For a Lightweight Linux Desktop, Try the New Xfce 4.10

Does anyone know which version of Xfce is in Debian repo?
I'm planning to install Debian (testing branch) with Xfce on my notebook

 

I'm not familiar with dealing with Debian directly so I Googled and found
http://wiki.debian.org/Xfce
and
http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/xfce4-panel
and
http://pkg-xfce.alioth.debian.org/

More "joy" here: http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=7041

 

For testing, use: http://packages.debian.org/testing/xfce/

 

I installed the xfce from the software center which is xfce 4.8 So far I love it.The boot up screen has changed,it says Debian at the bottom,but I liked the purple Ubuntu screen more.But I have only 1 problem,whenever I try to open a folder the first 3 tries takes 20 seconds then it opens fast.There must be some kind of conflict between nautilus but I do not know how to make it work better?Any ideas
And one more question am I going to update both Ubuntu and XFCE or is it still 1 system ?

 

For me, the just first time I open Thunar takes a while. Subsequently, it's normal. I think this is a known issue and may not have anything to do with nautilus, but I'm not sure. The same thing happens in 4.10.

 

Some people think something called gvfs is to blame for the delay in Thunar opening for the first time. Don't know more than that. But since it's a one-off event per session, I doesn't really inconvenience me.

Edit: keep in mind I'm just pasting what I've read and cannot comment on whether it's the correct thing to do!
From: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Thunar
edit /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount and change AutoMount=true to AutoMount=false.

The same advice is repeated here: http://asthecodegrows.robertbeverly...e-navigation-at-startup-with-xfce-thunar-fix/

 

That doesn't happen me, in fact damn fast even on old low spec laptop. Why you have this delay I don't know. However remember that I did a clean install.
(Wiped the wife's Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and also put her on Xubuntu with Xfce 4.10.
She's pleased as punch )

 

As I said, it happens just the first time for me and isn't really a problem. Had me worried a bit until I came to know about it though! Does your kit have just the one partition?

 

I'm not sure I understand but once you've installed it, Ubuntu will take care of everything. You just have one more choice at login: after you enter your password, click on the little logo next to it to choose whether you'll boot into gnome, unity, or xfce or whatever. But it's still all Ubuntu!

 

Correction to my saying I did a clean install. That only applied to the wife's laptop. On my old one I upgraded from 11.10. No thunar delays on both these laptops and both are single boot with root, home and swap partitions.

In fact I like Xubuntu so much that I will soon wipe Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my triple boot desktop and replace it with Xfce 4.10.
Might be something in the forums about this - will have a look later.

 

It maybe bug 7373.

 

Thank you for the answers.
I think I will be using the XFCE session.I loved Unity but on Ubuntu I had a weird problem.Whenever I closed the web browser Chrome or Firefox the screen got distorted and some letters got distorted too.But this does not happen on XFCE.I have 2GB of memory I am not sure if this is the problem.

SO I have Ubuntu and it will be supported for 5 years.I thought maybe it was going to be supported for only 3 years because I installed the XFCE.

 

Is there a way to change the boot up screen to the old purple ubuntu look.Now I have the Debian boot up screen with the stars.

 

See also this thread post #6 as well as the whole thread. http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=6987

 

Thanks but I do not have Nautilus running.

 

It's possible to change the boot up screen, and the associated files are in /lib/plymouth/themes/ However, I haven't tried doing this myself, so I can't give you step-by-step instructions for it.

I see that there is a utility for this, Plymouth Manager. If you search for plymouth manager ubuntu on your favorite search engine you should find a lot of info. I haven't used this utility myself, I just know that I've seen people talking about it.

From your description of how you installed XFCE, I would say that you still have one system (Ubuntu) and all of the updates will be through Ubuntu's Update Manager, so you won't have to update XFCE separately.

 

Now I can play Castleville easily,XFCE session uses less CPU and less memory compared to Unity.Castleville is more responsive.Thanks again for the people who have started and contributed to this thread.

