[HN Gopher] XFCE 4.18
___________________________________________________________________
XFCE 4.18
Author : severine
Score : 263 points
Date : 2022-12-15 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alexxcons.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (alexxcons.github.io)
| Nursie wrote:
| Nice, and congrats to the team that have worked on this!
|
| I look forward to this rolling on through to debian in the coming
| weeks and months. HiDPI improvements are welcome, and the other
| tweaks and updates look good. Xfce has been my daily driver for
| over ten years now (I think...), and I hope that it's
| unopinionated, configurable attitude has a lot of life in it yet.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I used to use XFCE as a desktop of choice, but switched to
| Plasma/KDE instead as XFCE didn't have great HiDPI support.
| Maybe I should try it out again.
| type0 wrote:
| Another venerable resource efficient desktop environment is
| Trinity https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ continuation of third KDE
| version
| einpoklum wrote:
| Ever since I switched my desktop to Linux, I've been using
| Cinnamon. I've noticed XFCE, and occasionally used it briefly on
| some machine, but I've certainly not explored its capabilities
| (e.g. from the Chicago95 link I gather it can definitely be a
| "traditional desktop layout" style affair, perhaps with a
| different launcher.
|
| Can someone point out to me, as a Cinnamon user - who remembers
| the Windows 5 UI fondly -some aspects of XFCE I might find
| appealing?
| jasperry wrote:
| Scanning through the feature list, the more straightforward
| management of the application/mime type associations is a big win
| to me.
|
| Like probably most people who use XFCE, I appreciate how it
| focuses on small, incremental quality-of-life improvements
| instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
| coldpie wrote:
| Awesome. Been using XFCE for ages. It hits just the right spot of
| modern features and usability without trying to re-invent the
| desktop paradigm for the Nth time. If you just want "Win98, but
| in 2022," you've found your desktop environment.
|
| WRT this update, the Thunar updates look fantastic. The File
| Highlight feature looks especially cool. I can imagine using that
| to highlight really frequently used folders in my home dir
| ("projects" folder etc) to make them stand out in the file
| browser. Customizing the toolbar buttons is a welcome feature.
| I'm also glad to see improvements on the default application
| feature, which I found difficult to use before.
| dmm wrote:
| As an enthusiastic XFCE user, do you mind answering a question?
| How do you usually launch applications?
|
| I can appreciate the discoverability provided by a nested start
| menu but I've grown very fond of text launchers with
| autocomplete provided by gnome, mac os, dmenu, etc.
| blensor wrote:
| I know my desktop is a mess but I usually have one window
| with many terminals open.
|
| So if I want to start a program without going through the
| menu Alt Tab to the terminal window, then I start it from the
| commandline (gimp, code, blender, godot, etc.)
| branon wrote:
| Not the parent but I have the Xfce AppFinder bound to the
| Super (Windows) key. I think I'm somewhat misusing it, but
| it's fast enough that I can strike Super and then immediately
| start typing the name of what I want. Dropped keys are rare,
| but it's not quite as fast as something like dmenu.
| nor-and-or-not wrote:
| I use XFCE4 together with Albert
| https://albertlauncher.github.io/
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I usually open a term and run "screen myapp"
|
| I don't run that many applications though.
| pachico wrote:
| I'm also an old hardcore user of xfce (xubuntu) but I can't
| live without https://ulauncher.io/ or similar projects.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| I bind <ctrl> + <esc> to the "Application Finder". This makes
| it launch with keybindings matching those that launch the
| Windows start menu. I start typing the program and it narrows
| down the results until the program is selected. Then, I hit
| <enter> and it opens the program.
|
| * In Applications -> Settings Manager -> Keyboard Shortcuts
|
| * + Add
|
| * command: xfce4-appfinder
|
| * shortcut: Ctrl + Escape
|
| ----
|
| My other favorite bindings are to tile a window into a
| quadrant of the screen.
|
| Applications -> Settings Manager -> Window Manger -> Keyboard
|
| Search "Tile window to the top-left", et c.
|
| I hold ctrl + alt and then one of qwe
| a d zxc
|
| These commands tile the window to <top-
| left> <top> <top-right> <left> <right>
| <bot-left> <bot> <bot-right>
| rwmj wrote:
| For browser windows and terminals I have special Launcher
| buttons on the panel. For the rest, sometimes from the menu,
| often straight from the command line in a terminal.
| coldpie wrote:
| For super common stuff, I have icons in my panel for them and
| I use the mouse. I open Terminal so often that I gave it its
| own global keyboard shortcut.
