem, yet they never bothered to delete it from the official images. In the time and machines since, I've kept using Xubuntu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu
        k__ 8y ago
        I used Xubuntu for many years, but somehow having my own Linux machine became less and less important, even as a developer. Now I just have Windows 10 and macOS Mojave. For Linux stuff, I spin up a Cloud9 EC2 instance.
      - phosphophyllite 8y ago
        And? This is somehow solves fragmentation problem?
- Zardoz84 8y ago
  You forgot Enlightenment. Back to later 90's/early 2000's was the most heavier thanks to the quantity of FXs(Without using GPUs or composition...) that it had.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    E17 had a compositor and hardware rendering before Xorg/XFree86 had (making it smoother and using the GPU instead of CPU). Its just that it was in an eternal state of beta.
- bluGill 8y ago
  What is lightweight? This is actually a complex question. Back in the day KDE has the largest in memory footprint when you first started up, but once you launched a realistic set of apps: suddenly KDE (using only KDE apps) has by far the smallest memory footprint.
  - Crinus 8y ago
    My personal arbitrary definition is something that is usable without noticeable lag on a Raspberry Pi 1.

fareesh 8y ago

I've been using Kubuntu since 18.04. The performance has been good i.e. much better than Ubuntu w/ Gnome, and most things are relatively painless/intuitive to setup when needed. KDE has some decent themes as well to get it to look a little more polished than the default theme.

s_kilk 8y ago
I'm in a similar boat, I used to use Xubuntu extensively, but have been on Kubuntu for the last while. KDE _feels_ light, and the metrics in System Monitor agree. So while the new Xubuntu release has piqued my interest, I'm not sure I actually need it any more. Today's KDE seems to fit right into the pocket of relatively light and relatively featureful.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  last time I used kde was in 2002. I loved especially kmail and konqueror. Though I have eventually been turned off by the dependency hell of big DE's (not unique to kde and probably only an issue if you compile the DE yourself, ... though also annoying if you have 100+ base-packages/dependencies pulled in just because you want 1 tool). after moving to i3 I find it hard to look back. the level of customization I can do with a tiling WM (also dwm, xmonad etc) is just insane. Makes more sense to me since most of the tools I use are lightweight, e.g. suckless (surf), a complete process tree after login now consists of: ?─┬─?───i3-wrapper───i3 ├─sh───xautolock ├─sh───unclutter ├─sh───dunst───2*[{dunst}] ├─sh───i3bar───sh───python───{python} ├─sh───x-terminal-emul─┬─3*[bash] │ ├─bash───pstree │ └─6*[{x-terminal-emul}] └─systemd─┬─at-spi-bus-laun─┬─dbus-daemon │ └─3*[{at-spi-bus-laun}] ├─at-spi2-registr───2*[{at-spi2-registr}] ├─dbus-daemon ├─dconf-service───2*[{dconf-service}] ├─dirmngr ├─gconfd-2 ├─gvfs-udisks2-vo───2*[{gvfs-udisks2-vo}] ├─gvfsd─┬─gvfsd-trash───2*[{gvfsd-trash}] │ └─2*[{gvfsd}] ├─gvfsd-metadata───2*[{gvfsd-metadata}] ├─pulseaudio───2*[{pulseaudio}] └─tracker-store───4*[{tracker-store}] $> sudo smem -c pss -t | tail -1 606032 ^^^^ as commenter below pointed out this includes processes from other users. the correct figure is smem -c pss -t | tail -1 220678 Use compton if you need some bells+whistles (transparency). If you want to get rid of X.org and use Wayland[0] just use sway[1] instead as drop-in replacement for i3. [0] The real story behind Wayland and X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ [1] https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/

lousken 8y ago

was the clipboard bug when copying high resolution pictures resolved?

viraptor 8y ago
Do you know the launchpad bug for this one?
- lousken 8y ago
  no, only xfce https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537 https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

virtualpain 8y ago

I'm not sure whether Xubuntu includes KDE's stuff or people here confused between Xubuntu and Kubuntu?

