News for users of the desktop environment XFCE:
xfce4-taskmanager 1.2.0
This is a new release which brings a handy feature, i.e. identifying windows by clicking on them. Just use the crosshair-button in the toolbar and click on a window. This will result in the appropriate/associated process being selected in the tree or listview.
...
xfce4-notifyd 0.3.5This long-awaited feature release finally brings the persistence support I have been working on for a while. So you can now enable a notification log and get your "away log" easily this way. There are even some options to only get the log for certain apps or only with "do not disturb" mode enabled.
...
Thunar 1.6.11This maintenance release brings some important fixes that have made users complain a lot in the recent past – and understandably so. Thunar was fairly unstable with copy, rename, move and drag-and-drop operations and would simply crash. While a lot of people in the community did testing (and whining :)), several folks got to work, identified the underlying issue and submitted patches (that I pushed recently).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @08:27PM
Use XFCE or MATE. For lighter alternatives, try LXDE or just a window manager.
And of course if more glitz regardless of weight is what you're after, there's gnome3 and KDE4...
(Score: 2) by romanr on Tuesday February 14 2017, @08:47PM
I find LXQT quite up to the challenge of a lightweight desktop. Also, Qt seems that it will support wayland soon.
(Score: 2) by Kunasou on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:14PM
If you want something really lightweight try OpenBox(with xfce4-panel looks nice), i3 or sway. Compositing can be handled with things like xcompmgr or compton easily and sway has it built-in.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:25PM
Meh, compositing is overrated.
Also, IceWM...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:46AM
While I agree, Ken Starks showed some Windoze guys Compiz [blogspot.com] and it got them to switch to Linux. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [fossforce.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tekk on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:59PM
You definitely want to go with compton. Compton is specifically a fork of xcompmgr to fix some memory leaks in xcompmgr, otherwise you have to restart it every so often.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @10:11PM
That's not a problem for me.
$ ps uaxw|grep -E "xcompmgr|PID"
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
acoward 2578 0.2 0.0 29732 1208 ? S Feb06 24:37 xcompmgr -n -d :0
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:34AM
Huh, nice. I used to have to kill it every week or two before I moved to compton.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:12PM
For values of "every so often" less than 8 days...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @05:08AM
That's not the longest I've run it for, and I've never noticed a problem with it. I have noticed the X server consuming a lot of RAM.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:31PM
I've been an XFCE user ever since Gnome 3 became a thing. Honestly, it's just about everything I've ever wanted in a Desktop Environment. On occasion though, I do miss some of the visual wizardry I used to get with the compiz on Metacity. Oh well.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:31AM
Ditto. I ran Gnome for something like 15 years. Gnome3 and Unity were a double brick wall. Switched to XFCE, with LXDE on a couple older machines, and haven't looked back. Some of the alternatives in the thread sound interesting, though, so should be fun to try out on a rainy Saturday.
I am glad for the updates to Thunar. It has always felt a little flaky.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:30AM
Same here: ran gnome since 1999-2000
Using xfce and i3 now due to bloat. I need speed and resources more than eye candy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:22PM
Switched to XFCE, with LXDE on a couple older machines
Thanks, I have an old Gateway laptop that would be very useful to me if it had an OS other than XP. XFCE wouldn't work on it, (no distro has so far) but maybe LDXE might. I'll have to try it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:20AM
apropos visual wizardry (XFCE + comp!z): http://paste.opensuse.org/76644865 [opensuse.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @11:30AM
I also switched to Xfce at the time Gnome became too bulky. And the interface has stayed mostly the same since, which is imho a good thing.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday February 14 2017, @09:57PM
I tend to use xfce as main desktop, does the job well, I also don't recall problems with thunar. I mostly use the shell for moving around files, but I recall a multifile copy operation successfully resumed after the usb cable of the external hd disconnected momentarily. I also like the multiple file rename options.
Stay sane, xfce.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @11:54PM
14.04 - Had no problems with Thunar.
16.04 - Thunar is crash happy when moving files around and renaming.
Also see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunar/+bug/1512120 [launchpad.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @09:48AM
Same experience here.
16.04 crashes when drag/dropping files from the Desktop to a folder.
Not that it's xfce, but it also hangs on shutdown some of the time forcing a hard stop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:06AM
Initially, this desktop environment used the X-Forms toolkit and was called X-Forms Common Environment.
Almost immediately, the developer dropped X-Forms and switched to GTK+.
Xfce is no longer an initialism and there's no reason to capitalize the whole thing.
.
When I think of "upgrade-treadmill" (the dept. line by cmn32480), I think of "obsolescence" and "lack of backward-compatibility".
Anybody finding that here?
...or is cmn32480 simply taking another opportunity to try to crap on FOSS while showing his ignorance of the topic?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:42PM
maybe he was looking for something funny to say on the dept. line. An updated DE is not the best target for humor. Maybe some reference to the mouse mascot...
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:36PM
Xfce has become what Gnome 2.x always should have been. It's light, sane, configurable, and amazingly customizable. This screenshot here is a credible OS X 10.9/Mavericks imitation, using Docky, Compiz/Emerald, Mint-X-Aqua theme and icons, and the TopMenu applet (you can't see it, but GTK2 apps actually create a global menubar): http://imgur.com/a/BunJk [imgur.com]
I started with Linux (Gentoo, eek) in 2004, and Xfce very quickly became my favorite DE. This was in the days before Thunar, when version 4.2 was out and the taskbar didn't quiiiite do what you'd expect a taskbar to do. I had started on Gnome 2.2 or 2.4, found it a little too curated and switched to Fluxbox, and settled on Xfce.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @08:57PM
I'm an Xfce guy myself. Love the lightness, configurability, and extensibility. I've recently gotten interested in i3, but that's not due to any perceived shortcomings of Xfce, it's due to a different workflow concept I'm working on, for which a tiling WM is better suited. Xfce serves me extremely well, and I continue to refine it to this day.