XFCE 4.8 Prerelease

[Warpnow]

I just installed the prerelease of the new XFCE. At long last, it has panel transparency with solid icons!

Anyone else using it?

Attached is a screenshot of my desktop.

[Lucradia]

I see JPEG Artifacts to the max. May have wanted to save as PNG, upload it to imgur.com and then link rather than to upload here directly.

it's good to see XFCE has stepped up the panel.

[3Miro]

I always keep transparency and other things like that off, it makes it harder for me to read the names of the window tabs.

I am excited about this one actually. I want to see all the new features they have, it is just that I am weary of possible performance hit (I do use it mainly for speed).

[handy]

I'm sure you will still be able to easily turn the fancy/glamorous stuff off.

[Pogeymanz]

This is going to be a fantastic release. I was using Pre2 for a few weeks on my Desktop. The panel has undergone a full rewrite, so it's really not even the same beast.

When I was using Pre2, Thunar took a really long time to load, which I'm assuming is either fixed in Pre3 or will be fixed by release time. Otherwise everything was nice and snappy. Though I didn't take any memory usage tests.

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

I see JPEG Artifacts to the max. May have wanted to save as PNG, upload it to imgur.com and then link rather than to upload here directly.

it's good to see XFCE has stepped up the panel.
I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say that he probably didn't care about artifacts, as there is nothing super detailed in the image to show off.

I like to see improvement here. I'm a gnome guy but alternatives are always good, especially when they're not KDE.

[koleoptero]

I hope natty xubuntu uses 4.8. I plan on moving permanently to xfce because I don't like the way gnome goes (for purely personal reasons).

[madjr]

I hope natty xubuntu uses 4.8. I plan on moving permanently to xfce because I don't like the way gnome goes (for purely personal reasons).

yeah, xfce will probably become the substitute for traditional gnome.

it has a more relevant purpose now.

[Lucradia]

yeah, xfce will probably become the substitute for traditional gnome.

it has a more relevant purpose now.

Indeed. Most of the unity dislikers will probably go to XFCE for this.

[unknownPoster]

I've always found XFCE to be superior to Gnome or KDE for my purposes. I'm really excited about this release.

[Khakilang]

I had PCLinux XFCE install in one of my older computer. I wonder I could do an update to 4.8 and see how it goes.

[Warpnow]

Better picture of my updated XFCE 4.8pre3 system:

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/1205/screenshot110113112550p.png

I'm liking it so far. :D

[bailout]

Is it possible to undecorate windows in the latest xfce? I have lubuntu/openbox on my netbook and find that being able to just right click on the window border and select undecorate to free up some vertical space is really useful. When I was looking into lightweight desktops the lack of this in xfce was the main reason I didn't choose it although I preferred some aspects of it compared to lxde.

The other annoyance I found was how difficult it was to make a launcher on a panel. I like to have a small 2nd panel at the top of the screen as a quick launcher but the way of adding launchers in xfce was needlassly time consuming.

Warpnow, that is a lot of ram for a 'lightweight' de with not much running. That has always been xubuntu's problem. They managed to take a lightweight de and add so much of the standard ubuntu bloat to it that it was just as heavy as standard ubuntu.

[Spice Weasel]

Is it possible to undecorate windows in the latest xfce? I have lubuntu/openbox on my netbook and find that being able to just right click on the window border and select undecorate to free up some vertical space is really useful. When I was looking into lightweight desktops the lack of this in xfce was the main reason I didn't choose it although I preferred some aspects of it compared to lxde.

You can use the Openbox window manager inside Xfce. Just start xfce4-panel and xfdesktop(4?).

[Naiki Muliaina]

Warpnow, that is a lot of ram for a 'lightweight' de with not much running. That has always been xubuntu's problem. They managed to take a lightweight de and add so much of the standard ubuntu bloat to it that it was just as heavy as standard ubuntu.

Not really Xubuntus problem, XFCE was only the 'lightweight' option when it was the only 'lightweight' DE about. XFCE shines as a modular desktop piece though. The 'take what you want' desktop. Which currently, nobody else really does (or at least well). Gogo XFCE! ;)

[Spice Weasel]

Not really Xubuntus problem, XFCE was only the 'lightweight' option when it was the only 'lightweight' DE about.

Hm...

Alpine Linux:

http://i.imgur.com/NoLRL.png

Xubuntu gives Xfce a bad name.

(image from kmandla's blog)

[Naiki Muliaina]

Most of the top XFCE alternative distro's are similar in usage to Xubuntu (sabyon, fedora, even Zenwalk and dreamlinux). The blame doesnt lie solely with Xubuntu.

If you want lightweight there's better out there, if you want modular, XFCE all the way.

[andrew.46]

Don't forget one of the more 'vanilla' packagings of xfce can be seen with Slackware. I attach a screenshot of xfce 4.6.2 running with Slackware -current. Packages of 4.8 pre 3 are available but sound a little too unstable for my tastes :).

Andrew