zzzcpan 8y ago
Yeah, this is weird, I guess some people mistake X for K.
StevePerkins 8y ago
This thread is baffling. Most of the comment replies are about KDE, for which Kubuntu (with a "K") is a completely separate spin. The XFCE-based Xubuntu spin includes nothing of KDE by default, and neither KDE or Kubuntu are mentioned in the linked article at all. Call me cynical, I just don't think most people clicked the link or even took a close enough look at the title here.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Alternative: People know exactly what they're talking about. Kubuntu is just an interesting, related topic and a valid comparison.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
There are no KDE apps or libraries in Xubuntu. I'm pretty sure that I would have noticed in the 10 years of using Xubuntu and updating it with Synaptic.
- ktpsns 8y ago
  Technically, that's not correct: Xubuntu is just an ubuntu package (https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/xubuntu-desktop https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/xubuntu-desktop). You can install any other Ubuntu (Debian) packages.

willvarfar 8y ago

Whaoo I can't wait! Where does Xubuntu and Kubuntu stand, install-base-wise, compared to the default Ubuntu? And other distros, for that matter? I'm one of many people who left Ubuntu as soon as they started doing their big UI changes. I went to Xubuntu. But I have no bigger idea of which distro is hot anymore; once I settled on Xubuntu, I haven't really been shopping around for alternatives.

dalai 8y ago
I have been trying mx linux the last two weeks or so. It is similar to Xubuntu, based on Debian Stable (which was a plus for me) with a polished XFCE desktop. So far I like it, especially some of the tools they have developed on top of Debian.
4thaccount 8y ago
I've used Xubuntu for years as a weekend OS for side projects. It seems to work well.
kgwxd 8y ago
I've been on Xubuntu since the Unity move too, so there's at least 2 of us :) I've dabbled, but never found a good reason to use anything different, simplicity and stability are all I care about.
- spaced-out 8y ago
  Same here. XFCE is highly configurable, stable, and has a small memory footprint, which you notice if you're doing any processor-intensive or memory-intensive work. There are also plenty of easy-to-install themes that look quite nice. I don't see what any other DE gives me other than glossy animations that I don't even want.
hedora 8y ago
After Unity forced me to shop around, I jumped from Ubuntu all the way to devuan after trying debian, and elementaryos. Both debian and elementaryos had significant system stability issues because of systemd. For instance, logind would wig out. I very nearly switched to a BSD, but the learning curve was a bit too high (I like apt).

noir_lord 8y ago

I switch from Xubuntu to Fedora/Cinnamon. I really like fedora and Cinnamon is kind what I imagine XFCE would be if they rebuilt it from scratch. It's nice to have choices that fit my workflow though.

paulcarroty 8y ago

I'm prefer Fedora 'cause better stability & great contact with developers. Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people communities and greedy enterprise desktops.

2038AD 8y ago
>Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people communities Little funny for me as I'm running Xubuntu with the XP desktop background (bliss). I'm not exactly old though.

pojntfx 8y ago

XFCE is great but OSTree really is the future. I don't see any reason for still using the dinosaur Ubuntu in a world where one can have Fedora Silverblue.

westmeal 8y ago
Isn't ostree for upgrades? Its not a DE like XFCE right?
4thaccount 8y ago
As someone without any knowledge of OSTree or Fedora Silverblue, can you go into more detail?
oblio 8y ago
What does OSTree have to do with XFCE? OSTree: https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/ https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/ -> The underlying architecture might be summarized as "git for operating system binaries" vs XFCE: https://www.xfce.org/ https://www.xfce.org/ -> Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. Also that Silverblue thing, assuming it's this site: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/ doesn't really do a good job at explaining what it is...
- danieldk 8y ago
  The charitable reading is that they meant 'Xubuntu'. They probably argue that Xubuntu is nice, but not the future because it does not do atomic upgrades with rollbacks. (I largely agree that OSTree-based systems are better, but Ubuntu is so popular that it is unlikely that Silverblue replaces it soon. By the way, Silverblue fans should look at Nix ;).)
imglorp 8y ago
Thank you for pointing out an interesting project. Ubuntu has the full force of upstream Debian behind it, while Centos/Fedora has Red Hat upstream, which just got bought by Oracle. Is anyone in the Centos/Fedora ecosystem concerned about the sale? What happens if management simply quits making public RH streams available? What if the lawyers come out as usual?

yagodragon 8y ago

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change the fonts dpi settings. Chrome and some other apps look good but the menus, file manager and firefox are still upscaled. 4. I manually change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx in about:config to make firefox look good. Finally, the result looks very unpolished. The menus are still largely upscaled and some apps like vlc won't even scale at all. My laptop's screen can't be used as a secondary screen because everything is upscaled, not to mention that i have to manually undo all those steps to revert everything back to "normal" for my 15.6" laptop screen. I eventually wrote some scripts with dconf to automate the proccess but it's just not good. Does anyone have experience with external monitors and linux desktops? How does xfce or kde handle this? I tried gnome that supports fractional scaling and it's way better than mate. Now the problem is that i only have 8GB of ram and gnome shell is known to be a ram hog.

AlexeyBrin 8y ago
KDE is a bit better with high resolution displays, try it with a live Kubuntu image and see if it works for your setup.
- grawprog 8y ago
  Yeah with KDE i have no problems. I plug my laptop into a tv regularly, it auto connects and scales properly and gives me the option of mirroring or extending the screen from any side to the tv. I didn't have to configure anything.
H1Supreme 8y ago
I have the same issue with Mate (which I love otherwise). I've settled for manually setting the font dpi when I switch from external monitor to my laptop screen. It's not ideal, but I couldn't find a way around it. I'm using Compiz, fwiw.
8y ago

le-mark 8y ago

Anyone know when xfce screensaver will make it in? I'd upgrade for that!

JasonFruit 8y ago

I was struck by something reading this article: almost none of the applications have names that express their function. If you haven't used it, what does Thunar do? Parole? GIMP? Gigolo, Garcon, or Ristretto? I don't see what's wrong with a name that has something to say about what your program does.

Soft 8y ago
I think it is useful for projects to have a searchable unique names. Also, I think the desktop files for those programs also include a generic name describing program's function that an application launcher can decide to show instead. For example, my KDE application menu refers to applications using these generic description ("Web Browser" instead of Firefox, "Music Player" instead of Spotify).
- II2II 8y ago
  Agreed on the ability to search for programs, add to that the difficulty in creating a meaningful name that won't confuse at least some users and doesn't step on trademarks or other project names. Even popular software titles have naming issues, with brand recognition being the main distinguishing factor that helps people figure out what the software does: - Excel, says absolutely nothing about what the product does. - PowerPoint is only tangentially related to what the product does. - Internet Explorer vs. Windows Explorer confuses many users. To avoid singling out just Microsoft, look at Apple: - Numbers basically depends upon people associating spreadsheets with any form of quantitative analysis. - Keynote is only tangentially related to what the product does. - Safari says absolutely nothing about what the program does. Contrast that to the brilliantly named GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is clearly a program for enhancing photographs of gnu's! Okay, maybe it's not so brilliant. Yet it does demonstrate that naming is hard even when the name states what the program is.
bluedino 8y ago
You're not alone. My boss was trying to research some Python stuff. Bottle, Celery..."who came up with these terms!"
8y ago

cdaringe 8y ago

Excellent job! These little patches here and there make a big difference. I'm super grateful for your work (if you're reading this thread :))

FrozenVoid 8y ago

> Xfce Quick Launcher Plugin has been removed from the Debian and Ubuntu archives due to it no longer being supported. Its the fastest option to quickly load scripts, and its convinient to have it always on the taskbar for frequently launched stuff. Whats the rationale for removing it?

ac29 8y ago
>removed [...] due to it no longer being supported
- FrozenVoid 8y ago
  Thats an excuse to not update code. The plugin is extremely useful.

bklaasen 8y ago

No mention of having fixed screen tearing in videos. I'm a longtime Xubuntu user because it just gets out of my way and is rock solid, but the apparently unfixable screen tearing makes me weep. Seemingly Manjaro XFCE edition[1] solves the screen tearing by using a different compositor[2]. [1] https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/ https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/ [2] https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-surprise-entroware-ares-review-choose-linux-7/ https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-surprise...