Xfce 4.10

[bmarkus]

Xfce development team released Xfce 4.10pre1, the preview release of Xfce 4.10 few days ago. It is up and running fine on TC 4.4, only thunar-volman plugin which is responsible for automounting drives and devices doesn't work yet, most probably due to missing or not properly configured TC components. Anyhow it is promissing and even pre1 works same or better as current 4.8

Desktop:



New power manager:



See announcement for details:

http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1333238400

[bmarkus]

Now the final version of Xfce 4.10 is available in the repo. It is really a nice release. To learn more, visit

http://xfce.org/about/news/?post=1335571200

The base system

Xfce4.tcz installs the base system. It gives you a basic functional desktop environment with menus, file manager (Thunar), preconfigured custom TC panel and tumbnails both on desktop and in file manager. On stock TC 4.5.1 without any other extensions it looks like




Xorg vs. Xvesa

While Xfce4 itself runs fine on Xvesa, its settings daemon doesn't start due to old RANDR version, therefore appearance setting doesn't work. If you miss it, install Xorg.

GVFS

gvfs.tcz is a soft (optional) dependency. It is recognized automatically when installed. GVFS provides Trash, acces to network including ftp sites, etc. Unfortunately current GVFS is not 100% in TC; Thunar opens after 20 seconds, looks like a timeout somewhere, must be investigated. Not Xfce4 issue.

Online help

Online help requires GVFS installed. It will be fixed by upstream dropping this dependency and will work without GVFS.

Removable media handling

Removable media handling is supported via thunar-volman plugin using udisk. Unfortunately it doesn't work on TC yet, must be fixed. Not an Xfce4 but TC specific issue.

Plugins

There are many obsolate plugins in the repo built for Xfce 4.6 which are most likely doesn't work on 4.10 Repo will be checked and plugins will be updated (where updata is available) or dropped if they are unmaintained by upstream. Be patient.

Update

My advice is to start with a clean install instead of updating previous release. While it is possible, manual tweaking requires more time and implies more risks.


Finally let's see a screen with Xorg, composition enabled with additional window manager theme, GVFS, ristretto and few panel plugins at the top: