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

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  • #41
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    I believe you're making a terrible mistake by trashing other DE's in defense of yours.
    Neither KDE nor GNOME breaks "half of our apps every six months to show off our cool new feature" * - and whether you meant it to imply that DEs do so or not as it will certainly sound like a (completely false) accusation to any sound reader.
    We all need to calm down here. He wasn't "trashing" other desktop environments. "Breakage" is a relative term, of course, and mileage varies according to what features particular users depend on. We're not talking about bugs here, we're talking about "breaking" our habits and daily routines. So, please, take a deep yoga breath and see things in perspective. I don't know why Phoronix comments get nasty so quickly. :/

    I can't speak speak for KDE, but even point releases of GNOME 3 frustrated me immensely. After carefully picking a theme that agreed with me, and configuring a set of plugins that work well, the next point release came around and broke half of them. (I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for theme/plugin developers.) It reminds me of the early days of Firefox, where add-ons would break a lot per release: those days are over because the platform stabilized, and I have no doubt that GNOME 3 will get there and be awesome. But, for now, I feel like using GNOME 3 puts me in the position of being an "early adopter" (if not a beta tester), and I ... really have work to do. I am very happy to contribute to free software (there are lots of packages I maintain) but I do want something consistent and reliable for my daily work. It's cool if you like cutting edge! I tried it, and didn't like it.

    So, yeah, "breaks every 6 months" for GNOME 3 is exactly my experience. I'm not a "liar," as someone here said, because I had this experience.

    Unity is interesting. While it does not "break" for me per se, every Ubuntu release comes with out-of-left-field surprises, which at least break my expectations (I did not expect Amazon search results from what I thought was an app launcher). Unity 7 has been stable for a few releases, but only because the team has been working hard on Unity 8 and mobile. Of course we all know that when Unity 8 becomes default it will be major breakage (again, I don't mean bugs, I meant usage habits) because it's a total rewrite of not only the shell, but the entire graphics stack.
    Last edited by emblemparade; 22 November 2014, 10:13 AM.

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    • #42
      Originally posted by borsook View Post
      So what? It is a menu for XFCE. The ability to use it is one of XFCE's strengths. Another example - I prefer XFCE over LXDE because there is a DockbarX plugin for XFCE. Not done by XFCE team, but still it adds to the potential functionality of the desktop.
      Excellent! I just compiled it from aur and testing it, nice!

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      • #43
        I forgot to include on my previous post that theres also http://xfdashboard.froevel.de/ which resembles gnome 3/unity

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        • #44
          Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
          @Michael Larabel, it's amazing that you get to decide Xfce is "losing users" and the release plan "MIA" without presenting any data whatsoever and without consulting with a single Xfce developer.
          Probably because there is almost no one left to ask?
          Also it's the developers' responsibility to communicate. http://xfce.org/about/news/ has last been updated Apr 28, 2012.

          Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
          I'm running UX surveys for Xfce, and the actual, real data I get indicates 24% of our respondants have been using Xfce for under a year. I'll publish the data later as the survey has only been running for 24 hours.
          If that survey does not ask how many people left and why, it is hardly ?actual, real data?.

          Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
          Xfce doesn't throw away half of its UI and apps twice a year simply because most of it works and does what it was designed for. We certainly have issues to solve wrt. our development process but breaking half of our apps every six months to show off our cool new feature is not in the minds of anyone I've talked to.
          No desktop project I know ?throws away half of its UI and apps twice a year?. You even writing that is suggestive that other do that.

          Originally posted by Hamish Wilson View Post
          Micheal should really do another article based on those blog posts.
          Why? The blog http://blog.alteroot.org/articles/20...from-xfce.html says: ?The development is relatively slow (the latest stable version, 4.10 has been released in April 2012), there is not so much developers, like 1 or 2 "core" devs, and less than 10 contributors?

          So yeah. Xfce is dead.

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          • #45
            Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
            We all need to calm down here. He wasn't "trashing" other desktop environments. "Breakage" is a relative term, of course, and mileage varies according to what features particular users depend on. We're not talking about bugs here, we're talking about "breaking" our habits and daily routines. So, please, take a deep yoga breath and see things in perspective. I don't know why Phoronix comments get nasty so quickly. :/

            I can't speak speak for KDE, but even point releases of GNOME 3 frustrated me immensely. After carefully picking a theme that agreed with me, and configuring a set of plugins that work well, the next point release came around and broke half of them. (I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for theme/plugin developers.) It reminds me of the early days of Firefox, where add-ons would break a lot per release: those days are over because the platform stabilized, and I have no doubt that GNOME 3 will get there and be awesome. But, for now, I feel like using GNOME 3 puts me in the position of being an "early adopter" (if not a beta tester), and I ... really have work to do. I am very happy to contribute to free software (there are lots of packages I maintain) but I do want something consistent and reliable for my daily work. It's cool if you like cutting edge! I tried it, and didn't like it.

            So, yeah, "breaks every 6 months" for GNOME 3 is exactly my experience. I'm not a "liar," as someone here said, because I had this experience.

            Unity is interesting. While it does not "break" for me per se, every Ubuntu release comes with out-of-left-field surprises, which at least break my expectations (I did not expect Amazon search results from what I thought was an app launcher). Unity 7 has been stable for a few releases, but only because the team has been working hard on Unity 8 and mobile. Of course we all know that when Unity 8 becomes default it will be major breakage (again, I don't mean bugs, I meant usage habits) because it's a total rewrite of not only the shell, but the entire graphics stack.
            I'm far from being a GNOME users, I dislike GNOME 3 with passion.
            However, breaking usage habits != breaking theme engine API.
            GNOME had two major iteration in ~14 years. KDE had 3 in the same period.


            Again, I'm not defending GNOME, far from it. (I used KDE and XFCE).
            I just think that making such claims (breakage every 6 month) doesn't serve XFCE's best interest, even if such claims are subjectively true to some users.

            - Gilboa
            oVirt-HV1: Intel S2600C0, 2xE5-2658V2, 128GB, 8x2TB, 4x480GB SSD, GTX1080 (to-VM), Dell U3219Q, U2415, U2412M.
            oVirt-HV2: Intel S2400GP2, 2xE5-2448L, 120GB, 8x2TB, 4x480GB SSD, GTX730 (to-VM).
            oVirt-HV3: Gigabyte B85M-HD3, E3-1245V3, 32GB, 4x1TB, 2x480GB SSD, GTX980 (to-VM).
            Devel-2: Asus H110M-K, i5-6500, 16GB, 3x1TB + 128GB-SSD, F33.

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            • #46
              Originally posted by gilboa View Post
              Steve,

              I believe you're making a terrible mistake by trashing other DE's in defense of yours.
              Neither KDE nor GNOME breaks "half of our apps every six months to show off our cool new feature" * - and whether you meant it to imply that DEs do so or not as it will certainly sound like a (completely false) accusation to any sound reader.

              XFCE is a sane choice (I personally use it on a number of low-end machines) and will hopefully manage to remain relevant in the future.

              - Gilboa
              * Approximate time between major releases:
              KDE: 1->2: 2 years, 2->3: 2 years, 3->4: 6 (!) years, 4->5: 6 (!) years.
              GNOME: 1->2: 5 years, 2->3: 9 (!!!) years.
              You need to read between the lines, though I realise my sentence was rather ambiguous. If we, the people who contribute to Xfce, wanted to adopt short release cycles and to have anything meaningful to show across the whole DE, we'd be compelled to push for changes to meet deadlines and we wouldn't be able to take the time we take to design and test our changes. Major Xfce releases are rare but they usually imply a large number of well-tested novelties.

              Now given that I've been commenting as a Xfce contributor on this thread I'll keep my opinion on other projects' release cycles and quality assurance processes to myself

              Comment


              • #47
                Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
                If we, the people who contribute to Xfce, wanted to adopt short release cycles and to have anything meaningful to show across the whole DE, we'd be compelled to push for changes to meet deadlines and we wouldn't be able to take the time we take to design and test our changes.
                You obviously have no idea how SCMs like git work.
                The whole point of those is to merge features only when they're done. If a feature is not ready, it stays in its dev branch for one or two additional dev cycles. That's how e.g. Linux itself is managed.

                Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
                Major Xfce releases are rare but they usually imply a large number of well-tested novelties.
                A sane development approach would be to make releases often. Not only would users not be overwhelmed by a large number of new features, bugfixes would also get into users' hands sooner.


                Originally posted by Steve DL View Post
                Now given that I've been commenting as a Xfce contributor on this thread I'll keep my opinion on other projects' release cycles and quality assurance processes to myself
                Better so. You'd only post FUD again.

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