10 ms·

Xfce 4.12 released

274 points by AhtiK 12y ago

Vektorweg 12y ago
we like to party! Definitely. Love it.
osw 12y ago
Good old xfce <3
jmspring 12y ago
I used to love XFCE for being a light weight alternative to Gnome and KDE. The last time I used it on a linux system it had gotten quite a bit porkier. Can anyone speak to if the new release has slimmed things down or is it still, at least to my reading, becoming bulkier still?
- tux 12y ago
  I think you should try 4.12 release for your self. As Morpheus has said "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the XFCE is. You have to see it for yourself." Because I'm not sure what you mean about "bulkier". Its defiantly faster and more light weight then Gnome and KDE. I've tried using Gnome and KDE many times and still where coming back to XFCE. So spin up new VM and see if this new release will work any better for you.
- screamin_jesus 12y ago
  XFCE is definitely still a lot lighter weight than gnome or KDE. I think its continuing to fit its niche well, something between the main DE's (gnome/kde/unity) and lighter stuff like lxde
FreakyT 12y ago
Glad to see that support work for a GTK3 version is coming along -- I'm looking forward to that. I've always been a fan of XFCE -- it's lightweight, but not so lightweight that you have to make a ton of sacrifices. Plus, XFWM is the only window manager I know of that supports compositing, but doesn't have any animations or other fancy effects (on slower computers, this can be surprisingly beneficial).
- virtualwhys 12y ago
  > Plus, XFWM is the only window manager I know of that supports compositing My one gripe with i3WM, an otherwise excellent tiling window manager, is the lack of compositing support (well, it works, kind of, but falls apart when, for example stacking terminal windows with transparency enabled, argghhh).
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Same thread (sans www subdomain in link) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124996
- ExpiredLink 12y ago
  > Much leaner than others, without being spartan. If Xfce ever needs an advertising slogan ...
recuter 12y ago
This was on my shortlist when I first moved to Arch before I landed on just plain i3. Am I missing anything by not trying it?
- chunkstuntman 12y ago
  I enjoyed using xfce as a nice desktop environment around a tiling window manager (bspwm), I'm sure i3 would plug in similarly.
- tarentel 12y ago
  I switched from xfce to i3. I keep them both installed though. I have a hard time using i3 with programs that have a lot of floating windows like gimp. So if I know I'm going to be doing something like that I'll switch to xfce. I also had an easier time setting up i3 the way I wanted it to look with xfce stuff than I did with gnome stuff.
  - platz 12y ago
    I use i3 but also use a lot of the xfce widgets/apps as they work nicely with i3. Can't wait for the power manager fix for systemd
  - thrownaway122 12y ago
    Gimp has had single window mode for years now. window -> single window mode
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  It is trivial to try out a different desktop environment on Linux. The process doesn't commit you, and you can back out to your previous environment at any time. 1. Install the environment(s) you want to try. 2. Log out of your present desktop session and select the new alternative at your display manager (log-in) prompt. That's it. Or, if you don't want to log out entirely, create a new test account, and use that (with a new session -- yes, you _can_ run multiple desktop sessions at a time) and try out different desktop environments / window managers. Or, use Xephyr, a nesting X server, to run X within your present X session. Or, use a virtual machine to test a different OS entirely (heavier weight than other options). Lots of alternatives.
sampo 12y ago
My new work (a government research lab) has some strict policy (no installing own OS) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 on the desktop workstations. And the RHEL 6.5 has Gnome 2. So I was thrown back in time to the long lost paradise (since 2011) that is Gnome 2. It brought back memories, and now that I again use it, I must say that Gnome 2 is not bad at all. On my laptop I use Xubuntu (Xfce desktop), and I also must say that modern Xfce is better at the Gnome 2 thing, than Gnome 2.
- alxmdev 12y ago
  I enjoyed Gnome 2 as well, back on Debian 5 and 6. Did you try MATE (http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/)? It's an active fork of Gnome 2.
  - sampo 12y ago
    I like my panels vertical, and looks like [1] MATE has inherited this bug from Gnome 2, that window buttons go crazy if the panel is vertical, and there are more than 8 windows open. Gnome 2 never fixed this bug, and apparently is still exists in MATE, too. Anyway, I think Xfce is better. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1351825 https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1351825
- currysausage 12y ago
