Xfce 4.10 Desktop Feature Release

[nschermer]

No GNOME user with half a brain would ever switch to an environment that never ever has bugfix releases. Roughly once a year there is a feature release and in between not a single bugfix is released to its users whereas in GNOME and KDE land users get monthly bugfix releases until six months later a new feature release is made (in contrast to Xfce’s 18 months).
And why would a happy GNOME 2 user switch to a DE that after years is still playing catchup with GNOME 2? Xfce 4.0 was released in 2003 and moved from a CDE clone to a GNOME 2 clone. Cinnamon manages to do new releases way quicker. I expect GNOME 2 fans to either adapt to GNOME 3 switch to Cinnamon, Unity or Plasma Desktop.

Just to inform: Xfce has a different release model then KDE and GNOME (and probably any other desktops). Because the development team is small (3 active developers), we decided that making stable release consumes too much time. So instead we make 1 stable release each year (time permitting, so 4.10 was ~4 months late), containing libxfce4uti-4.10.0, thunar-1.4.0 etcetc..
After that we only make stable releases of individual packages: so the latest Xfce 4.8 versions are xfce4-dev-tools-4.8.0 (same as in the 4.8 bulk release), xfce4-panel-4.8.6 (6 stable releases after 4.8.0 which was in the 4.8 release), xfce4-settings-4.8.3 (3 releases after 4.8) etcetc.

The single stable release consumes 10 minutes, a full stable release almost a day. I think the the last year Xfce made over 40 individual stable releases (for the desktop-critical packages), where as GNOME and KDE maybe had 10 full-stable releases. Both models work fine, but the latter requires a lot more effort (which Xfce doesn't have).

http://www.xfce.org/about/releasemodel

[curaga]

You are comparing 2 different libraries: if you compare libgtk-x11-2.0.so (gtk2) and libgtk-3.so (gtk3) you'll see there is not much difference in size. Same for the 2 gdk libraries (in fact there is the gtk3 version 30% smaller). Nonetheless this says nothing, the library size has no relation to the actual memory usage.

I compared the right libraries, just cut the names short for the post:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 455K 2012-04-29 15:12 libgdk-3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 4,3M 2012-04-29 15:12 libgtk-3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 595K 2012-04-29 15:13 libgdk-x11-2.0.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 3,8M 2012-04-29 15:13 libgtk-x11-2.0.so

Oops, mixed the gdk ones around, sorry about that. Gdk3 is smaller.

[mrugiero]

They DO bugfix releases, they just doesn't bump it to the DE version number, but to the specific component itself.

[borsook]

Does anyone know will this get into 12.04's backports? And if not - a PPA?

[Awesomeness]

Just to inform: Xfce has a different release model then KDE and GNOME (and probably any other desktops). Because the development team is small (3 active developers), we decided that making stable release consumes too much time. So instead we make 1 stable release each year (time permitting, so 4.10 was ~4 months late), containing libxfce4uti-4.10.0, thunar-1.4.0 etcetc..
After that we only make stable releases of individual packages: so the latest Xfce 4.8 versions are xfce4-dev-tools-4.8.0 (same as in the 4.8 bulk release), xfce4-panel-4.8.6 (6 stable releases after 4.8.0 which was in the 4.8 release), xfce4-settings-4.8.3 (3 releases after 4.8) etcetc.

Your “different release model” seems to include the complete lack of any public news: http://www.xfce.org/feed?lang=en says absolutely nothing about bugfixed component releases.

[anonymous]

Your “different release model” seems to include the complete lack of any public news: http://www.xfce.org/feed?lang=en says absolutely nothing about bugfixed component releases.

Of course. That news feed is for Xfce as a whole. If you want to see the bugfix for a component ( like Thunar) you have to read the news/changelog for that specific component like:

http://archive.xfce.org/feeds/project/thunar

BTW anyone know of any live distro that has Xfce 4.10? I want to test it but not spend my time compiling nor actually have installed locally.

[not.sure]

Just to inform: Xfce has a different release model then KDE and GNOME (and probably any other desktops). Because the development team is small (3 active developers), we decided that making stable release consumes too much time. So instead we make 1 stable release each year (time permitting, so 4.10 was ~4 months late), containing libxfce4uti-4.10.0, thunar-1.4.0 etcetc..
After that we only make stable releases of individual packages: so the latest Xfce 4.8 versions are xfce4-dev-tools-4.8.0 (same as in the 4.8 bulk release), xfce4-panel-4.8.6 (6 stable releases after 4.8.0 which was in the 4.8 release), xfce4-settings-4.8.3 (3 releases after 4.8) etcetc.

That's why we like it!
A no-nonsense, no version-number-bonanza, no break-shit-at-all-cost development model.

[Awesomeness]

Of course. That news feed is for Xfce as a whole. If you want to see the bugfix for a component ( like Thunar) you have to read the news/changelog for that specific component

If it's actually Xfce’s attitude towards communication that users/packagers need to hunt for bugfixed components themselves, it is no surprise that Xfce only has three developers. The sense of progress also attracts new contributors.

[baryluk]

I really like this release. I see lots of BeOS/AmigaOS influences here.

[Hamish Wilson]

This sounds nice, but I hope there are fixes for these problems from 4.8, as they are highly annoying:

1. Icons not staying in position on the desktop when a game or something changes the screen resolution.
2. We have had issues mounting secondary hard drives and other devices (which is not a problem in Gnome).
3. The panels often hang on top of programs displaying things in fullscreen (such as VLC).
4. It needs a proper volume knob like the one in Gnome and LXDE.

There are some other things I could mention, such as there being no tabs in Thunar (though I read that this is a deliberate move), no file search or connect to server functionality in Thunar (I have to use Catfish and Gigolo, respectively), and not being able to turn off the icons being displayed on my secondary screen (though for the most part I am just happy it is working with Zaphod Mode).

I am not trying to be down on Xfce here, as it is some really nice things about it - it has the best compositor I have ever used and it is fairly flexible. I would just like at least some of these things to be addressed. Now, anyone know where I actually should be posting this as to make a difference?