Lightweight classic desktop environment Xfce continues advancing, with a new pre-release update available for testing pulling in some great features.
Their current plan is to have a second pre-release at the end of September and if needed a third in October. With the aim to have the final Xfce 4.16 release in by November. It's shaping up to be a pretty exciting release, with lots of working going into all areas.
One of the big addition is support for display fractional scaling, giving you better options to get your desktop exactly how you want it to be on whatever resolution that may be.
There's plenty more coming like a fancy set of new icons (shown below), they dropped lots of older GTK2 code to improve maintainability, the "About Xfce" dialog has been revamped, they added client-side decorations for settings dialogs, tons of bug fixes and more.
It's not just icons and application adjustments, they've also tweaked and upgraded the main panel user interface of Xfce too. There's a new "Status Tray" plugin, with unifies the system tray and the status notifier plugin to make life easier and more streamlined for users. If you set your panel to autohide, there's also now an animation to make it clear that's what it's doing.
Pictured: autohide animation.
Plenty more tweaks elsewhere to improve the flow. These tweaks include having launcher now show the desktop file action when right clicking (like being able to open a private window with Firefox), the application window list now supports "launching a new instance" in the right click menu, the panel can have a dark mode depending on theme support and the list goes on. Sounds like a real quality upgrade coming.
See the full post here. More about Xfce on the official site.
I have to admit Xfce is a wonderful Linux desktop environment. Especially if you like your classic style. If I wasn't so happy with MATE, Xfce would be my next choice.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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16 comments
XFCE is the best desktop environment. I used, and tested almost all of DE, and I always come back to XFCE. I don't know, it just works, it is very lightweight, simplistic, customizable and beautiful :) When i look at it, I just feel at home.
Last edited by Avikarr on 14 September 2020 at 8:17 pm UTC
Last edited by Avikarr on 14 September 2020 at 8:17 pm UTC
11 Likes, Who?
walther von stolzing Sep 14, 2020
Some serious 'quality of life' improvements coming up; esp. dark mode for panel alone (dirty workarounds exist, but a clean solution would be very welcome), & desktop file actions on the launchers. What I really am waiting for, though, is keyboard shortcuts (at least an option to focus & navigate by arrow keys) for the panel 'window buttons'.
1 Likes, Who?
XFCE. My only real complaint is how strict they are regarding full screen window focus, in particular if you fullscreen something on one monitor -- such as a youtube video -- and click elsewhere; Any panels on that display will go above your window.I tracked down a bug report/request for this once and it turns out it was intentional due to some standard (FreeDesktop maybe? I don't recall) XFCE follows. The good news is in the same thread a patch was provided for the desired behaviour -- which I still use today (though I've had to adjust the patch over time for newer XFCE versions).
Aside from that minor annoyance, XFCE is still the best desktop environment I've ever used.
1 Likes, Who?
I love XFCE too. Do they plan on fixing the tearing issue ?
I haven't had screen tearing issues in Xfce for years. That was something they apparently fixed with the default compositor in the transition to gtk3 (4.14 release), but I continue to use compiz for all it's additional bells and whistles.
Last edited by lectrode on 14 September 2020 at 9:31 pm UTC
0 Likes
XFCE is still the first choice if you want a stable, resource and user friendly desktop. Unlike memory hogs like KDE (I have to run some computers 24/7, and then it becomes a serious issue since first version of KDE4).
It's cool to hear they add a little bit more usability. What I'm still missing though is more configurability of shortcuts. They seem to have a Mozilla attitude regarding that (we decide, no you can't change anything about it).
It's cool to hear they add a little bit more usability. What I'm still missing though is more configurability of shortcuts. They seem to have a Mozilla attitude regarding that (we decide, no you can't change anything about it).
1 Likes, Who?
TheLinuxPleb Sep 15, 2020
I played around a lot with different DE's, but XFCE is where i ended up eventually. Maybe two years now already and i still love it. Simple, fast and effective.
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Been using XFCE since Xubuntu 12.04 LTS after the Unity fiasco of Canonical and then in Linux Mint XFCE, I mainly use my computer for work and with XFCE I have a light environment that just work in each release.
Have try KDE Neon for a while and I was surprise that was more lightly that I remember KDE I just have to spend time to make it work with all the options, GNOME 3 is a memory hog in comparison.
Kudos for the XFCE team!
Have try KDE Neon for a while and I was surprise that was more lightly that I remember KDE I just have to spend time to make it work with all the options, GNOME 3 is a memory hog in comparison.
Kudos for the XFCE team!
0 Likes
Like Liam, I'm a Mate man. But one size does not fit all; I'm generally pleased to hear that the different DEs are doing good stuff, whether it's XFCE, KDE, Cinnamon, Budgie . . . I guess even Gnome 3 . . . OK, never really forgave Gnome 3 for being what it was rather than an improved Gnome 2 . . .
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Great news!
I prefer MATE, when it comes to light-weight Linux distributions, but it doesn't mean I don't like XFCE. It's actually pretty good.
The only important problem I had with XFCE is its HiDPI support. I tried Manjaro XFCE on my main gaming PC, but it took a lot of effort to make it look half decent on my 4K screen. That's why I'm glad that they seem to be working on that issue.
Besides, to be honest, HiDPI support is still a problem for many Linux DEs, with the exception of GNOME. That's why I stick with Ubuntu for now.
I prefer MATE, when it comes to light-weight Linux distributions, but it doesn't mean I don't like XFCE. It's actually pretty good.
The only important problem I had with XFCE is its HiDPI support. I tried Manjaro XFCE on my main gaming PC, but it took a lot of effort to make it look half decent on my 4K screen. That's why I'm glad that they seem to be working on that issue.
Besides, to be honest, HiDPI support is still a problem for many Linux DEs, with the exception of GNOME. That's why I stick with Ubuntu for now.
0 Likes
XFCE is the best desktop environment. I used, and tested almost all of DE, and I always come back to XFCE. I don't know, it just works, it is very lightweight, simplistic, customizable and beautiful :) When i look at it, I just feel at home.Funny, I can say the exact same things about my beloved KDE ;)
Great to see XFCE mature even more. I had to revert back to it while KDE was broken because of the Qt 5.15 debacle on my Artix system. And while it was only a couple of days, it was a pleasent journey. But now that KDE is fixed again, I will go back to my beloved KDE ;)
1 Likes, Who?
soulsource Sep 15, 2020
I love XFCE too. Do they plan on fixing the tearing issue ?
Are you talking about video tearing in Firefox on AMD graphics cards?
There's a workaround that gets rid of it: Desktop Compositing. It can be enabled in the "Advanced window manager tweaks" settings.
However it comes at a price, namely drastically increased memory consumption (resolution dependent - on 1920x1080 it's about 200 MB more) and slightly higher GPU load. Normally I don't use compositing, because the trade-off between eye-candy and memory usage just isn't worth it imho... Switching it on is just a checkbox, so I only enable it when I want to watch a longer video in the browser.
(I don't really know what causes the tearing, but I've noticed that it only happens to me in Firefox. Neither VLC nor mplayer have any tearing on my machine, so it might be the video output API used. I've set VLC and mplayer both to use VDPAU.)
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I tracked down a bug report/request for this once and it turns out it was intentional due to some standard (FreeDesktop maybe? I don't recall) XFCE follows.
If something in a DE is terrible by design and it's part of a standard it's almost guaranteed to be EWMH. It's what KDE cites as a reason to keep multiscreen horribly annoying.
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I'm looking forward to improved fractional scaling, and I like the look of the new icons too. The hiding-panel animation feels like so much fluff to me. I prefer the snappy "there/not-there" quality it has now. (Maybe they can be talked into making that optional.)
I tried Mate for a minute a few releases back, and I quite liked it, especially the way, like, "dark mode" settings worked for everything (it's pretty hit-or-miss in xfce currently). Mate's a really nice alternative to xfce ... except no notepad plugin. Turns out that was the ultimate deal-breaker for me.
I tried to convince the Mate devs to adapt xfce's notes plugin for Mate, like they have for some other xfce goodies, but they couldn't be bothered. "There's other apps that do that already," they said, incorrectly. There is simply nothing out there as straightforward and simple as xfce's "notes" panel plugin.
That and xfce's weather-plugin. Like everything in xfce, it's simple on the surface but presents increasing complexity the deeper you go. Current conditions on display in the panel with a simple forecast if one clicks on it. Hover over any part of the forecast, however, and one is given dreamily detailed weather info.
Oh and the timer plugin! That just went off to remind me I have a meeting soon. Again, super simple.
And finally, xfce's mascot is a mouse. The most lovable, adorable 'nix mascot since the penguin. :)
I tried Mate for a minute a few releases back, and I quite liked it, especially the way, like, "dark mode" settings worked for everything (it's pretty hit-or-miss in xfce currently). Mate's a really nice alternative to xfce ... except no notepad plugin. Turns out that was the ultimate deal-breaker for me.
I tried to convince the Mate devs to adapt xfce's notes plugin for Mate, like they have for some other xfce goodies, but they couldn't be bothered. "There's other apps that do that already," they said, incorrectly. There is simply nothing out there as straightforward and simple as xfce's "notes" panel plugin.
That and xfce's weather-plugin. Like everything in xfce, it's simple on the surface but presents increasing complexity the deeper you go. Current conditions on display in the panel with a simple forecast if one clicks on it. Hover over any part of the forecast, however, and one is given dreamily detailed weather info.
Oh and the timer plugin! That just went off to remind me I have a meeting soon. Again, super simple.
And finally, xfce's mascot is a mouse. The most lovable, adorable 'nix mascot since the penguin. :)
2 Likes, Who?
I love XFCE too. Do they plan on fixing the tearing issue ?
It seems that they made the built in compositing hardware accelerated with version 4.14, and I haven't seen a tearing issue when running with compositing since then. Before that (or alternatively) you could use an external compositor, like Compton (or a window manager with compositing, i.e., Compiz), to eliminate tearing issues.
(Edit: I intended to mention that I have heard that with certain Nvidia cards tearing can still be an issue even when using compositing.)
I've used Xfce at least some of the time since back in the 3.x series. It strikes a nice balance between features and resource usage for me. I have also used Fluxbox, IceWM, and LXDE each a fair amount in the last twenty years. Right now, most of my Linux boxes are defaulted to Xfce. Even the servers that I administer at work which have a GUI installed (some don't) have Xfce on them.
Last edited by CFWhitman on 17 September 2020 at 1:00 pm UTC
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. . . OK, never really forgave Gnome 3 for being what it was rather than an improved Gnome 2 . . .
This. This is when I switched to Xfce and have I've lived happily ever after.
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. . . OK, never really forgave Gnome 3 for being what it was rather than an improved Gnome 2 . . .
This. This is when I switched to Xfce and have I've lived happily ever after.
Thirded.
Gnome3 is literally why I decided to try Xfce after generally being happy with Gnome2 for years, and I haven't looked back. At the time I chose XFCE over Cinnamon over some teething issues re: multi screen support, and I simply preferred XFCE over MATE. I remember describing my impressions of Xfce to myself as "A better Gnome2 then Gnome2 ever was."
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