  > I also must say that modern Xfce is better at the Gnome 2 thing, than Gnome 2. Gnome 2 is wonderful when configured, but yes, some interactions (like moving toolbar elements around) are pretty awkward by 2015 standards. That being said, RHEL 6 with Gnome 2 is a great choice for older, less performant systems that you configure once and don't touch frequently. Or for replacing XP on Grandpa's old ThinkPad...
- rdtsc 12y ago
  RHEL 6.5's Desktop is kind of like a hidden feature. Most deployments I would guess are probably server. But yeah US Govt love them some Redhat Desktop systems. Enable that multi-level SELinux mode and go to town.
kelnos 12y ago
The desktop has a new wallpaper settings dialog I would like to apologetically take blame for designing and implementing the old dialog 6+ years ago, and thank the team for finally replacing it with something that looks actually usable. Congrats on 4.12! Hopefully it'll be in Debian jessie soon...
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Congrats on 4.12! Hopefully it'll be in Debian jessie soon... Isn't it too late to be included in Jessie? As an XFCE + i3 user anxiously awaiting Jessie in stable, I'd be very happy to hear that it'll be included, but I thought all major packages had been frozen already.
  - e12e 12y ago
    Presumably. There's always backports...
  - kelnos 12y ago
    A quick google shows an Xfce blog post from November stating that it won't make it in, as the Jessie freeze had already passed. I had no idea! But as a sibling says, hopefully it'll make it to backports.
    - baruch 12y ago
      I simply use Debian in unstable all the time and update every couple of weeks. I hate staying stuck for a year or more with old versions and unstable was very rarely unstable for me. There was once or twice in the 10 years or so that I've used Debian unstable that the upgrade broke. The most annoying times of the year are when Debian is in a freeze preparing for release. I can't get the latest version of everything and I am just so lazy I can't be bothered to build an upstream package from scratch. And while I don't find much use for Debian releases myself I know they are useful and important to others.
- eric_the_idiot 12y ago
  As the guy who implemented the new wallpaper design and took over maintenance of xfdesktop, you did just fine. Thanks for all your work on xfdesktop, it's been easy to extend it to do the new things.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Oooh. List mode alt-tab looks interesting. One of the features still keeping me on WindowMaker is the fact that I can pin windowlists, which makes tracking down a specific window (across multiple desktops) far easier. And after WindowMaker, xfce remains my preferred full-desktop environment. I like that it's avoided the feature-bloat and power-user hostility of GNOME and KDE.
- bnolsen 12y ago
  windowmaker on my dev workstations and xfce (or chromeos) on my laptops.
aboutus 12y ago
I haven't used Linux for a few years now (KDE was always my go-to GUI), but after reading this article[1], I've decided to go back. What is the hot new Linux distro on the block? Elementary OS? Tails? Steam OS? [1] https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-apple-google-and-microsoft-78af12071bd https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-app...
- waldohatesyou 12y ago
  Manjaro looks pretty cool.
  - bjwbell 12y ago
    +1 on that, it's awesome. Switched 6 months ago from Ubuntu & could never switch back.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Remember http://distrowatch.com/ http://distrowatch.com/ was the place to go look at recent distros. I used to be a distro geek, test all kinds of various ones, various window manager, twiddle driver settings and all. Now just use Ubuntu for the last 7 years and like it. It just lets me get the work done.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  SteamOS is only made for Gaming though. You can go back to desktop mode but nothing's really added versus Stock Debian there. I'd recommend Mint, they use Cinnamon as their Windows Manager and it's pretty cool.
  - bronson 12y ago
    Agree with Mint. Its Cinnamon experience is excellent and, if it turns out you're not a fan, it's just Ubuntu: you can switch to any of the other desktops without reinstalling.
    - sampo 12y ago
unicornporn 12y ago
I'm so sad to say this is looking worse for every release. And by looking, I mean looking. I'm starting to think this is going to be just as unbearingly ugly as the current iterations of GNOME and KDE in a few versions. It might be getting more functional, but I don't know. Xfce was the option I was so happy to have. It used to be a no frills, minimalistic (but not conceptually minimalistic) interface that simply did the job. Now the interface is getting more complicated and innovative. More complicated designs requires better designers, and they don't seem to be around except for in the Elementary OS community. I haven't looked into MATE yet, perhaps I'll do that.
- asher 12y ago
  Have you tried fluxbox? Did XFCE offer something beyond fluxbox?