|
| For less often used things, I use the xfce program launcher,
| which I think is what you're looking for. I have it mapped to
| some keyboard shortcut (the muscle memory is so automatic I
| don't even remember what the shortcut is and I'm not at my PC
| at the moment). It automatically focuses the text entry box,
| so no need for the mouse at all. Here's a screenshot from the
| linked article:
| https://alexxcons.github.io/images/blogpost_8/appfinder.png
| apricot wrote:
| Most of the time, I use dmenu_run (bound to super-R) for
| launching usual applications, and the menu for seldom-used
| ones.
| gen2brain wrote:
| I use gmrun for many years, in every DE, bind to Alt+F2. I am
| happy that now there is a new home here
| https://github.com/wdlkmpx/gmrun. I cannot imagine using
| something else.
| ufo wrote:
| Here's what I did back when I used XFCE a couple of years
| ago:
|
| The xfce whiskermenu plugin includes a text search feature
| that looks similar to the one from Windows. On Xubuntu the
| whiskermenu is the default "start menu" while in some other
| distros you may need to add it in the panel settings.
| Finally, in the keyboard shortcuts bind Super to the
| xfce4-popup-whiskermenu command, to bring up whisker menu for
| a text search.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Finally, in the keyboard shortcuts bind Super to the
| xfce4-popup-whiskermenu command, to bring up whisker menu
| for a text search.
|
| I've had this trigger the popup menu when there is another
| shortcut that binds the Super key in combination with
| something else. Say, if I had something under Super+R, then
| the menu would also open. Though maybe this has been
| patched out in the newer versions, I remember that issue
| being the case in an XFCE desktop from 2020.
|
| But other than that, this is indeed a really nice and
| usable setup!
| raisin_churn wrote:
| ksuperkey[0] addresses this, though it is unfortunately
| not widely packaged so you likely have to compile it. I
| haven't used it in a while, but it worked well when last
| I did.
|
| [0] https://github.com/hanschen/ksuperkey
| andai wrote:
| Same, so I rebound whiskermenu to Meta+Space.
| iza wrote:
| I worked around this issue using xcape to map my Super
| key to another key combo: xcape -e
| "Super_L=Alt_L|F1"
|
| Then set the keyboard shortcut for xfce4-popup-
| whiskermenu to the new combo (Alt+F1 in this case). This
| allows other Super shortcuts to work without triggering
| whiskermenu.
| jasperry wrote:
| Are you using WhiskerMenu? It should really have replaced the
| default application launcher by now. It upgrades the
| launching experience from Windows 98 to at least Windows 7.
| bhattisatish wrote:
| Not parent commentator, but in my case I do the following:
| rofi -show run
|
| The above command is mapped to Command-R Similarly Command is
| mapped `xfce4-popup-whiskermenu`
|
| Both land on a search box and you can search to your heart
| content and select the option that works for you :-)
| ollien wrote:
| +1 for Rofi
| [deleted]
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I use rofi on pretty much any desktop environment, it's
| super great. I'm eagerly awaiting its window-search feature
| getting wayland support (Knowing wayland it will be
| compositor-specific though...).
| aliqot wrote:
| I just right click the desktop and use the menu that pops up
| rglullis wrote:
| <super+R> (at least on my settings, don't remember if that is
| the default) opens "Application Launcher", which gives you a
| search prompt that finds (AFAICT) by executable name and
| definitions in _.desktop and_.service files.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > If you just want "Win98, but in 2022," you've found your
| desktop environment.
|
| If you want Windows 95 in 2022:
| https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
| cf100clunk wrote:
| While we're at it, you can customize XFCE to look like macOS
| Big Sur:
|
| https://invidious.baczek.me/watch?v=oQ8RWtD3MTQ
|
| EDIT: there is an updated version of this procedure:
|
| https://invidious.baczek.me/watch?v=uvvoJU69uNo
| gattilorenz wrote:
| > If you want Windows 95 in 2022
|
| Indeed the metaphor is apt: font/positioning problems that
| still can plague Linux in 2022, but didn't appear as much in
| Windows in 1995 :^)
| Koshkin wrote:
| Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FVWM95
| gsich wrote:
| It's actually pretty good. Sometimes the inconsistencies
| shine through.
| capableweb wrote:
| > WRT this update, the Thunar updates look fantastic
|
| Nice! I'm a Thunar user (but not XFCE in general) and missed
| that updates to Thunar was included until I saw your comment.
| As someone who deals a lot with images, the preview is a very
| welcome change! Really happy with Thunar.
| geek_at wrote:
| Can you finally resize windows with a larger grab area than
| 1pixel? That drove me nuts
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't use XFCE, but maybe it's possible to fix this with an
| xfwm4 theme? The theme I used on sawfish back in the day had a
| similar 1-pixel grab area, and I was able to change it by
| forking the theme and modifying it.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Same here. I love XFCE, but this is really annoying. I would
| solve it by protruding a small shape from the windows external
| sides/angles that can be grabbed more easily as soon as the
| mouse pointer approaches them, rather than using thicker
| windows borders.
| mhitza wrote:
| Could probably be theme dependent, as I have what look like 3
| pixels in there https://i.imgur.com/LD4BF4E.png :) (I use the
| Arc Dark theme)
|
| I usually do right click on the title bar to resize the window.
| But that muscle memory might have been conditioned from having
| to deal with 1px corners in the past!
| nicolas314 wrote:
| Try Alt+RightClick and drag. Not so easy on a trackpad but fine
| with mouse.
| julianlam wrote:
| That's fine and all (I make heavy use of this -- always miss
| it on Windows), but it's a workaround to a legitimately
| inferior UX decision.
|
| It's similar to when early Dell XPS's would overheat when
| gaming with the monitor open, because the monitor itself
| would block the sole exhaust vent. The workaround _then_ was
| to attach an external monitor and keep the laptop screen at
| 45 degrees.
| jayp1418 wrote:
| Only DE which supports all BSD, Linux most DEs have problem in
| one or other BSD or require lot of patches to be used with
| chungy wrote:
| GNOME and KDE both work fine on Linux and FreeBSD. In addition,
| OpenBSD usually gets the newest GNOMEs.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| It has gotten better on the BSDs, but there are a lot of
| patches and shims that have been implemented and maintained
| to do that though.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGwaT5rQML0&t=580s
| chungy wrote:
| Should be worth noting that NetBSD is its own thing;
| FreeBSD and OpenBSD haven't had problems getting the newest
| GNOME versions for the entire lifetime of 3.0 and higher.
|
| Unlike Linux, the BSDs aren't distributions of some
| "upstream BSD"; instead they are developed independently
| with different feature sets and different goals. Unique
| challenges for NetBSD don't reflect on how other BSD
| derivations behave.
| nortonham wrote:
| I think at least one of their devs uses OpenBSD as their
| primary OS, but I read that as a comment, so not sure if ture.
| It's great XFCE is available across distros and the BSD's
| Anthony-G wrote:
| One of the nice things about XFCE is that its window manager
| includes a style called "Kokodi" (on CentOS 8 Streaming) which
| shows the active or focused window with a distinctive blue title
| bar.
|
| I've found that many other window managers (including MS
| Windows), don't make this visually obvious (i.e., there's little
| difference between the focused and non-active windows) which
| makes it harder to discern which application is currently active
| while using multiple monitors.
| red_admiral wrote:
| THIS.
|
| I remember the days when you could pick a theme (which was just
| a set of bitmaps with a fixed palette) and then pick a couple
| of "accent colors" to customise it. If you picked your
| favourite shade of dark wine red as your GTK_ACCENT_COLOR
| (might have been called something else, I forget), then
| highlighted things like buttons, selected text, and the title
| bar of the active window only would be that color.
|
| I loved the old flexibility of being able to choose the shape
| of my buttons, title bars and widgets and then tweak the color
| myself - "I like that theme's rounded buttons, but I want them
| in red not blue" kind of thing.
| wooptoo wrote:
| The window style `Default-4.4` does the same. Incredibly
| useful.
| Koshkin wrote:
| General population needs a "desktop," I get it. But for those
| comfortable with the CLI, a window manager (e.g., one that _does
| not suck_ [0]) should be good enough. (Coming from personal
| experience - used Gnome /KDE/XFCE, enjoyed them all, in the end
| went back to a blissful world of MWM.)
|
| [0] http://dwm.suckless.org/
| clircle wrote:
| What does CLI have to do with tiling windows?
| Koshkin wrote:
| DWM and MWM are two different window managers; DWM supports
| various window layouts.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Well done. XFCE is a desktop for people who want just a desktop,
| and a file manager that manages files well - Thunar is a great
| piece of software IMO.
| schipplock wrote:
| yea, Thunar is a godsend.
| tux wrote:
| I've used XFCE (since Mar 9th, 2008 until Apr 7th, 2021) now
| using "i3-wm v4.21" as my main window manager on all computers.
| But I still use a lot of XFCE software like Thunar been most
| notable. Thunar has received much needed love, thank you to all
| developers making it better. Thunar now has "Split View" (dual
| pane mode) this is one of the reasons why I used more "PCManFM"
| or "ranger", but unlike Thunar "PCManFM" never had an option to
| hide "menu" in GTK only in QT. And now Thunar's menu/toolbar is
| more customizable. File Highlight is a nice addition, I've been
| using custom "LS_COLORS" for terminal for a while now. Now all
| the Thunar needs is embeded file info dialog similar to side pane
| and maybe ability to have toolbar vertical (on left or right) ;-)
|
| EDIT: One of the best choices XFCE team made is to not use/enable
| CSD [1] by default. This would of killed XFCE project for those
| of us who love classic XFCE look. Please never force users to use
| CSD, make it an option(al). Thank you!
|
| [1] Window Header Bars - All header bars of Xfce Windows/Dialogs
| by default will be drawn by the window manager now (Xfwm4). Some
| dialogs optionally support 'GtkHeaderBar' (CSD) which can be
| enabled via a xfconf setting.
| mizzack wrote:
| You should give i3 + XFCE a go... Start an XFCE session, launch
| Session and Startup settings, disable xfwm4 and xfdesktop, add
| i3, relogin. Done! XFCE DE with i3 window management.
| WHA8m wrote:
| Is this what they do with the Fedora i3 spin? Sounds (looks)
| a lot like it. I'm very new to Linux and I was wondering
| about "that other DE" when I just wanted i3. Maybe I have to
| go for Fedora Core + i3 separately then.
| dixie_land wrote:
| Interesting. I also run i3 with XFCE components but I cherry
| pick them and start them under my i3 session. Specifically I
| use the xfsettingsd from xfce so I can still customize the
| appearance using the Settings app, and without having to
| restart the session for them to take effect
| lastdong wrote:
| Best desktop manager ever, it's so lightweight but provides all
| the functionality you need, and super customisable too.
| alxlaz wrote:
| Does anyone know of a good way to disable that braindead window
| fading "feature" in GTK? If you look at the changelog, the text
| in the inactive window is barely readable. I have to squint to
| read it on most monitors.
|
| Fading it is also unnecessary in most applications. Gnome apps
| need to do it because they have no titlebar, but this isn't a
| problem in most cases, and xfwm can draw titlebars just fine.
|
| I know I can manually overload the GTK theme's backdrop
| properties but I was kind of hoping someone on the Interwebs
| found a way that doesn't require me to drag .css hacks over
| umpteen computers.
|
| Background: a good chunk of my work involves things like
| comparing simulation and measurement results among multiple
| applications/windows. Text in inactive windows being unreadable
| is a little counterproductive when I try to do that. I
| begrudgingly put up with the huge widgets but having to squint at
| screens for eight hours a day is not fun.
|
| (FWIW, Adwaita is even worse).
| jasperry wrote:
| I think it's the compositor doing that. In XFCE, you can
| control that from the "Window Manager Tweaks" app, in the
| "compositor" tab.
| alxlaz wrote:
| It's not the compositor, sadly, this is a GTK "feature". GTK
| allows you to define colors for various elements separately,
| depending on whether the window has focus or not. This is a
| good idea on paper, but in practice it seems this either
| doesn't have enough granularity (to allow e.g. dimming button
| text, which is probably useless when the window doesn't have
| focus, but not the text in text views, for instance, which
| you might actually want to read even from unfocused windows),
| or most theme designers, including Adwaita's, use it
| indiscriminately.
|
| If you have a high-DPI monitor with good contrast it actually
| looks okay. But I routinely have to work with work-issued,
| ten year-old monitors in artificially-lit offices. It's
| really terrible.
| jasperry wrote:
| I see. I guess the only solution is to go on a theme hunt,
| then. I use Bunsen themes with XFCE, and haven't
| encountered that problem, but I don't use a lot of GTK3
| apps.
| cwillu wrote:
| Settings | Window Manager Tweaks | Compositor | Opacity of
| inactive windows
| alxlaz wrote:
| That is not what I'm asking about. I don't mean the _opacity_
| of inactive window. What I want to disable is GTK 's setting
| of the color of various elements depending on whether the
| window has focus or not. Even with compositor opacity set at
| 100%, GTK windows that don't have focus get that dim grey
| text. The color is, technically, theme-defined;
| unfortunately, both Adwaita and Greybird use a really low-
| contrast color that I find really difficult to read on some
| monitors.
| happyjack wrote:
| Kudos for the xfce team to keep up the project after all these
| years. I haven't used desktop Linux in a couple years, but
| xubuntu and Debian / xfce were always great experiences.
