
Releases for XFCE - wwwhizz
https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2017/02/13/releases-releases-releases/
======
byuu
Sigh, are they seriously bringing GTK3's client-side decorations and lack of
title bars to Xfce??!

Applications should have title bars. This is how it's been done everywhere
since pretty much the first Xerox GUI. Monitors are bigger than ever today. I
promise, people can spare 10 pixels of vertical space so that they can see the
name of the application being run (and the name of documents open in said
application), and have a very easy area to click on to move the window around
with. GTK3 CSDs also break the user's ability to choose a window manager
theme. It also removes the possibility to disable the toolbar area from
certain applications, eg text editors. They also tend to result in
applications that lack traditional menubars, which are very useful for complex
programs.

I have already dropped every last Gnome 3 application over this nonsense. This
is going to be horrendous to have to stop using Xfce now, too.

Sorry, I know HN doesn't like negativity, but this "change for the sake of it"
stuff is getting really old. I just want to keep using my computer the way
that's worked just fine for me for the past 25 years. This really is a step
backward in usability. I don't want to have to target tiny slivers between
widgets, or hold down Alt to move windows around. And for applications I want
an actual toolbar in, I don't like how most of the toolbar icons disappear so
that things can be merged into the titlebar area.

~~~
reitanqild
_Sorry, I know HN doesn 't like negativity, but this "change for the sake of
it" stuff is getting really old. _

Agree.

I sense I am getting old and grumpy but there is something to learn here:
there seems to be an increasing number of people, even in open source, who
just want stuff to _work_.

I just want Ubuntu, dropline gnome, updated drivers, backed by a commercial
vendor that I can pay a reasonable amount to to make sure they _never_ let
designers, ux people, product managers etc _experiment_ with my desktop.
Polishing it like Ubuntu originally did was totally ok though.

I don't want "spatial navigation" in Gnome. I don't want to have to think
application or document" when I hit alt-tab, or having to wait for a (IMO, I
know some people love this feature, but bear with my rant here) retarded alt-
tab to understand that I want to switch to a document under the app I have
switched to, then wait again for it to slide out nicely.

No! I want alt tab to switch through my last used windows. If it looks really
nice, bonus.

I want my drivers to work. Etc.

And most of all: I don't want Linux to copy Mac! If I want a Mac I can get my
boss to get me one!

~~~
treve
Could be wrong, but I kind of feel that you might want to give Kubuntu a shot.
Everything is really predictable, but it still looks nice.

~~~
xioxox
I use KDE on a day-to-day basis, but I wouldn't call it that predictable.
They're still infected by the rewrite and change everything disease. They also
introduced pointless frameworks like anakondi which had dreadful performance.
KDE4 was a incomplete buggy disaster at first and KDE5 can still be pretty
buggy. This week my KDE panel decided to vanish losing all its configuration.
I'd like to use something which just works, like KDE3 did.

~~~
smueller1234
Amen. KDE4 was a disaster in the beginning. I toughed it out then. I was in
academia and could spend some hours dealing with breakage.

When Ubuntu shipped KDE5, normal usability stuff broke horribly again.
Nowadays I have two kids and a job managing a large IT organisation. I simply
can't defend spending the time any more. So I switched to xfce for the time
being. Of that breaks the UI in any comparable way, I give in to the hordes
that keep ridiculing me for not using a Mac. :(

~~~
reitanqild
Honest question:

What do yo mean by "normal usability stuff broke horribly again"?

I'm using Neon now and it is one of the least annoying distros and DEs I have
ever worked with.

~~~
smueller1234
Totally fair question. Sorry for not being more specific. All multi monitor
and docking/undocking broke in seemingly random ways. That's despite giving
state transitions ample time (ie. not detaching a screen and then immediately
closing the laptop to put it to sleep).

Also I was bit by the bug that somebody else mentioned here: the panels would
disappear with sweet reliability. If I remember correctly, this was a bug that
would hide the existing dock. So if you simpy recreated it, you'd have two
running side by side, and so on.

There was more but I don't remember specifics. The screen issues were enough
to be a big practical problem for me.

Edit: speeling

~~~
reitanqild
Thanks!

I don't use docking and rarely use multiple monitors so that might explain a
bit of the difference in experience.

------
omegote
Only XFCE has given me back the joy of using Linux on the desktop that I used
to feel with Gnome 2.x after the crap of Gnome 3 and the honorable but not-
quite-there attempts of Cinnamon and Mate.

Do you guys have any tips on contributing to XFCE? As far as I've heard, they
mostly use C/C++ and Python, the two languages I'm more experienced with.

~~~
cyphax
> Only XFCE has given me back the joy of using Linux on the desktop that I
> used to feel with Gnome 2.x

I feel exactly the same way! I never really got used to KDE's looks; I've
always had a preference for the look Gnome 2.x had, and when that ended, Xfce
filled the gap brilliantly. So much so, that MATE hasn't replaced it since
(eventhough I have it installed also), especially since I started using
Whisker Menu. I have many nice things to say about Xfce, so I hope it stays.
:)

~~~
macco
What's wrong with the look of Breeze?

~~~
kijin
Breeze is light years ahead of Oxygen (or whatever the default theme on KDE 4
was called), but I cannot shake the feeling that it will be replaced with
something else before it is done being polished. KDE doesn't seem to like
stability.

~~~
macco
I hope they don't polish too much. The already polished the circle from the
X-Button on the title bar away. Which is no improvement.

Besides that KDE is fuckin' great, imo.

------
peatmoss
XFCE is the (maybe only?) boring desktop environment that does exactly what it
says on the tin and who can be trusted to make thoughtful incremental progress
rather than changes for change's sake. You can't duplicate this sense of
enduring without lots of time.

I mostly pair XFCE with XMonad to get some creature comforts plus automatic
window tiling. I've thought about trying to patch XFWM to add automatic tiling
--the one and only "power feature" I can't live without in XFCE.

I remember when XFCE was billed mainly as a CDE clone and thus got lumped in
with other "nostalgia desktop recreation" projects for a lot pf folks. Since
that time it's really come into its own.

------
Longhanks
Hopefully XFWM4 will someday support full 60fps vsync compositing without any
tearing. That would make XFCE the perfect desktop environment for me. For now,
I am relying on Compton.

~~~
andreyv
Xfwm4 already supports two methods of tear-free compositing, OpenGL and X
Present, for a few years now. You need to build from git master to use them.

------
kijin
Crashy Thunar has been my only complaint with XFCE so far. I'm glad that it
has been fixed!

Thunar is an absolutely gorgeous file manager that does what it should, no
less, no more. It embodies the essence of what I like the most about XFCE: it
is living proof that simplicity and elegance are compatible with treating your
users as adults.

~~~
wiz21c
just for the sake of the useless argument, I(ve used Thunar but for me at
least, it's quite slow. Somehow Dolphin (kde's file manager) is much better (I
use openbox WM and Dolphin is the only KDE component I use regularly)

~~~
kijin
I found Dolphin clunkier and slower than Thunar when I tried it, but that
might have to do with the fact the I was trying to run KDE in a virtual
machine. Thanks for the suggestion anyway, I'll give it another go the next
time I feel like switching distros.

------
raspberrytart
Just posted to say I use XFCE every day and love it. Thanks for your hard
work.

------
Slackwise
If only they'd add a proper "dock" widget, then I can go back from my hacked-
up Gnome 3 setup.

Guess I should put my foot where my mouth is and code one up.

~~~
realharo
I use DockbarX
([https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx](https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx)), which
you can configure to act very much like the taskbar from Windows (one of the
best Windows features imo). Unfortunately the window previews don't work in
Xfce, and some apps sometimes still show up twice (the launcher doesn't merge
with the running app correctly) - rare, but it happens. Still, haven't found
anything better on Linux.

------
edoceo
Yay! Crashy Thunar has annoyed me a bunch, glad to see the patches are in.
Will try to help get the Gentoo packages updated

------
listic
Is this going to get into Ubuntu 17.04 or is it too late?

~~~
XzetaU8
We're two months away from the 17.04, Judging from the last two release
roadmaps I'd say that there's still plenty of time.

[https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/topic-y-
xubunt...](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/topic-y-xubuntu)
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