- unicornporn 12y ago
  Apparently I'm getting down voted. Not sure why. Anyway, I gave MATE a try and I'm really happy. The "TraditionalOk" theme and some really simple customization gave me exactly what I was looking for. Old school Xfce style: https://i.imgur.com/IN8UN1T.png https://i.imgur.com/IN8UN1T.png
  - wyclif 12y ago
    I like that theme a lot.
  - Numberwang 12y ago
    That date and time format on the top bar is probably the least likely way a Swede would write it down using a pen. Other than that your theme looks good. Please share details.
    - unicornporn 12y ago
      I spent two minutes changing the colors, icons and font sizes of TraditionalOk (the all came with the OS). In that time I couldn't figure out how to edit that date/time format or placement. :) It was just a fast test of Ubuntu MATE in a VM.
kyledrake 12y ago
I use this. It's great. Much leaner than others, without being spartan.
nacs 12y ago
There's a visual tour here of the new version here: http://xfce.org/about/tour http://xfce.org/about/tour
- brynet 12y ago
  A note on Xfce's portability: "All but one of those screenshots were taken on machines running OpenBSD -current, a good proof that Xfce is still portable and friendly to all Unix systems."
  - beefhash 12y ago
    It'd be interesting to know which of those screenshots is the one not taken on OpenBSD-CURRENT.
    - xiaq 12y ago
      I guess it is the Parole media player one, due to lack of decoders on OpenBSD. The lack of decoders is purely my speculation, so it's likely wrong.
tux 12y ago
I'm very excited! Can't wait to see this in official Arch repos ^_^ I've been using XFCE as my main DE since 2011 Thank you everyone in linux community who made this release possible. This release has tons of bug fixes and features according to changelog here; http://xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.12 http://xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.12
- bjwbell 12y ago
  FYI at least for Manjaro, they've been running with the pre-release versions of XFCE for a long time.
  - tux 12y ago
    Yes I know, I have tried Manjaro. But I prefer using Arch Linux + XFCE instead. I like installing only what I use.
logn 12y ago
Screenshooter integration with Imgur? Is this the beginning of making Xfce a cloud-syncing desktop like Mac?
byuu 12y ago
I'm very impressed and happy for the continued support for non-Linux systems. It's very heartening that when necessary, they are coding backends for other systems, instead of buying in to the Linux-only systemd lock-in. I was also very surprised to see how decent the UI looks even under GTK+ 3. I was afraid they would get sucked into the horrible catastrophe that has befallen Gnome with things like client-side decorations. Gedit, for instance, went from this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit2261.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit226... ... to this: http://cdn.xfce.org/about/tour/4.12/xfwm4-csd.png http://cdn.xfce.org/about/tour/4.12/xfwm4-csd.png ... the horror. Has anyone given this a try yet? I would like to know if the common dialogs (eg file open, file save) use proper window decorations, or if they too now look like the Gnome 3 CSD garbage. Also, it's still possible to use Clearlooks-Phenix, right? They're just saying they discontinued the Xfce-* themes, right? Adwaita is such a dull theme.
- zatkin 12y ago
  Wow, that Gedit transition looks awful. I'm curious what the motivation was for these 'client-side decorations' you speak of.
  - ronjouch 12y ago
    1. What do you consider "awful" (or, OP, a "horror") in this transition? (This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.) CSD are one of the better recent GNOME UX trends, I think, for the reasons below which feel well executed to me. 2. Motivations are (to my understanding) to save vertical space, reduce window clutter, and put common actions at the forefront. Matthias Clasen talks about it in great detail at [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/13/client-side-decorations-continued/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/13/client-side-decor... [2] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/20/even-more-client-side-decorations/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/20/even-more-client-... [3] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/03/21/dialogs-in-gtk-3-12/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/03/21/dialogs-in-gtk-3-...
    - lottin 12y ago
robgibbons 12y ago
And here I just got around to upgrading to 4.10! I've been running Crouton (XFCE/Xubuntu) on my Samsung Chromebook 13" for about a year now. XFCE is a godsend for Chromebooks... instantly transformed from a light browsing laptop into a serious work machine.
xiaq 12y ago
As someone who has used xfce 4.10 before switching to i3, I am very impressed of the progress the Xfce team has made, especially UI improvements. They are consistently picking up the latest good designs and implementing them in their simple, no-bullshit manner. Great job!

