Is XFCE dead?

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by mattdocs12345, Apr 18, 2014.

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  1. mattdocs12345

    mattdocs12345 Registered Member

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    Read this article: http://www.slax.org/blog/

    "XFce was nice few years ago, when the last version has been released, but it's too outdated for today."
     
  2. keithpeter

    keithpeter Registered Member

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    This chap needs some project management!

    Just pop IceWM on it with a reasonably modern theme and get the thing out of the door FFS :twisted:
     
  3. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    I wouldn't take it to heart, he also mentioned plain "however I think I don't like it any longer" with Cinnamon.

    He's just going over the options and stating what he thinks.
     
  4. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    Xfce is not dead, its development has always been rather slow. IMO this is a good thing. End users don't want excitement, they want something that "just works."
     
  5. mattdocs12345

    mattdocs12345 Registered Member

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    I 100% agree. I don't mind long breaks between release dates. But it looks like they missed their release date by 2 years... so that's why Im asking is there any significant XFCE development going on?
     
  6. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    Well, the last commit on their git repo was 27 hours ago... :)
     
  7. inka

    inka Registered Member

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    Isn't xfce, as of v4.10, feature-complete? Are there any remarkable bugfixes we're collectively hoping/waiting for?
    What are the expectations for v4.12 onward? (I've read the xfce wiki 'roadmap' and found it to be unenlightening)

    That quote in the first post here mentions "too outdated". Hmm, I'm unsure what bred that remark. Outdated, as in, not fully GTK3 friendly?
    After v4.8, most of the themes shipped with xfce are not (do not have GTK3 friendly variants).

    For me, xfce seems moot, so it might as well be "dead". My outlooks stems from having considered "What all components and features does a DE comprise... and are each of the components (within any current DE) best-in-class for my use?"

    I'll choose my own web browser, thank you. (and Midori does NOT cut it for my use)
    Session manager? I need a session manager?
    Mousepad? Why -- is that some dev's ego trip, to pad his portfolio? (I'd choose leafpad, along with medit or geany)
    xfce4-terminal isalotofcharacterstotype ...and is moot, given the feature-comparable choices of roxterm and lxterminal.
    Thunar (and exo-tools) ...moot, feature-wise, compared to pcmanFM or spaceFM (and just having rox-filer or xfe would fine by me anyhow)
    Gigolo. Ah, there's an ego trip...
    Catfish? I'd rather mlocate or find... and for gui would prefer findwild or something other than Catfish.
    Mirage (image viewer), at least this is a recommended xfce component (vs dependency, IIRC)

    For gui users, I'd recommend lxtask (possibly along with mate-system-monitor) rather than xfce4-taskmanager
    and would probably recommend BUM (boot up manager) in place of xfce startup applet
    ...so, what's left? What's to get excited about, wait for, in whatever future xfce version?
     
  8. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    The GTK3 theme breakage is more the Gnome/GTK developers' fault for breaking theme compatibility over and over again. The Xfce devs can do very little about that; since the GTK people have decided for some insane reason that they don't want to support development of external GTK3 projects, and GTK should now be considered an internal Gnome library.

    Also the dependencies will be different depending on Linux distribution, since the distribution package manager is what handles dependency resolution... I don't believe Mirage is actually part of Xfce. Their image viewer is Ristretto.


    In any case I think Xfce still fills the very important niche of "familiar desktop for newbies." It looks reasonable, behaves intuitively (for people coming from Windows) and doesn't have ludicrous resource guzzling defaults like KDE...
     
  9. Balthazar

    Balthazar Registered Member

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    Thanks for your comment. I like Xfce and it's my desktop environment in Parabola (and I tried it in Gentoo as well). It has everything I need.

    @inka
    I don't understand half of what you're saying (e.g. choice of browser).
     
  10. 0strodamus

    0strodamus Registered Member

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    xfce4-power-manager was recently updated to resolve an issue, so I don't think Xfce is dead. I've been playing with MATE, but I'm having a tough time committing. Xfce is just too good. :)
     
  11. moontan

    moontan Registered Member

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    I always thought XFCE was the sweet spot between speed and aesthetics.

    never really cared about KDE because of the bloat, Unity is horrible.
    Cinnamon is better than the last two I thought.

    E17 menus are a nightmare.
     
  12. mattdocs12345

    mattdocs12345 Registered Member

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    Yeah I love Xfce. I can customize everything. Cinammon and MATE are harder to customize. I especially coudn't change the bottom right tray font and color. In Xfce it is easy as a pie.
    I made my Xfce look like Windows 98, nice and gray. No nonsense.
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2014
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