This seems like a ton of work and a great achievement. XFCE, for whatever reason, is always my go to desktop environment and really just "feels like home". Thank you to everyone who contributed.
- Coherency: the way it works and is presented does not change much over the years. It's important for me. I don't want to adapt everytime a designer thinks he has a good idea.
- Simplicity: it just works and is well configured out of the box
- Efficiency: not the lightest Desktop Manager in the market but it is light enough so it won't eat resources for nothing
- Right level of complexity: there is enough to configure it to adapt it to your needs but not too much to make it a mess. Take the xfce console for example: you can rename tabs, move them and search text in them. Last time I check these features were not available in Gnome Terminal. But at the same time I don't want much more than that.
Coherency is really important for me: Xfce has been there when Gnome / Unity / Gnome 3 / Mate / Cinnamon were confusing me by offering all the same but not really the same.
Edit: I wrote "consistency" instead of "coherency" but I guess the right term is coherency in this context.
Same here. I use it with LM20. I just love its simplicity. For me the peak of desktop UX was Windows 98. No feature since then convinced me. Tiles, docks, animations, ... just NO! Except for [Super] triggering a search for applications ... [Super], [f][i], [Enter] -> Firefox opens up. IIRC that didn't exist in Windows 98.
I haven't used Xfce in a long time, but it will always have a soft spot in my heart. It kept my computer usable when I was a teenager, and was the first open source project I contributed to (translations). Congrats to the Xfce team on the new release, and on having hit their stride again, it seems, with the move to GitLab.
Same! I wonder if they added in the ability to make the window resize edges wider than 1pixel yet. So many wasted hours trying to find the resize pixel on all the windows
Odd how no one has mentioned the addition of client side decorations. Personally it's a huge dealbreaker for me, I really dislike how they look. It's a shame, because the release and Xfce in general otherwise seems really good. Guess I'll stick to MATE for now.
Yeah I agree, I been using XFCE for many years but I think that CSD is a bad move! I hope they at least remove search bar from titles. If they don't improve it, I may have to switch to i3.
Fractional scaling finally arrived, I will try it ASAP. Last time I looked in to Xfce there was no way to have a fixed workspace on a secondary display (something that possible in Gnome, for instance). Since I use workspace a lot having a secondary display is kind of useless because it switches workspace at the same time. I since started to use the rather fine Xfce+Awesome combination, but should Xfce get a fixed workspace feature I might go with pure Xfce again.
Oh no, those icons. Shadows and depth without perspective looks really awkward. Lots of the icons blend into the background because of low contrast and lack of border or drop shadow. I really liked the tango icons.
Well, I don't have a strong opinion on them myself, but I can offer you some reassurance: this is Linux. There's always at least a few programmers grumpy enough in response to any kind of change that they'll do something about it and provide some option to use the old thing. I'm sure the tango icons will have their own legacy icon theme soon enough, if not already.
Icons are trivial to change in Linux. If you preferred the Tango icon pack then just set the icon pack to Tango. There are GUI utilities to manage this for you too.
lxde is so dang light (especially installation and memory wise) though :) . It is my go to for a VM where I need GUI stuff but don't want to pay too much for it.
One of the great things about Xfce is that everything is just a standalone component.
My desktop is Xmonad and xfce-panel works great on it. I use panel, settings, power-manager from Xfce (probably a few more). It's very stable and its simple and flat design makes it a great fit for tiling window managers.
Was I the only one who shed a tear when XFCE stopped having the CDE-alike panel design?
I wonder if it's sort of a signal of the evolution of the free-software desktop experience.
A lot of the '90s/'00s paradigms were pretty strongly "we're trying to replicate the experience of a lustworthy expensive system" -- see WindowMaker/AfterStep to look like a NeXT, FVWM to look like Motif back when that was expensive and proprietary, IceWM offering OS/2 style themes, and how everyone went to make workalike themes when the QNX Photon "full desktop on a 1.44M floppy" demo disc dropped.
Now, they just have their own styles, but at the same time, they seem less uniquely identifiable.
I like the xfce look and the xfce specific apps unfortunately I tried using xfce on a dell xps 15 laptop and had problems with screen tearing while scrolling up/down. I never found a fix so ended up on KDE.
I hope they redo the old GTK and XFWM themes for XFCE but for GTK3. Some themes had no match, specially that one yellow/lavender one with a gradient window close to the XP colours, but with no bezels.
Had previously been testing in a Docker image [1], but this is a bit more convenient. OpenSuSE has a number of useful options I was previously unaware of.
Does anybody know how hard is it to switch from gnome to xfce on arch linux? Is it just removing gnome and installing xfce?
Maybe someone could share their experience who has made the switch recently. If it is not a big thing that could potentially break everything, then I'd be happy to try it out.