|
| I think this project is really underrated, and I think xfce yo
| and attitudes towards interface are really good. It's also super
| stable!
| Kukumber wrote:
| It is in my favorite Desktop Environment
|
| I moved to XFCE when Canonical announced going back to Gnome 3
|
| I wish they'd replace the Gnome filepicker too, that is the worst
| piece of garbage i ever seen, you can't even manually type a
| path!!
| capableweb wrote:
| > I wish they'd replace the Gnome filepicker too, that is the
| worst piece of garbage i ever seen, you can't even manually
| type a path!!
|
| Don't have it in front of me right now, but can't you hit
| CTRL+L to bring up the "address bar" and manually write the
| path there?
|
| CTRL+L works in a lot of places to enter paths, from web
| browsers to local disk browsers.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Issues i have with the path bar (from the top of my head)
|
| 1. it is not permanent, it disappears and never remember
| anything
|
| 2. it doesn't respect the paths (can't navigate)
|
| 3. i don't want to play a keyboard shortcuts game
|
| That's just one of the issues i have with the Gnome
| Filepicker, there is also the mounted disks that appears like
| it's a mobile UX, and many more, i have a document with
| everything that i hate about it, but i'm not on my PC to
| share it, it is an UX disaster
|
| I wish i could use Thunar as a filepicker, that would be
| perfect
| capableweb wrote:
| > 1. it is not permanent, it disappears and never remember
| anything
|
| What is it supposed to remember? Last path you opened?
| Seems to work fine for me in Firefox at least. First I
| tried uploading a image to imgur from my Downloads
| directory, then next time I wanted to select a picture it
| opened into the Downloads directory. Then I uploaded a
| image from my Pictures directory and next time it opened,
| it opened directly to the Pictures directory. Is this not
| what you mean?
|
| > 2. it doesn't respect the paths (can't navigate)
|
| Not sure what this means, if you type in /tmp and then
| Enter it'll navigate to /tmp just as you expect it to. If
| you're in /tmp/directory it shows "$DriveName / tmp /
| directory" and clicking on any of them navigates to the
| right place.
|
| > 3. i don't want to play a keyboard shortcuts game
|
| Why do you want to have a path bar that you type into then
| if you don't want to use the keyboard? Just manually
| double-click your way to success instead of using the
| keyboard, nothing is stopping you. Either use the keyboard,
| or don't. Both approaches work.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| At least on normal Ubuntu 22.04 the path bar behaves as
| you'd expect - it shows what you've clicked on, and if you
| click on the path bar and start typing a path it goes where
| you say.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > i have a document with everything that i hate about it
|
| I can save you the effort by reminding everyone that the
| GTK3 file picker is a _significant_ setback from the
| Windows 98 filepicker, and it the amount of times I
| encounter it on Linux is beginning to feel like
| flagellation.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Can you explain why you think it's worse?
| HeckFeck wrote:
| No thumbnail images. It is a meme for good reason. Really
| annoying after how many years waiting?
|
| Low on details, extremely limited customisation options.
|
| When I begin typing a file name to save a file, it
| interprets this as a desire to filter the contents of the
| file list.
|
| The aforementioned lack of any path or way to type in the
| full path to a location.
|
| There were more but thankfully I don't see it as often
| since I use KDE now.
|
| This site compares the two directly:
| https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-
| thumbna...
| stonogo wrote:
| The thumbnails-in-filepicker feature branch was merged
| recently:
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/5163
|
| The rest of your complaints, which I share, remain
| unfixed.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| So the reason it's broken, is that it doesn't do all the
| annoying things that make the file picker in Windows 98
| broken?
|
| Granted I've never used Windows 98 so I don't know what
| I'd compare it with but all those misfeatures sound
| annoying.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I think you've read me wrongly. All that I described
| above are problems in the GTK3 file picker that aren't
| problems in the Windows 98 file picker.
|
| See the linked web page for a screenshot of the W98
| picker for a visual aid.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yes, the Windows 98 one is broken.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| If you think that not having image thumbnails for image
| files in a filepicker is a 'feature', you must be
| trolling. Or a Gnome developer.
| severine wrote:
| https://feaneron.com/2022/12/14/the-burial-of-the-filechoose...