 

That's what I'm wondering about: what do you see in the file manager's left pane under Network? Do you have other "devices" listed there? The first delay in opening Thunar in each session seems to be related to the presence of other devices, from what I understand.

Anyway, I made the change to false and it does help a lot but the second opening is as "instantaneous" as could be.

Waiting patiently for your feedback on the compose key post about the LibreOffice extension ....

 

Yes, Ubuntu 12.04 will be supported for 5 years but I don't understand whether those who have installed Xfce 4.8 will be upgraded (or not) to 4.10 at the time that Xfce 4.10 becomes official along with the release of 12.10.

Anyone?

(In any case, I'm not staying with the LTS. I'll be moving to 12.10, 13.04, etc along with whatever changes are offered here.)

 

As you install xfce on ubuntu so you get update for 5 years without problem for xfce you already switch to new one

because you not using base of xfce 12.04 (ie pure xfce) but ubuntu + xfce desktop envirment from ppa please correct me

and xfce ppa is rolling for desktop Environment while base is ubuntu which is supported for 5 years

 

I installed Opera 11.64 yesterday but then came across rumors that it may get Zucked. It may never happen but even the possibility demotivates me from spending time tweaking Opera. So now I'm going to try Web, the erstwhile Epiphany, pretty sure that it won't get Zucked. I wonder how it will behave in an Xfce session since it is a Gnome thing. I had tried Epiphany while on Ubuntu 11.04 (Unity 3D mode) and wasn't happy. Let's see.

 

Very fast (assuming I'm not just lucky with my internet). Couldn't figure out how to get the "built-in" HTML5 player to work on YouTube with a video I know is available in HTML5 format. Scrolling up or down with mouse or keyboard gives some sort of blinking effect, at least for me. Clicking on any question in askubuntu.com makes the browser take 100% CPU. I closed the browser without waiting to "see what will happen". Gmail was fine as was my bank site. I still have to check Google Drive.

Edit: that works as well.

I think it's much improved since the last time I used it. Now for the tweaking.

Oh, and it's the only browser that lets me use the overlay scrollbars which I find very convenient. (I have them since mine isn't just Xfce but Xfce on top of Ubuntu 12.04.)

 

Thunar alwasy starts kinda slow the first time after bootup. Launching it starts Thunar's daemon which runs in the background until shutdown and makes it quicker to open. For me it takes a few seconds on the first time, but after that it's instant. The daemon can probably be forced to start on boot by making a script for your runlevel or user account.


For the person who doesn't like the Debian grub display, you can open up /etc/default/grub and add

Code:

GRUB_BACKGROUND=/my/image/filepath.png

to replace the default. Then run

Code:

update-grub

Grub online manpages
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

A second method would be from our very own Dedoimedo.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html


For those who were talking about mouse & trackpad functions, I've found xfce 4.8 to be lacking without some config fixing. Check out the Arch wiki for super customization of Synaptics, Elan and Alps touchpads.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#xinput

All possible synclient touchpad functions
http://www.x.org/archive/current/doc/man/man4/synaptics.4.xhtml#heading4

 

I am using XFCE 4.8 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I installed the shiki-colors-xfwm-theme from the Ubuntu Software Center.When I open the appearance under the styles there is no Shiki theme.Shiki is only under the window manager.Am I doing something wrong? In Ubuntu when I had installed Shiki it was a complete theme with panels, icons etc.

 

sorry in xfce its diffrent check other options as well to change you have to change lot of other option in xfce its not like gnome

i never installed any theme in xfce but what i did is i create .icon and .themes and extract theme/icons into then and select options form window manager

please check all windows managers options you find it there sorry as i didnt have XFCE desktop right now

try windows manager and apperance they should be there if not it might be permision problem or link problem.

best easy way is create 2 hidden folders name .themes and .icons in home folder and extract theme icon in them and select

or

create root access folder and copy paste them to /usr/share/icons usr/share/theme