

Xfce 4.12 released - AhtiK
http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1425081600

======
byuu
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/Gedit226...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit2261.png)
... 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.

~~~
acous
I think it's a little unfair to compare the gedit UI at different sizes. I
hastily mocked up how they would look at the same size:
[http://i.imgur.com/hb6TLEr.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/hb6TLEr.jpg)

Personally I love the minimal and uncluttered look. I don't need big buttons
for copy and paste, and even on a 30" monitor I appreciate the extra space it
allows for actual content.

~~~
ExpiredLink
> _I love the minimal and uncluttered look._

Uncluttered, unintuitive, unhelpful - just like a vi buffer in input mode.

~~~
acous
> unintuitive

Unintuitive for whom? It abandons the traditional structure, which some people
are accustomed to, but I suspect that it would be measurably more effective
for people who haven't developed patterns of familiarity with the traditional
workflow.

> just like a vi buffer in input mode

I think the key difference is discoverability. In gedit I can immediately see
how do 6 common actions, and that there's another layer of less common actions
in the hamburger menu. I never had to google "how to exit gedit" for example.

------
kelnos
_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
> 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.

~~~
kelnos
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
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.

------
sampo
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
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
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)

------
unicornporn
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.

~~~
unicornporn
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)

~~~
Numberwang
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
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.

------
nacs
There's a visual tour here of the new version here:

[http://xfce.org/about/tour](http://xfce.org/about/tour)

~~~
brynet
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
It'd be interesting to know which of those screenshots is the one not taken on
OpenBSD-CURRENT.

~~~
xiaq
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.

------
FreakyT
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
> 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).

------
jmspring
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
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.

------
dredmorbius
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
windowmaker on my dev workstations and xfce (or chromeos) on my laptops.

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

~~~
ExpiredLink
> _Much leaner than others, without being spartan._

If Xfce ever needs an advertising slogan ...

------
robgibbons
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.

------
tux
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
FYI at least for Manjaro, they've been running with the pre-release versions
of XFCE for a long time.

~~~
tux
Yes I know, I have tried Manjaro. But I prefer using Arch Linux + XFCE
instead. I like installing only what I use.

------
xiaq
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!

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

------
recuter
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?

~~~
dredmorbius
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.

~~~
mkartic
I don't think the OP has a problem figuring out _how_ to try a new DE. The
question was whether it's worth it. The nuanced answers of users with
considerable experience is more valuable (IMHO) than just firing up Xfce for a
session or two.

~~~
dredmorbius
The effort to do so is so low that yes, if you're curious, it's worth it.

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

------
aboutus
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-
app...](https://medium.com/backchannel/why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-apple-google-
and-microsoft-78af12071bd)

~~~
ekianjo
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.

~~~
xorcist
I need something that just works for the parents. (Since Unity, Ubuntu has
been on a constant slow slide downwards usability-wise.) I tried Mint on a
recommendation, but their idea of an upgrade was a re-install (really!), so
that was a no-go. Any other ideas?

~~~
collyw
Manjaro with XFCE.

Mint is good. Cinnamon is pretty, but occasionally has problems that I don't
see since I swapped to XFCE (it randomly started hogging the CPU, I never
worked out why).

Manjaro needed a few more tweaks to get things working at first, but I have
had less problems afterwards.

------
Vektorweg
_we like to party!_

Definitely. Love it.

