New Features Coming To Xubuntu 14.04 LTS

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Features Coming To Xubuntu 14.04 LTS

Much of our talk about Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on Phoronix is in regards to the default Unity-based desktop given that it takes the largest share of *buntu users, but for the Xubuntu 14.04 LTS release this week there's several interesting changes for this Xfce spin worth noting...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTY2NTI

[Sn3ipen]

Looks like its going to be Xubuntu for my secondary computer, then. There's actually allot more changes then i expected.

[stqn]

I?m not sure if I like the Whisker menu? I?ve never really used it, but my understanding is that it places the most often used applications on the left, which means things change places occasionally, which is very bad. Also it requires much more mouse movement than the normal menu.

Adding a zoom to the compositor is nice, but the default compositor is useless because it causes tearing. They should have switched to compton instead.

Also it looks like there is still not a single dark theme .

My only gripes with Xubuntu 12.04:
- no dark theme
- compositor causes tearing
- incredibly slow software updater and software center
- the software center doesn?t work with dark themes (white text on white background, yay!)
- the software updater wastes a lot of vertical space
- updating the kernel does not remove old kernels, so at some point updates fail because of lack of disk space.

The last 4 are not specific to Xubuntu, so maybe they were fixed and it wasn?t mentionned in the blog post? That would be nice.

[Vim_User]

Michael, please stop listing new themes and wallpapers as features, those are not features.

[Spike29]

Adding a zoom to the compositor is nice, but the default compositor is useless because it causes tearing. They should have switched to compton instead.

Xubuntu 14.04 comes with xfwm 4.11.1, which adds an option (in Xfce Settings) to enable Vsync : http://xfce.10915.n7.nabble.com/ANNO...d-td42382.html
It is supposed to work good with Intel and AMD open-source drivers.

I tested it with both nVidia open-source and proprietary drivers (GTX 650) and it mostly works : screen tearing is not 100% gone, but is reduced A LOT

[Mike Frett]

xscreensaver

I wonder if i can still use xscreensaver?. I just like watching things move when my computer is inactive, in particular GLText. Just because something isn't needed doesn't mean it isn't useful. I don't know about that Whisker Menu, I liked the simplicity of the default Menu -- Simplicity is WHY I use Xubuntu to begin with. I think the Xubuntu team are forgetting why people use their OS to begin with.

[xeekei]

Unless they have removed the standard menu, which is unlikely, you can just use that instead of Whisker.