Xfce 4.12 released

274 points by AhtiK 12y ago

Vektorweg 12y ago

we like to party! Definitely. Love it.

osw 12y ago

Good old xfce <3

jmspring 12y ago

I used to love XFCE for being a light weight alternative to Gnome and KDE. The last time I used it on a linux system it had gotten quite a bit porkier. Can anyone speak to if the new release has slimmed things down or is it still, at least to my reading, becoming bulkier still?

tux 12y ago
I think you should try 4.12 release for your self. As Morpheus has said "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the XFCE is. You have to see it for yourself." Because I'm not sure what you mean about "bulkier". Its defiantly faster and more light weight then Gnome and KDE. I've tried using Gnome and KDE many times and still where coming back to XFCE. So spin up new VM and see if this new release will work any better for you.
screamin_jesus 12y ago
XFCE is definitely still a lot lighter weight than gnome or KDE. I think its continuing to fit its niche well, something between the main DE's (gnome/kde/unity) and lighter stuff like lxde

FreakyT 12y ago

Glad to see that support work for a GTK3 version is coming along -- I'm looking forward to that. I've always been a fan of XFCE -- it's lightweight, but not so lightweight that you have to make a ton of sacrifices. Plus, XFWM is the only window manager I know of that supports compositing, but doesn't have any animations or other fancy effects (on slower computers, this can be surprisingly beneficial).

virtualwhys 12y ago
> Plus, XFWM is the only window manager I know of that supports compositing My one gripe with i3WM, an otherwise excellent tiling window manager, is the lack of compositing support (well, it works, kind of, but falls apart when, for example stacking terminal windows with transparency enabled, argghhh).

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

Same thread (sans www subdomain in link) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9124996

ExpiredLink 12y ago
> Much leaner than others, without being spartan. If Xfce ever needs an advertising slogan ...

recuter 12y ago

This was on my shortlist when I first moved to Arch before I landed on just plain i3. Am I missing anything by not trying it?

chunkstuntman 12y ago
I enjoyed using xfce as a nice desktop environment around a tiling window manager (bspwm), I'm sure i3 would plug in similarly.
tarentel 12y ago
I switched from xfce to i3. I keep them both installed though. I have a hard time using i3 with programs that have a lot of floating windows like gimp. So if I know I'm going to be doing something like that I'll switch to xfce. I also had an easier time setting up i3 the way I wanted it to look with xfce stuff than I did with gnome stuff.
- platz 12y ago
  I use i3 but also use a lot of the xfce widgets/apps as they work nicely with i3. Can't wait for the power manager fix for systemd
- thrownaway122 12y ago
  Gimp has had single window mode for years now. window -> single window mode
dredmorbius 12y ago
It is trivial to try out a different desktop environment on Linux. The process doesn't commit you, and you can back out to your previous environment at any time. 1. Install the environment(s) you want to try. 2. Log out of your present desktop session and select the new alternative at your display manager (log-in) prompt. That's it. Or, if you don't want to log out entirely, create a new test account, and use that (with a new session -- yes, you _can_ run multiple desktop sessions at a time) and try out different desktop environments / window managers. Or, use Xephyr, a nesting X server, to run X within your present X session. Or, use a virtual machine to test a different OS entirely (heavier weight than other options). Lots of alternatives.

sampo 12y ago

My new work (a government research lab) has some strict policy (no installing own OS) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 on the desktop workstations. And the RHEL 6.5 has Gnome 2. So I was thrown back in time to the long lost paradise (since 2011) that is Gnome 2. It brought back memories, and now that I again use it, I must say that Gnome 2 is not bad at all. On my laptop I use Xubuntu (Xfce desktop), and I also must say that modern Xfce is better at the Gnome 2 thing, than Gnome 2.

alxmdev 12y ago
I enjoyed Gnome 2 as well, back on Debian 5 and 6. Did you try MATE (http://mate-desktop.org/ http://mate-desktop.org/)? It's an active fork of Gnome 2.
- sampo 12y ago
  I like my panels vertical, and looks like [1] MATE has inherited this bug from Gnome 2, that window buttons go crazy if the panel is vertical, and there are more than 8 windows open. Gnome 2 never fixed this bug, and apparently is still exists in MATE, too. Anyway, I think Xfce is better. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1351825 https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1351825
currysausage 12y ago
> I also must say that modern Xfce is better at the Gnome 2 thing, than Gnome 2. Gnome 2 is wonderful when configured, but yes, some interactions (like moving toolbar elements around) are pretty awkward by 2015 standards. That being said, RHEL 6 with Gnome 2 is a great choice for older, less performant systems that you configure once and don't touch frequently. Or for replacing XP on Grandpa's old ThinkPad...
rdtsc 12y ago
RHEL 6.5's Desktop is kind of like a hidden feature. Most deployments I would guess are probably server. But yeah US Govt love them some Redhat Desktop systems. Enable that multi-level SELinux mode and go to town.

kelnos 12y ago

The desktop has a new wallpaper settings dialog I would like to apologetically take blame for designing and implementing the old dialog 6+ years ago, and thank the team for finally replacing it with something that looks actually usable. Congrats on 4.12! Hopefully it'll be in Debian jessie soon...

chimeracoder 12y ago
> Congrats on 4.12! Hopefully it'll be in Debian jessie soon... Isn't it too late to be included in Jessie? As an XFCE + i3 user anxiously awaiting Jessie in stable, I'd be very happy to hear that it'll be included, but I thought all major packages had been frozen already.
- e12e 12y ago
  Presumably. There's always backports...
- kelnos 12y ago
  A quick google shows an Xfce blog post from November stating that it won't make it in, as the Jessie freeze had already passed. I had no idea! But as a sibling says, hopefully it'll make it to backports.
  - baruch 12y ago
    I simply use Debian in unstable all the time and update every couple of weeks. I hate staying stuck for a year or more with old versions and unstable was very rarely unstable for me. There was once or twice in the 10 years or so that I've used Debian unstable that the upgrade broke. The most annoying times of the year are when Debian is in a freeze preparing for release. I can't get the latest version of everything and I am just so lazy I can't be bothered to build an upstream package from scratch. And while I don't find much use for Debian releases myself I know they are useful and important to others.
eric_the_idiot 12y ago
As the guy who implemented the new wallpaper design and took over maintenance of xfdesktop, you did just fine. Thanks for all your work on xfdesktop, it's been easy to extend it to do the new things.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Oooh. List mode alt-tab looks interesting. One of the features still keeping me on WindowMaker is the fact that I can pin windowlists, which makes tracking down a specific window (across multiple desktops) far easier. And after WindowMaker, xfce remains my preferred full-desktop environment. I like that it's avoided the feature-bloat and power-user hostility of GNOME and KDE.

bnolsen 12y ago
windowmaker on my dev workstations and xfce (or chromeos) on my laptops.

aboutus 12y ago

I haven't used Linux for a few years now (KDE was always my go-to GUI), but after reading this article[1], I've decided to go back. What is the hot new Linux distro on the block? Elementary OS? Tails? Steam OS? [1] https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-apple-google-and-microsoft-78af12071bd https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-app...

waldohatesyou 12y ago
Manjaro looks pretty cool.
- bjwbell 12y ago
  +1 on that, it's awesome. Switched 6 months ago from Ubuntu & could never switch back.
rdtsc 12y ago
Remember http://distrowatch.com/ http://distrowatch.com/ was the place to go look at recent distros. I used to be a distro geek, test all kinds of various ones, various window manager, twiddle driver settings and all. Now just use Ubuntu for the last 7 years and like it. It just lets me get the work done.
ekianjo 12y ago
SteamOS is only made for Gaming though. You can go back to desktop mode but nothing's really added versus Stock Debian there. I'd recommend Mint, they use Cinnamon as their Windows Manager and it's pretty cool.
- bronson 12y ago
  Agree with Mint. Its Cinnamon experience is excellent and, if it turns out you're not a fan, it's just Ubuntu: you can switch to any of the other desktops without reinstalling.
  - sampo 12y ago

unicornporn 12y ago

I'm so sad to say this is looking worse for every release. And by looking, I mean looking. I'm starting to think this is going to be just as unbearingly ugly as the current iterations of GNOME and KDE in a few versions. It might be getting more functional, but I don't know. Xfce was the option I was so happy to have. It used to be a no frills, minimalistic (but not conceptually minimalistic) interface that simply did the job. Now the interface is getting more complicated and innovative. More complicated designs requires better designers, and they don't seem to be around except for in the Elementary OS community. I haven't looked into MATE yet, perhaps I'll do that.

