Xfce 4.16pre2 Is Another Step Forward For This Open-Source Desktop

Xfce 4.16 had been aiming to release in October~November as part of their new timed release approach but that has now slipped into the December~January time-frame but today saw the availability of the second pre-release.

September saw the release of Xfce 4.16pre1 with GTK2 support being removed, switching to client-side decorations, a new status tray plug-in, new icons, and other changes.

Today's Xfce 4.16 pre2 update brings more new icons, disabling of UPower support by default, improved user experience of settings dialogs, the Xfce user interface library has a new API for launching daemonized processes, various icon/appearance improvements for the Xfce panel, and many other refinements.

It depends how the testing plays out for whether an Xfce 4.16pre3 release will be needed or they could go straight to the Xfce 4.16.0 stable release. If all goes well it is possible we could see that Xfce 4.16.0 christening in December.

More details on the Xfce 4.16 desktop work via the pre2 announcement.