XFCE 4.20 Released
alexxcons.github.io
alexxcons.github.io
Wayland support is huge news. Of course, it's still limited, and Wayland itself is still limited in many ways. But this appears to be the road forward, and Xfce is taking it, showing how it's future-proof. I like how it was done by factoring out things related to the Wayland support into a library, while maintaining most of the rest. This hopefully shows that the code is in a good shape, well-structured.
Congratulations with the release!
At least with Arch, it's an optional package: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xfce4-whiskermen...
I don't know how to tell if this is the case for Ubuntu/Debian just from browsing the package pages in launchpad.
$ cat /usr/local/bin/noko-make-icon
convert -size 24x24 -gravity center -background yellow -fill black\
label:$1 ~/.local/share/icons/$1.png
file=~/.local/share/applications/$1-noko.desktop
echo [Desktop Entry] > $file
echo Name=$1 >> $file
echo Comment=noko-made >> $file
echo Exec=$1 >> $file
echo Terminal=false >> $file
echo Icon=~/.local/share/icons/$1.png >> $file
echo Type=Application >> $file
BTW you can DRY it up:
convert ... # Unchanged.
cat <<EOF >~/.local/share/applications/$1-noko.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=$1
Comment=noko-made
Exec=$1
Terminal=false
Icon=~/.local/share/icons/$1.png
Type=Application
EOFAlso, if you specify Terminal=true, your configured preference for your terminal emulator is ignored by all desktop environments.
What do they use?
tl;dr they are adding Wayland support while maintaining X support by abstracting both into an interface so they never lose support to either.
Future projects wanting to overturn crusty old incumbents by supercharging the worst part of that incumbents' process should at least provide a side project where all the extra bits that maybe people liked can grow a replacement, even though it's not the focus.
The whole point of freedesktop.org was to provide such a side project in the first place. The fact that it doesn't seem to be doing this with any effectiveness at present is the real issue.
the decision to roll window management and keyboard management and screen management into one thing called "compositor" looks very cavalier to me. It resulted in a need to duplicate so many things that are modular and pluggable under X.
(Repeating myself, I wish somebody created a Wayland compositor that explicitly delegates most tasks to plugins, providing a stable interface, so that you could use your own WM, your own keyboard switcher, etc. Thankfully, screenshooting is using a similar approach already, but in a limited way. The idea is so obvious that somebody must have attempted this already.)
You'd think that, wouldn't you?
The closest thing I know to a universal Wayland server that's WM and desktop independent is Mir.
I blame the disappearance of the one concerted competitive rival effort to the primarily Red Hat-backed complex of Wayland+GNOME+Flatpak to a single HN thread.
In my experience, HN commenters are often surprised when I say that I find this place to frequently be toxic, negative, with a strong element of groupthink. It's all on display in this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
It is also why Jamie Zawinski blocks incoming URL requests from here, and redirects to a famous image.
Conversely, the worst issue I had with dual monitors was with Wayland: Wayfire thought it was a brilliant idea to not support "window spanning two monitors" as default policy.
It feels to me like Wayland, GNOME and Systemd all come from the same sort of developer brain infection making them build vast, all-inclusive structures that are explicitly hostile to anyone who doesn't have the exact same underlying assumptions and needs.
I never notice the things Wayland "solves", just what it breaks.
Now, currently I'm using LXQt (which is probably even more bare bones and "get the job done" DE), what can XFCE give me? I mean, I certainly see a point when people switch to XFCE from Gnome or KDE. But what about if coming from the other side of the spectrum?
I think you basically answered it right there.
It sits between. For the lxde people it would be more of a full fledged desktop, but not with the full weight of KDE or Gnome.
Yeah, I understand that it sort of sits in between. But what are those "additional" features compared to a more spartan DEs? More included apps / accessories? More access to the machine's properties (like, more GUIs for various options)? Something else?
A working vertical taskbar.
Which, sadly, LXDE did just fine.
The thing is this: the controls on a vertical taskbar should be horizontal, and they should rearrange themselves in rows according to its width. So, horizontal buttons with horizontal text for each window, and status icons in columns and rows.
Any and all desktops with a start menu and a taskbar are just variations of Windows 95, and this is how Windows 95 worked. Most of the ripoffs don't do it right, and can't. A few (e.g. KDE) do it but really badly, so you get a HUGE start button and a HUGE clock, for instance.
Most people don't remember Win95 now, but I do. It really annoys me when the knock-offs can't do things the original did 29 years ago.
Can you imagine if someone came along with a new version of Vim, but they'd changed all the keystrokes and replaced all the : commands with English verbs? Instead of :wq or :x you typed SAVE FILE? People would laugh mockingly and go use something else.
That's how I feel about a half-done version of the taskbar-and-start-menu interface, like in MATE or Cinnamon.
Original Windows 95 fit into 32MB of disk space because that was the original maximum size of FAT16 drives. It was a tiny, simple OS. If someone presents me with a UI that copies the Win95 one, and basically every other FOSS desktop except GNOME >=3, Unity and Pantheon does, then the least I expect is an accurate copy of the very simple functionality that Windows 95 provided in 4MB of RAM.
Take that away, and it's ruined. It's Vim with no command mode and only cursor keys: you might as well use Notepad.
Notepad is perfectly usable and it's all a lot of people need. I'm not mocking anyone happy with it. I expect a bit more though.