asher 12y ago
Have you tried fluxbox? Did XFCE offer something beyond fluxbox?
unicornporn 12y ago
Apparently I'm getting down voted. Not sure why. Anyway, I gave MATE a try and I'm really happy. The "TraditionalOk" theme and some really simple customization gave me exactly what I was looking for. Old school Xfce style: https://i.imgur.com/IN8UN1T.png https://i.imgur.com/IN8UN1T.png
- wyclif 12y ago
  I like that theme a lot.
- Numberwang 12y ago
  That date and time format on the top bar is probably the least likely way a Swede would write it down using a pen. Other than that your theme looks good. Please share details.
  - unicornporn 12y ago
    I spent two minutes changing the colors, icons and font sizes of TraditionalOk (the all came with the OS). In that time I couldn't figure out how to edit that date/time format or placement. :) It was just a fast test of Ubuntu MATE in a VM.

kyledrake 12y ago

I use this. It's great. Much leaner than others, without being spartan.

nacs 12y ago

There's a visual tour here of the new version here: http://xfce.org/about/tour http://xfce.org/about/tour

brynet 12y ago
A note on Xfce's portability: "All but one of those screenshots were taken on machines running OpenBSD -current, a good proof that Xfce is still portable and friendly to all Unix systems."
- beefhash 12y ago
  It'd be interesting to know which of those screenshots is the one not taken on OpenBSD-CURRENT.
  - xiaq 12y ago
    I guess it is the Parole media player one, due to lack of decoders on OpenBSD. The lack of decoders is purely my speculation, so it's likely wrong.

tux 12y ago

I'm very excited! Can't wait to see this in official Arch repos ^_^ I've been using XFCE as my main DE since 2011 Thank you everyone in linux community who made this release possible. This release has tons of bug fixes and features according to changelog here; http://xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.12 http://xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.12

bjwbell 12y ago
FYI at least for Manjaro, they've been running with the pre-release versions of XFCE for a long time.
- tux 12y ago
  Yes I know, I have tried Manjaro. But I prefer using Arch Linux + XFCE instead. I like installing only what I use.

logn 12y ago

Screenshooter integration with Imgur? Is this the beginning of making Xfce a cloud-syncing desktop like Mac?

byuu 12y ago

I'm very impressed and happy for the continued support for non-Linux systems. It's very heartening that when necessary, they are coding backends for other systems, instead of buying in to the Linux-only systemd lock-in. I was also very surprised to see how decent the UI looks even under GTK+ 3. I was afraid they would get sucked into the horrible catastrophe that has befallen Gnome with things like client-side decorations. Gedit, for instance, went from this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit2261.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit226... ... to this: http://cdn.xfce.org/about/tour/4.12/xfwm4-csd.png http://cdn.xfce.org/about/tour/4.12/xfwm4-csd.png ... the horror. Has anyone given this a try yet? I would like to know if the common dialogs (eg file open, file save) use proper window decorations, or if they too now look like the Gnome 3 CSD garbage. Also, it's still possible to use Clearlooks-Phenix, right? They're just saying they discontinued the Xfce-* themes, right? Adwaita is such a dull theme.

zatkin 12y ago
Wow, that Gedit transition looks awful. I'm curious what the motivation was for these 'client-side decorations' you speak of.
- ronjouch 12y ago
  1. What do you consider "awful" (or, OP, a "horror") in this transition? (This is a real question, not a rhetorical one.) CSD are one of the better recent GNOME UX trends, I think, for the reasons below which feel well executed to me. 2. Motivations are (to my understanding) to save vertical space, reduce window clutter, and put common actions at the forefront. Matthias Clasen talks about it in great detail at [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/13/client-side-decorations-continued/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/13/client-side-decor... [2] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/20/even-more-client-side-decorations/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/01/20/even-more-client-... [3] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/03/21/dialogs-in-gtk-3-12/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/03/21/dialogs-in-gtk-3-...
  - lottin 12y ago

robgibbons 12y ago

And here I just got around to upgrading to 4.10! I've been running Crouton (XFCE/Xubuntu) on my Samsung Chromebook 13" for about a year now. XFCE is a godsend for Chromebooks... instantly transformed from a light browsing laptop into a serious work machine.

xiaq 12y ago

As someone who has used xfce 4.10 before switching to i3, I am very impressed of the progress the Xfce team has made, especially UI improvements. They are consistently picking up the latest good designs and implementing them in their simple, no-bullshit manner. Great job!