Xfdesktop 4.10.3 Released While Xfce 4.12 Remains M.I.A.

[Awesomeness]

Annoying commentary, Michael. Do you have any hard data showing that Xfce users are abandonding it? And if so, that they are doing so because of "stagnant development"?

Canonical/Ubuntu and Linux Mint each claim to be the most popular distribution.
Yet the only hard data available is that Red Hat makes a billion US dollars a year and Canonical and Mint don't.

I can speak only for myself: I choose Xfce exactly because it's "stagnant" -- it does the job well enough using paradigms that are burnt into my brain, and doesn't try to keep innovating every few months, breaking these hard-earned habits.

There are options with traditional metaphors that manage to use modern technologies and ship updates on a monthly basis.
Plasma Desktop defaults to a traditional desktop (although it's flexible enough to adapt to very different metaphors).
Gnome Shell is similarly flexible: Although non-traditional by default, a ?Classic? option is fully supported.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the innovation in Unity and GNOME 3. We need to keep pushing the envelope. But, those experimentations have so far resulted in more frustration for me personally than an improved everyday experience. I do watch them closely and try them out, and I'm pretty confident that one day they will hit a sweet spot. Until then, Xfce.

There are some things that do need to get updated in Xfce, but they are in the pipeline and are being developed (see above). I guess some of us are more patient than others.

Unity has no innovation. It's just a copy of OSX metaphors. Putting the dock to the left edge of the screen is something many OSX users thought of before Canonical ?invented? it.
Gnome 3 Classic does basically what Xfce tries to achieve but with predictable bugfixes.

[xeekei]

This seems to be a thread for unsubstantiated claims, so I will point out that what they're really doing is porting to Qt5. You saw it here first.

Are you confusing "should" with "will"?

Also, put me down on the "people-that-left-Xfce"-list. It was also for the same reason stated in the article.

[gilboa]

XFCE developer has stagnated.

No use in ignoring it, XFCE development has slowed down considerably in the last few years as the number of active developers has decreased in the last couple of years.
Lack of developers tends to lead to dwindling usage, no use in ignoring it either.

XFCE should consider switching to timed release (E.g. KDE 4.x series) and embrace the "Release early, release often" paradigm.
This will increase the media coverage which in turn will push users into testing XFCE and in-turn this should increase the number of developers.

Lack of feature releases tends to kill open source projects.

BTW, I'm currently typing it on a Fedora 20 machine w/ XFCE.

- Gilboa

[emblemparade]

Today I learned that ...

1) Users have very different needs and desires.
2) Bugs that ruin things some people don't occur at all for others, for various reasons (features they use, hardware configuration, etc.).
3) The world of free software standards is wonderful because it allows us to chose the components we like. We live in magical times.

Conclusion: Stop raining on other people's parades! If a certain program, package, distro works great for some people, but not for you, then just don't use it. Going on to say that "it sucks" because it's not best for you flies in the face of the evidence that other people love it.

I'm glad GNOME 3 classic mode works great for some of you. Some of you like Cinnamon, and some MATE. Seriously, I truly am glad you enjoy these! I tried them all, but after getting frustrated with various things, big and small, I switched to Xfce and felt very relieved. Than you Xfce, for existing and not breaking every 6 months.

[Awesomeness]

I'm glad GNOME 3 classic mode works great for some of you. Some of you like Cinnamon, and some MATE. Seriously, I truly am glad you enjoy these! I tried them all, but after getting frustrated with various things, big and small, I switched to Xfce and felt very relieved. Than you Xfce, for existing and not breaking every 6 months.

Yeah! Who needs dependable bugfix cycles!

[emblemparade]

Yeah! Who needs dependable bugfix cycles!

You seem to really resent the fact that Xfce works great for me.

[Awesomeness]

You seem to really resent the fact that Xfce works great for me.

And you claim that other desktops break every six months. Obviously you're lying.

[emblemparade]

And you claim that other desktops break every six months. Obviously you're lying.

"Lying." I love how everyone here keeps things in perspective.

GNOME 3 constantly has themes and plugins that stop working in newer versions. I'm sure the platform will eventually stabilize (just like Firefox plugins), but for now it's chaotic and jumpy. Also, I've had very annoying problems with the dark theme -- many apps did not support it. I tried hard to find alternatives, but they seemed to have not been updated for my more recent version of GNOME.

Unity has been more stable -- but, still, changes to the way Dash works really through me off. I found the Dash annoying enough to work with as is (I really love Xfce's Whisker Menu), but having to learn new tricks really threw me off. Unity 8 is going to be a complete rewrite, so we know for sure a lot of things are going to change. Maybe I'll try Unity again when 8 comes out, with the hopes that things will be stable.

Cinnamon is under heavy development, so it's changing a lot. I might try it in the future when it gets a stable release. My previous attempts to check it out resulting in crashes.

MATE is OK and stable enough -- the one exception on this list -- and have nothing against it per se, just find Xfce more pleasant. I really like Whisker Menu and DockbarX.

But don't listen to me, I'm a liar! I lie about my experience in order to ... make profit, I guess? $$$

[bison]

Some of you like Cinnamon, and some MATE. Seriously, I truly am glad you enjoy these! I tried them all, but after getting frustrated with various things, big and small, I switched to Xfce and felt very relieved.

What do you like about Xfce that's better than MATE? I haven't used the Whisker menu much; how is it better?

[emblemparade]

What do you like about Xfce that's better than MATE? I haven't used the Whisker menu much; how is it better?

Whisker is my favorite app menu ever. It lets you browse apps via categories using the mouse without clicking, and also without that annoying I-didn't-move-my-mouse-quite-right sub-menu precision annoyance, while also letting you use the keyboard to start apps, just like Unity and the rest. It even lets you configure simple keyboard shortcut commands. No "scopes" or Amazon search results. Just apps. It also has just enough configuration options to make it look and feel as I like, on my hi-res desktop and my low-res netbook. You can try it quickly yourself by using a Xubuntu 14.04+ live image (Whisker comes preinstalled).

I also prefer Xfce over MATE because it's more minimalistic. It has a perfectly adequate window manager that does exactly what I need. Its built-in compositor is a bit too minimal for me, but I replaced it with Compton easily enough. Everything in MATE feels heavy and bloated compared to Xfce. (I have a powerful desktop, I don't choose Xfce because of a lack of resources.) Some people here complain about bugs, but I haven't encountered them, lucky me. (One problem I had was with Xunbuntu 14.04 not supporting the compose key anymore. Not an Xfce issue, but an unfortunate Xubuntu decision to not use ibus by default anymore. I solved it simply by installing ibus.)

I'm perfectly willing to concede that some time in the future Xfce wouldn't be good for me personally. Perhaps it will still lack Wayland/Mir support, which I will eventually want once those becomes stable. Perhaps I will have a hi-DPI monitor (Xfce doesn't work well with those). Perhaps I will become disabled and need accessibility features (very minimal support for that in Xfce, one important reason it is not suitable as a default desktop for any distro). When that time comes, I will switch to MATE or Cinnamon, or maybe GNOME 3 or Unity if they prove less frustrating for me than they do now. I'm also very excited about convergence in Unity 8, a revolutionary feature that could tip me over despite my frustrations!

You know, It's OK if Xfce won't be around forever due to a lack of development. Software does not have to be immortal. I'll always remember it fondly. For now, it is the best desktop (for me!), I am happy with it, and amused by the haters.

Or maybe I am just lying! You can never trust anybody on the Internet.