| rrmm wrote:
| I've been using XFCE for many years now (currently though
| Xubuntu). It stays out of the way. I'm glad to see continued
| improvements without forcing a complete remake or overhaul for
| the sake of change.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Custom Actions_
|
| > _It is now possible to arrange custom actions in cascading
| submenus. Just enter the same submenu name for a custom action in
| order to place it into the same menu. If you require multiple
| menu levels, you can achieve that by using ` /` in the path of
| the 'Submenu' entry._
|
| In 2012 KDE AppMenu Runner was presented as a "plugin which
| allows to browse, search and select the menubar of the active
| application".[0]
|
| In 2019 I requested to somehow implement a feature, similar to
| _Blender_ 's "Menu Search"/"Operator Search"[1], into _Olive
| Video Editor_.[2]
|
| After resulted0 _" Action Search"_ was implemented into _Olive
| Video Editor_ (` /`) shortcut, its code was reused for _" Action
| Search"_ in _Scribus_ (`Ctrl+ /`) and then converted into
| Qt5-plugin.[3,4]
|
| Year later, this Qt5-plugin code reused in for implementing
| global _" Action Search"_ in _helloSystem_ FreeBSD
| distribution.[5]
|
| Then _" Search and Run a Command"_ (`/`) was added into
| _GIMP_.[6]
|
| Guess, _GIMP_ 's implementation may be used for other GTK-based
| apps too (especially _Inkscape_ , which still has no such
| feature).
|
| [0] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/appmenu-runner-the-
| kde-h...
|
| [1]
| https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/controls...
|
| [2] https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/265
|
| [3] https://github.com/scribusproject/scribus/issues/109
|
| [4] https://github.com/aoloe/scribus-plugin-actionSearch
|
| [5] https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/21
|
| [6] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5601
| mongol wrote:
| I love XFCE but it has some strange bug with custom keybindings
| that unfortunately spoils the experience for me. I have spent
| many hours trying to work around it but eventually gave up.
| codeulike wrote:
| Weird that the page neglects to explain what xfce is, even by
| hyperlink
|
| After several clicks:
|
| _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._
| bgorman wrote:
| XFCE should be spending all of its development efforts on
| supporting Wayland. The project's priorities are clearly not in
| the right place to ensure the future growth of the project.
| Market share will continue to decline until wayland support is
| added, no matter how great any new features are.
| oblio wrote:
| If you view Xfce as the hobby project for several undergrad and
| grad students, you will understand their priorities better.
| josteink wrote:
| I don't know. Wayland support is very important (tm) to us
| Wayland-users, but I don't know how the rest of the world feels
| about that.
|
| It could be like that whole _kerning_ -thing which is super-
| mega important to some people, while the rest of the world
| don't even notice?
| nortonham wrote:
| X always worked fine for me and my basic use case. I do agree
| something new is needed to replace it, but I don't have a
| need to try it until it's more mature.
| rwmj wrote:
| People also complain loudly about Hi-DPI support and tearing
| with X. I've not noticed either of them being an issue ever.
| I can play videos fine and I can plug my laptop into a 55"
| TV, and it all just works (as far as I can tell) with plain
| old X11.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> People also complain loudly about Hi-DPI support and
| tearing with X. I've not noticed either of them being an
| issue ever. _
|
| Why wouldn't they complain for something that affects them?
| If you don't have any issues, that's great for you, but
| that doesn't help those who do in any way, so why do you
| downplay their issues?
| stevedonovan wrote:
| I've honestly never noticed the problem, so I never saw the
| problem with X in the first place.
|
| (It is possible that I have never experienced a truly
| beautiful desktop, but my eyes are no longer particularly
| precise enough to operate at modern pixel densities)
| izacus wrote:
| The whole point of Wayland is that you don't need "precise
| enough eyes" to comfortably use modern pixel densities.
|
| But for that you need a functional UI scaling system
| provided by the Waylands rework.
| bgorman wrote:
| HiDPI support and fractional scaling are simply must-haves
| for anyone with a computer built after 2011.
| boudin wrote:
| Switching to wayland is not a small feat, even if libraries
| like wlroots can reduce significantly the work. XFCE is not a
| commerical project, it doesn't really care about market share I
| guess. They have plans to move towards wayland support but
| those things takes time.
| rwmj wrote:
| Does Wayland support network transparent applications yet?
| znpy wrote:
| yes, but nah.
|
| Yes, wayland is the future, is cool, is better and everything.
|
| And yet, I don't really care about it. I'll stay on Xorg as
| long as XFCE stays on Xorg. I'll move to wayland as soon as
| XFCE moves to wayland.
|
| And I know that the Xfce people already have plans for wayland
| support.
| otikik wrote:
| > Market share will continue to decline until wayland support
| is added, no matter how great any new features are.
|
| It might be that they are not interested on "Market share". Or
| they are but not enough to justify the work. I'm sure they
| would be glad to accept a pull request.
| biggunz wrote:
| I had to abandon XFCE due to some issue with aging XFCE4
| libraries and high cpu problems, switched to KDE Plasma 5.x,.
| got 50% longer battery lifetime and havent looked back.
|
| They need to focus on these kinds of problems, not on adding
| new features, otherwise I would have stayed.
| nortonham wrote:
| what about a DE's libraries would make it drain so much
| battery life?
| geon wrote:
| Does xfce do a lot of the graphics in software? That is
| very inefficient on modern hardware.
| nortonham wrote:
| I have no idea, I was asking because it's not something I
| know enough about.
| sph wrote:
| I would love to try XFCE on Wayland. I used to love that DE,
| but I haven't been able to stand uncomposited Xorg in a decade
| (running xcompmgr is not good enough).
|
| Are there concrete plans to migrate to wayland?
|
| EDIT: of course you're getting downvoted because you dared
| utter the W-word. Come on people, this is not Reddit.
| lottin wrote:
| XFCE has had its own compositor for ages.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Are there concrete plans to migrate to wayland?
|
| Yes, of course. Two minutes of searching would have led you
| here: https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap Come on,
| sph, this is not Reddit.
|
| > of course you're getting downvoted because you dared utter
| the W-word. Come on people, this is not Reddit.
|
| I downvoted them because I think it's rude to complain about
| how others choose to spend their time contributing to open
| source projects.
| senko wrote:
| > Two minutes of searching would have led you here:
| https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap
|
| That page says: "For Xfce 4.18, the plan is to ensure our
| applications are working acceptably on Wayland"
|
| Since this is the 4.18 release and Wayland is not mentioned
| in the blog post, it's reasonable to ask if that plan is
| still in place. (I do agree it's up to XFCE maintainers and
| contributors to set the pace, if any, for Wayland support).
| coldpie wrote:
| > it's reasonable to ask if that plan is still in place
|
| Do you think it is more likely that that user found the
| wiki page, performed the same analysis as you, then came
| back here to ask their question without mentioning any of
| the research they did; or they just turded out the first
| question they could think of and did zero research trying
| to answer it for themselves?
| mpol wrote:
| I am happy they decided to spend their time first on supporting
| GTK v3. GTK v2 is disappearing from distro's and the situation
| was getting urgent. This happened on 4.16 and I suppose a lot
| more small work for it happened in 4.18.
|
| I am also happy they decided to release more often, allthough
| once a year turned out to be too short. Supporting applications
| on Wayland is already a great step. How they decide to build
| their Wayland compositor is not fully clear, I think it is wise
| they take the time for that, to build something that they can
| support and maintain for years to come with a small team of
| people.
| sylware wrote:
| Hopefully we get wayland for 4.20. Namely xfce needs its
| compositor.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Wayland support would be great! Can we see your patches to add
| it?
| Scramblejams wrote:
| I see a lot of pushback here but I'll mention why I'm eager for
| my DE of choice to get Wayland support: Gaming under Xorg with
| multi-monitors can get very hitchy/teary, and Wayland is
| focused on smooth frame delivery.
|
| Details if anyone wants it: The game itself may only be running
| on one monitor, but it doesn't matter, if I have multi monitors
| active it'll hitch. You can apparently mitigate this somewhat
| by making sure all your monitors are running the exact same
| frame rate, but two of my monitors run 59.95Hz while the third
| runs 59.92Hz, that's not close enough, and I can't seem to get
| them to something common like 59.00 Hz. I tried disabling two
| monitors while playing on the third, and it's better, but still
| far from perfect.
|
| I tried a very recent KDE on Wayland and while gaming felt
| smooth, its multi-monitor support is very buggy right now --
| actually the whole DE felt really buggy -- so that's out.
|
| I really wish gamescope could be run on top of Xorg and the
| game could 'just' run in that...
| type0 wrote:
| You can combine XFCE with Gala window manager (from Elementary),
| it isn't perfect but it can look good.
| jasperry wrote:
| Thank you for this information, I'm interested. Does Gala let
| you bind keyboard shortcuts for window moving/resizing actions?
| That's the main reason I'm still using OpenBox with XFCE.
| Blue111 wrote:
| Not sure when it came out but I'm already using it in Arch. I
| like to use Nemo file manager instead of Thunar though.
| noir_lord wrote:
| XFCE was my main desktop for a long time, it's what I'd go back
| to if Cinnamon ever stopped been the one I use everywhere -
| Cinnamon in many ways feels like what XFCE would have been if it
| was started decades later - it also (like XFCE) doesn't screw
| with the standard desktop UX approach and that's a must for me,
| 28 years of using basically the same approach makes me feel
| uncomfortable on anything else.
| osrec wrote:
| I really enjoy the Linux lightweight desktop environments. Not as
| whizzy as some of the heavyweight environments, but so much more
| usable and functional, in my opinion.
|
| I am personally a fan of LXDE. It just gets out of my way and
| lets me do stuff!
| coldpie wrote:
| > It just gets out of my way and lets me do stuff!
|
| Ahh, but think of the value our users would get out of us
| presenting them with Amazon ads in their DE!
| friendlyHornet wrote:
| > Ahh, but think of the value our users would get out of us
| presenting them with Amazon ads in their DE
|
| What? Is this in regards to what Cannonical did back in 2013
| or something else?
|
| If it is about the Cannonical scandal, I am not sure how
| that's related to DEs, since it was Ubuntu doing it
|
| Or did something similar happen again with a specific DE?
| gfaster wrote:
| Well, Canonical did put ads in apt[1]
|
| [1]: https://askubuntu.com/q/1434512
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I remember in maybe 2011/2012, Ubuntu did have embedded ads
| in their Unity DE.
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-
| ubuntu-1210-am...
| osrec wrote:
| Not sure exactly what the OP was getting at, but it might
| be a dig at Windows and the random junk it keeps popping up
| now and again (news updates and whatnot).
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, that's the direct reference[1] but also more recent
| junk like ads in Explorer on Windows[2]. They're examples
| of the DE (maybe the wrong term, sorry) devs getting in the
| way of users doing what they want to do.
|
| [1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/mark-shuttleworth-
| explai...
|
| [2] https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979251/microsoft-
| file-e...
| JayGuerette wrote:
| I've used XFCE seemingly forever, at least 20 years.
|
| In recent years I've grown to dislike Thunar and a variety of
| other things that were mostly GTK issues and some XFCE issues. I
| was really frustrated with clicking on the system tray and having
| that click register as a click on the menu that popped up, that
| just so happened to be 'Quit', and closing the app.
|
| Then I upgraded my computer in a huge jump. Sure, games were
| faster, but I wouldn't enjoy the results of my investment at any
| given moment. So I switched to KDE for the first time ever, with
| animations and sexiness everywhere. It's got it's issues, and
| it's multi-monitor support is really sub-par, but so many things
| suddenly work better.
|
| Best example: The flow of clicking on a ZIP to download and
| ultimately looking at the extacted output in new folder is
| suddenly effortless and intuitive.
|
| I love the polish of KDE and while I'm tempted to give XFCE
| another try, the thought of giving up on the effortless sanity of
| KDE for GTK funk makes me shudder.
| nice_byte wrote:
| > I love the polish of KDE
|
| this is really funny, because to me, KDE starting from ~4 is
| the gaudiest thing I've seen.
| walrus01 wrote:
| everything after kde2 is absurd. KDE literally twenty years
| ago was great.
| jraph wrote:
| Versions 4 and 5 look radically different.
|
| Version 3 was fine. Very fine even for the time.
|
| I didn't really like the default look of version 4. Oxygen
| had depressing colors, it lacked fineness. I always switched
| the theme to Fusion, or Cleanlooks, which imitated the
| Clearlooks GTK theme.
|
| Version 5, with Breeze, is really good. Very elegant. By the
| way I also tend to find Gnome with the Breeze theme way nicer
| than with Adwaita (which is already fine).
|
| The only DE I find almost as nice looking as Plasma with the
| default settings is macOS.
|
| They are also constantly cleaning up the UI and making it
| simpler, bit by bit.
| biggunz wrote:
| I loved XFCE4 for probably a decade, but the constant CPU usage
| bugs made me switch to KDE Plasma, havent looked back.
| djbusby wrote:
| What bugs? I've used XFCE for 15+ years on desktop, laptop,
| Intel and AMD. Never seen this issue.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Er. Don't get me wrong, I like KDE and I like XFCE, but if
| you're hitting fewer bugs in KDE than XFCE then the least I can
| say is that your experience is very different from mine. That
| goes double for resource use, where KDE has made _massive_
| improvements but last I looked their file indexer was still a
| huge resource hog.
| iza wrote:
| > Thunar: It is now possible to add a 'file creation date' column
|
| Finally! Coming from Windows this is something I've always
| missed.
|
| I know older filesystems didn't support it but EXT4 has been the
| default for years now.
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