Features Coming In The Xfce 4.12 Desktop

[tuubi]

You can always just use KDE with compositing disabled. ( Alt + Shift + F12, then uncheck it in system settings)

Right, because everyone know KDE magically turns into Xfce if you disable compositing.

But seriously, I doubt many of us run Xfce without Xfwm's own or an external compositor.

[mmstick]

I am running Xubuntu 14.04 and am still on XFCE 4.10, i see the roadmap dates for XFCE have all had there dates crossed out. Does this mean that the XFCE desktop suite has no developers? I'd sort of like to know so that I can start searching for another Desktop suite to use instead. I love the lightweightness of XFCE, maybe I should go try LXDE.

You can always just use KDE with compositing disabled. ( Alt + Shift + F12, then uncheck it in system settings)

[calc]

who is necromancer? when I look at that I see all the packages that make up the XFCE suite. i don't know what to do with that. is there a PPA for 4.12 for development or testers?

Sure, but it doesn't appear to be being kept up to date. The last upload appears to have been on April 2, 2014 and there are no builds for 14.04 yet.

https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev

https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/xfce-4.12

[ubuntuaddicted]

who is necromancer? when I look at that I see all the packages that make up the XFCE suite. i don't know what to do with that. is there a PPA for 4.12 for development or testers?

[calc]

I am running Xubuntu 14.04 and am still on XFCE 4.10, i see the roadmap dates for XFCE have all had there dates crossed out. Does this mean that the XFCE desktop suite has no developers? I'd sort of like to know so that I can start searching for another Desktop suite to use instead. I love the lightweightness of XFCE, maybe I should go try LXDE.

Over the past 2 months there have been 79 unique committers, via email address, as noted via https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-commits/ so it seems fairly active. I don't know what the distribution breaks down to though so it may be a lot of work in non core areas, or relatively small fixes. Perhaps someone has a script that can parse git emails to make a pretty graph.

[Serge]

I am running Xubuntu 14.04 and am still on XFCE 4.10, i see the roadmap dates for XFCE have all had there dates crossed out. Does this mean that the XFCE desktop suite has no developers? I'd sort of like to know so that I can start searching for another Desktop suite to use instead. I love the lightweightness of XFCE, maybe I should go try LXDE.

Necromancer, have a look at http://git.xfce.org

[ubuntuaddicted]

Development Dead?

I am running Xubuntu 14.04 and am still on XFCE 4.10, i see the roadmap dates for XFCE have all had there dates crossed out. Does this mean that the XFCE desktop suite has no developers? I'd sort of like to know so that I can start searching for another Desktop suite to use instead. I love the lightweightness of XFCE, maybe I should go try LXDE.

[startzz]

I don't understand why the memory usage matters? What's the point in having so much free memory? I mean if the DE utilizes more memory doesn't that mean it can be potentially faster depending on how it uses it? I always have at least a gigabyte of free memory so it seems like it would be a good thing for it to be used.

the point is that some douchebags likes to play with their "celeron 133 mhz, 16 mb ram" machines, so its a "pretty big deal" to use ram only when you need it. Memory usage for actual performance is not a thing, that should matter, its fast cpu, fast hdd/ssd, plus good written real DE, not some shitty des that someone made a list of, linux doesnt have a good de, so people doesnt have what to do, and then they starting to compare useless things, like memory usage.

[mrugiero]

The point was, the memory usage would only rise at those times when I'd be using the application, and unless it's an application that I'd have to use with multiple other applications, or one that I'd have to use all the time, I don't see the memory usage as much of a problem. I mean, Firefox can use over a GB of RAM, depending on the amount of tabs open... compared to that, the KDE libs are piecemeal.

The thing is you get into problems usually not because of a single app, but because of the combination.

I was mostly making the point that installing software on your computer that uses different libs/toolkits than your DE doesn't cause any harm per se. The disk space needed for the extra libs is neglicible, and when it comes to memory usage, well... that's just another factor you need to evaluate when you consider which software suits your purpose best. There's always a tradeoff, it just depends what quality you value the most - low memory usage, functionality, ease of use, speed, stability, etc...

That's exactly my point, actually. There are pros and there are cons. The pros depends on the specific app, and that's why I didn't list them: because I can't, without focusing on a single case. But there is a common con to the use of apps that depends on parts of other desktops (or that use agnostic libraries not used by your desktop), which is the increased memory use.

I was thinking more of the application side. When we get to applications that don't usually use GUI toolkits, such as games (especially ones ported from other OS's), at least some of them are going to want to talk to the display server directly - not all will want to use SDL. Without Mir, Wayland would have been a no-brainer choice for them, at least somewhere down the line. Now, they have to decide between Mir, Wayland or - more likely - just using the lowest common denominator, X.

I understand. So it's related to the other discussion on this thread. As I said already, if Mir's API ends up being unstable, this might be a good thing for Wayland users, since nobody would target an unstable API and most apps running on Unity will forcibly target a toolkit. If not, then it's likely that you are completely right.

Thats a wrong interpretation. First of all RAM has a finite amount of bandwidth. It is going to be quicker to work with a smaller amount of RAM than a larger amount. Period. Second RAM is for applications to use. What exactly is the point in having OS components consume large amounts of RAM for when in reality all it does is take longer to work with and removes it from use by applications?

There's also the complementary question to ask: what's the point of just consuming more RAM "because", and buying more RAM because it's used in pointless ways. I'm not against using more memory if it brings useful features or makes things faster (that's why I don't whine with Firefox' memory use: it's caching content, thus, allowing me to browse faster).

Pretty sure this list more or less data gibberish.
Why don't measure how much memory respective desktopshell and windowmanager use instead? Measuring some sort of default installation with arbitrary bloat the actual dist choose to include is kinda strange.

Any setup would be arbitrary anyway. The most logical setups I can think of are default and only the window manager.

[jumico]

Thats a wrong interpretation. First of all RAM has a finite amount of bandwidth. It is going to be quicker to work with a smaller amount of RAM than a larger amount. Period. Second RAM is for applications to use. What exactly is the point in having OS components consume large amounts of RAM for when in reality all it does is take longer to work with and removes it from use by applications?

If applications use less memory, more memory can be used for disk caching.

Thank you. I need a thanks button like on xda.