Xfce

Xfce (pronounced as four separate letters) is a free desktop environment for Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris and derivatives. Its goal is to be fast and light, while still being visually appealing and easy to use. It consists of several separately packaged components that together provide the full functionality of the desktop environment, but can be selected separately so that the user can tailor the work environment to their needs.

Features

Xfce is based on the GTK+ 2 library, just like GNOME 2. It uses the Xfwm window manager and can be fully configured with the mouse, thus keeping the configuration files hidden from the inexperienced user.

It is possible to run Xfce with as little as 40 MB of RAM using Alpine Linux.

History

Olivier Fourdan started the project in 1996. The name "Xfce" originally stood for XForms Common Environment, but Xfce has since been rewritten twice and no longer uses the XForms toolkit. The name survived, but is no longer capitalized as "XFCE", but rather as "Xfce". The current position of the developers is that the acronym no longer stands for anything specific. It has been nicknamed the X Free Cholesterol Environment (Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment), It is even called that in some of its man pages.

Early versions

Xfce Desktop 3.

Xfce started as a simple project built with XForms, intended to be a free CDE clone for Linux. Fourdan posted the program, a simple toolbar, on ibiblio (then "SunSITE").

Fourdan continued development of the project and in 1998, Xfce 2 was released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm (Xfce's window manager). Fourdan requested that the project be included in Red Hat Linux, but was turned down because the project was based on XForms. Red Hat only accepted open source software released under a BSD or GPL compliant license, but at the time, XForms was closed source and free for personal use only. For the same reason, Xfce was not in the Debian repositories. before version 3. Xfce 2 was only distributed in the Debian contrib component.

In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based on GTK+, a non-commercial toolkit that was growing in popularity. The result was Xfce 3.0, which was released under the GPL license. In addition to being entirely based on free software, the project included GTK+ drag and drop support, native language support, and easier configuration. Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1.

Modern Xfce (Version 4 - Present)

A typical Xfce 4.4 desk.

In version 4.0.0, released on September 25, 2003, Xfce was updated to use the GTK+ 2 libraries. Changes in 4.2.0 include a window composition manager for Xfwm that added built-in support for transparency and drag shadows, as well as a new SVG icon set. In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included the Thunar file manager, a replacement for xffm. Support for desktop icons has been added. In addition, various improvements were made to the bottom panel to prevent misbehaving plugins from spoiling the stability of the entire panel. In February 2009, Xfce 4.6 was released. 0. This version has a new configuration backend, a new configuration manager and a new sound mixer, as well as several significant improvements to the session manager and the rest of the core Xfce components.

In January 2011, Xfce 4.8.0 was released. This version includes changes such as the replacement of ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit, and PolicyKit, and new utilities for browsing remote network shares using various protocols, including SFTP, SMB, and FTP. Window clutter was reduced by merging all file copy progress dialogs into a single dialog. The bottom panel app has also been rewritten for better positioning, transparency, and launcher management. Version 4.8 also introduced a new plugin menu to view directories. The display settings dialog in 4.8 supports RandR 1.2, detecting displays automatically and allowing users to choose the desired resolution, refresh rate, and screen rotation. The screens can be configured to work in cloned mode or in multi-screen mode by placing one next to the other. Keyboard selection has become easier and more user friendly. Also, the manual configuration editor has been updated to be more functional.

The 4.8 development cycle was the first to use the new release strategy, "Xfce development and release model", developed at the Ubuntu Desktop Summit in May 2009. A new web application was used to facilitate release management, and a dedicated Transifex server was created for Xfce translators. The project's server and replication infrastructure was also upgraded, in part to cope with the expected post-release demand. release announcement.

Xfce 4.10 was released on April 28, 2012 and introduced a portrait display mode for the menu panel and moved much of the documentation to an online wiki. The main goal of this release was to improve the experience of the user.

On February 28, 2015, Xfce 4.12 was released. Introduced window previews and list mode when pressing the Alt+Tab key combination, docked windows in the corners of the desktop, a new dialog for setting wallpaper with support for different backgrounds in each workspace, support for tabs in the Thunar file manager, a new plugin for power management, and support for Blu-Ray burning in xfBurn, among others.

Version 4.14 was released on August 12, 2019, which highlights the migration of components to GTK 3. The integration of CatFish for easy file search in the system. Made improvements to the panel, added the ability to choose color profiles and settings for different displays, made many improvements to the file manager and window manager, and rewritten several components to aid migration to GTK+ 4.

Version 4.16 was released on December 23, 2020 with many improvements to the surface (User-visible things) For example, new icons and color palette, Settings Manager received a visual update to its filter box. A new dialog to choose the default application to open a certain type of File, Added default keyboard shortcuts, in the Tunar File manager added the function of pausing operations and added the function of queuing files, made a notable update to the dashboard as a modern status notifier among many more updates.

After 2 years of development, version 4.18 arrived on December 15, 2022, the latest version currently with news mainly in the Thunar file manager such as list improvement, new panel style, search improvement, now you can customize the toolbar and the buttons on it, split the view into two panes, added recent places entry, changed the behavior of the trash can depending on the view being used, among other improvements are improvements to by applying new visual themes, improvement to the default application management system

Main Xfce Applications

• xfdesktop :It is the image manager of the desktop background, the color of the desktop background, the menu and other things.
• Mousepad:It is a Leafpad-based text editor. The main reason for being Mousepad has been to give print support, which would have been difficult to implement in Leafpad for various reasons. Since 2009 it has no new versions in the official channel, which is why it is recommended to use the git repository.
• Xfce4-terminal: It is a modern terminal emulator for the Unix/Linux desktop.
• Thunar: It is a modern file manager for the Xfce desktop environment. It has been designed from the beginning to be quick and easy to use.
• Xfburn: Xfburn is an interface for recording optical media based on the libburnian library to create and record CD and DVD.
• Orage: A simple calendar application with reminders.
• Application Finder: (xfce4-appfinder) It allows you to search, launch and find information about applications installed in your system.
• Xfmedia: Xfmedia is a simple and easy-to-use media player based on the xine engine. The GUI GTK+ focuses on the reproduction and management of audio files although, being based on xine, it also supports video. It is currently considered obsolete and recommended to use Parole or VLC instead.
• Xarchiver: It is a GTK+2 interface for the handling of compressed files in 7z, zip, rar, tar, bzip2, gzip, arj and rpm formats, although it is no longer a component of Xfce as such and follows a separate development, it is recommended by Xfce in the absence of others with equal integration.
• xfce4-power-manager: It's the "demon" of energy. It is in the background managing the behavior of when the PC or lap-top is plugged or battery.
• xfce4-power-manager-settings: He's the visual energy manager. With this program or command you can manipulate the energy behavior.
• xfce4-panel: the default xfce4 panel
• Mixer: A modern mixer based on GStreamer.
• Ristretto: Ristretto is a light image viewer.
• Web browser: Xfce does not have its own browser. However, the use of the Midori light browser is recommended.

Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce since version 4.4. It is similar to Nautilus or PCManFM and is designed for maximum speed and minimum memory consumption. Xfce also has an archive manager called Squeeze/Xarchiver.

Products and distributions that use Xfce

Several distributions that include Xfce by default are: