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Xfce 4.14 Sees Its Long-Awaited Pre-Release

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  • #21
    In my opinion, Xfce didn't have to be ported to the Gtk3 libs; instead, the Xfce folks had to fork the Gtk2 libs.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by debianxfce View Post

      Just wait it to break because of constantly updating qt packages. No go when using a rolling release distribution.
      I'm using LXQT on a rolling release distro since years and the only time it broke was when a brownout happened in the middle of an update. This interrupted update left different QT parts with different version numbers on disc so every QT app crashed. This has nothing to do with LXQT through, KDE (apps) crashed in the exact same way.

      So LXQT breaking for you cause of other QT probs must be a bug of your distro. Maybe this is why you're the only one using it?

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      • #23
        A DE is heavy or lite? It depends on the cpu usage at idle for me. 1 Gb of used ram and low cpu activity at idle is much better than 400 Mb of used ram and high cpu activity at idle in my opinion. So, what cpu activity Kde or Xfce or others have at idle?

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        • #24
          I'm using XFCE for years, after testing Gnome, KDE, Pantheon.
          Just one thing, XFCE developement is slow (too ?) but secure, and some features needs really to be implemented (like colord, vblank).

          For me KDE is a good eyecandy DE, suitable for users who wants to. XFCE is fast, flexible, essential.

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          • #25
            I have never used XFCE on high DPI screen (which I assume it doesn’t do right now) so does anyone know if this release will make it usable on high DPI screen? Thanks!

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            • #26
              Assuming we are able to move to the next level of discussion (e.g. abandon the ridiculous religious war about the best DE, which BTW is the Merkur 25C), I'd like to move the focus onto the following question: does the GTK3 port mean XFCE 4.14 has Wayland support?
              Last edited by lucrus; 20 May 2019, 04:09 AM.

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              • #27
                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                It is not a dealbreaker, but it is nice. I type my login and *poof* the Xfce desktop is up. Such a nice feeling. Especially on a laptop.

                The actual time heavily depends on the storage device. On an SSD drive, KDE can almost make it in 2 seconds, but on a HDD it is a 20 second disaster. eMMC or USB stick is somewhere in between.
                I have autologin, but doubt it's much different.

                Yes, storage device matters. I've run KDE on an old laptop but it's bottleneck was due to using a 32GB USB stick as the boot/storage media, it could barely manage 16MB/sec over USB 2.0.. That would show the desktop rather fast(provided no plasmoid widgets were being used iirc), but still take a while before you could interact without interruptions, I believe most of that was due to the poor I/O though. It ran smoothly afterwards.

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                The thing is that Xfce is guaranteed to work on low power / low memory hardware. Then I don't have to learn and setup two different desktops. Whatever device I use, I know that Xfce will work. I just copy my setings over and it is done. So convenient.
                Eh, you've not really established what you referring to here. When dealing with an SBC, you're often running a different distro such as Armbian, sure you could be using Xfce still, but you could do the same with KDE, it's just a matter of how low you want to go.

                How well does Xfce work on a Pi Zero or lower than that? There's a certain cut off point with Xfce still.

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                Hard to find a device with less than 1 GB RAM today. And even if you do, what's the point of running a desktop on such a device?
                Depends on the type of device you're referring to. I agree, there isn't much point on running a desktop on such a device, just like I wouldn't see much point in running one on RPi, that hardware has numerous drawbacks to cut costs a little. If you can justify the RPi, it'd be for similar reasons that someone would try to justify even lower end hardware.

                This is argument that continues to lose relevance as time goes forward. Any slight advantage here has little value imo, but take whatever wins you can get I guess?

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                I don't know about that. If you show me a Raspberry Pi running KDE, I'll believe it.
                I didn't claim that it could, read the statement again.

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                ODROID-N2 has 4 GB RAM. That is sufficient to run a Windows 10 desktop.

                Also, the GPU on
                ODROID-N2 is Mali-G52. Possibly the Panfrost GPU driver is in use, and that's why it can run KDE.
                The cheaper N2 model has 2GB RAM, but I'd pay for the 4GB model personally. It's still low power, and not too far off the cost of an RPi affordability wise, you get a lot more value out of the hardware in comparison(full ethernet and USB bandwidth instead of shared, USB 3 and actual gigabit ethernet).

                Yes the Panfrost driver is used, and the SBC will receive mainline support in 5.2 kernel. This was just an example board. I'm not going to go on further than that, you can run other DEs on cheaper and lower resource/power hardware than Xfce can too, you'd have similar points to make against the weaker hardware.

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                I don't know. Xfce runs the same with or without a GPU.
                It's possible that KDE can use MESA for software-only rendering, but that would be slow and annoying as hell.
                I don't have experience with either situations, and personally have no interest in it, how often are you running a DE without GPU accel and expecting fast performance? I feel that you're really nit picking here for reasons that Xfce is somehow better, rather than just accepting that both DEs can be good, no need for finding reasons that they're better than the other. Some cases, one or the other is going to be better, but that veers of mainstream desktop use.

                Originally posted by xfcemint View Post
                Well, I like Xfce. Maybe it just suits my needs. I know KDE has more features than Xfce, but I never needed those extras. The features of Xfce are quite sufficient for my needs.

                I somewhat dislike the window decorations for Xfce you get with Linux Mint. So I just edited them in a text editor. In a half an hour, I got what I wanted. It was so easy.

                I don't like Gnome Shell, Gnome 3 or whatever it is called.
                If Xfce suits you well, great, nobody is trying to covert you to another DE. It can be hard enough sometimes to sell Windows or macOS users on reasons that Linux based distros can be better, most of them they don't care for or the drawbacks aren't worth it to them. For those that cross over the line, squabbling about DE superiority and the like is just ridiculous :P

                KDE is pretty easy to change up stuff like that too, don't even need a text editor which makes it more accessible.

                I'm not fond of where Gnome is going either, had too many bad experiences with it, but GTK4 might be interesting.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by frank007 View Post
                  So, what cpu activity Kde or Xfce or others have at idle?
                  KDE is like around 1% maybe 2% iirc?

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by boxie View Post
                    *ah hem* If only XFCE were as good as KDE... this xfce dinosaur is moving so slowly, it's acting like a tar pit for all the users that don't know any better!
                    Waaay too fast for me. I still miss xfce 3.6 CDE look and feel on gtk1 ... that was the best xfce version and it got downhill from there. I still can't get used to gtk2 look and gtk3 is even more revolting.

                    Luckily CDE got opensourced some time ago and last time I tried it, it's fast becoming useful on modern unix. Give me back my motif, kthxbye.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by veeableful View Post
                      I have never used XFCE on high DPI screen (which I assume it doesn’t do right now) so does anyone know if this release will make it usable on high DPI screen? Thanks!
                      XFeces does not have high DPI support, since XFeces developers and users do not have high DPI screens. A typical XFeces user has a 1366x768 display and a pentium or core 2 duo CPU.

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