Start by just installing the xfce4 packages. Then when you're on the login screen, I believe there is a "cog" icon somewhere that let's you choose your session. Choose Xfce. Enjoy.
If you enjoy it enough, you can uninstall Gnome packages. Just make sure not to uninstall GDM unless you want to replace it with something else. I'm sure the Arch wiki has suggestions on the Xfce page.
In Xubuntu the login manager lets you switch between whatever DE you like. I think the Xubuntu login manager is lightdm so if you set that up properly you should be able to have both XFCE and Gnome easily. There were some ways Lightdm and XFCE didn't play very nicely together, especially around screen locking, but it's possible they've been fixed.
Find the Arch page on installing XFCE and it will tell you the combination of packages you want and after the install log out and you should be able to select your desktop via your login manager. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce
[+] [-] severine|5 years ago|reply
"Moderator" doesn't make him justice, though: ToZ will help you achieve almost anything imaginable when it comes to Xfce, and then some!
Big kudos to all the Xfce team and community, and extra sweet love to ToZ, you rock!
[+] [-] utxaa|5 years ago|reply
xfce is a gem. ToZ is the man.
[+] [-] m8s|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kototama|5 years ago|reply
- Coherency: the way it works and is presented does not change much over the years. It's important for me. I don't want to adapt everytime a designer thinks he has a good idea.
- Simplicity: it just works and is well configured out of the box
- Efficiency: not the lightest Desktop Manager in the market but it is light enough so it won't eat resources for nothing
- Right level of complexity: there is enough to configure it to adapt it to your needs but not too much to make it a mess. Take the xfce console for example: you can rename tabs, move them and search text in them. Last time I check these features were not available in Gnome Terminal. But at the same time I don't want much more than that.
Coherency is really important for me: Xfce has been there when Gnome / Unity / Gnome 3 / Mate / Cinnamon were confusing me by offering all the same but not really the same.
Edit: I wrote "consistency" instead of "coherency" but I guess the right term is coherency in this context.
[+] [-] 74d-fe6-2c6|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] himujjal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
started https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21329632
4.14 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20672890
oops https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13948228
releases https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642857
4.12 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9125474
debian https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675945
not debian https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762472
debian https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4374089
debian https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356197
4.10 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904201
linus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843366
4.8 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111106
[+] [-] Vinnl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterydip|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geek_at|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int_19h|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wwwhizz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] December_Stars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tux|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayneftw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibudiyanto|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renke1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigzero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ragnese|5 years ago|reply
Unless, of course, your preferences just changed, or you didn't really like Unity either.
[+] [-] cosmotic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanderZwan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnlmorg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_k|5 years ago|reply
Same with GTK themes.
[+] [-] ChuckNorris89|5 years ago|reply
They look more like the icons from a phone from 2004, like a Motorola or Symbian OS.
Still love XFCE.
[+] [-] Der_Einzige|5 years ago|reply
Not slow, not bloated, just a DE as it should be.
The alternatives simply don't work for me. lxde or lxqt are horribly ugly to me.
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stunt|5 years ago|reply
My desktop is Xmonad and xfce-panel works great on it. I use panel, settings, power-manager from Xfce (probably a few more). It's very stable and its simple and flat design makes it a great fit for tiling window managers.
[+] [-] OscarCunningham|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hakfoo|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if it's sort of a signal of the evolution of the free-software desktop experience.
A lot of the '90s/'00s paradigms were pretty strongly "we're trying to replicate the experience of a lustworthy expensive system" -- see WindowMaker/AfterStep to look like a NeXT, FVWM to look like Motif back when that was expensive and proprietary, IceWM offering OS/2 style themes, and how everyone went to make workalike themes when the QNX Photon "full desktop on a 1.44M floppy" demo disc dropped.
Now, they just have their own styles, but at the same time, they seem less uniquely identifiable.
[+] [-] atum47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrpotato|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tux|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggyb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alekq|5 years ago|reply
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/xfce:/rat:/i...
[+] [-] bsg75|5 years ago|reply
Had previously been testing in a Docker image [1], but this is a bit more convenient. OpenSuSE has a number of useful options I was previously unaware of.
[1] https://github.com/schuellerf/xfce-test
[+] [-] bflesch|5 years ago|reply
Maybe someone could share their experience who has made the switch recently. If it is not a big thing that could potentially break everything, then I'd be happy to try it out.
[+] [-] ragnese|5 years ago|reply
If you enjoy it enough, you can uninstall Gnome packages. Just make sure not to uninstall GDM unless you want to replace it with something else. I'm sure the Arch wiki has suggestions on the Xfce page.
[+] [-] filmor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukeschlather|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply