Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop

[Awesomeness]

How i wish there were some other, less opiniated, news site covering what phoronix covers. I'm only a few gnome bashing posts from unsubscribing.

Personally, I really like GNOME Shell. IMO it's the second best DE after Plasma Desktop but I feel not sorry for the shitstorm the GNOME people have to endure now because they are exactly the people who fueled the KDE 4.0 shitstorm.
They are the ones who made (and possibly still make) fun that KDE technology consists of “countless wrappers”, yet those “countless wrappers” allow for totally different user experiences under the same technological roof. Plasma Desktop uses exactly the same technology as Plasma Active: No compromise between traditional desktop GUI and tablet GUI needed.

Again: I like GS but if the GNOME devs where more open adopting KDE ideas, a traditional DE based on GNOME tech wouldn't need a fork like Cinnamon. (GS Extensions are a step in the right direction but IMO not far enough in modularity

@Hamish Wilson
Last time I tried XFCE, it offered the worst customization of any DE I've tried, however, that was maybe 3 years ago, so I'm sure it has significantly improved since.

Xfce only has a minor release once a year and those are not only minor in version number but in actual new features. Don't expect too much.

Isn't GNOME 3 designed by Red Hat? Like I thought RH was exactly the reason why GNOME is starting to fail.

GNOME Shell is mostly a Red Hat product, not GNOME 3 in general and I really do not see GNOME actually failing. Sure, GNOME lost some conservative users, but OTOH I've seen users who in the past used GNOME just because it was part of Ubuntu and didn't give it a thought but after Unity they make the conscious decision to replace Unity with GNOME Shell.

[skurk]

You all know Gnome3 has failed horribly for people that want to do anything but browse for covers in iTunes. I have been using Linux since when men were men and wrote their own device drivers (1994, Linux 1.x, Slackware floppy series) and I do believe the Linux desktop currently is in crisis. A serious crisis.

The only users that could possibly like Gnome3 are the users that will never use Linux but are perfectly happy with Windows 7 or OSX. I do not believe trying to cater to beginners is what Linux need to do. It's a tool for more advanced users with different demands and I am perfectly happy if it stays that way. Linux is user friendly enough if you got any interest in learning and reading some.

I, for one, have switched to XFCE a long time ago. While I'm not 100% happy, bash scripts and simple hobby hacks let me do what I want to do without getting in my way and I really got no serious complaints.

Gnome is going to die if it doesn't change, because the user base it wants to attract simply isn't available.

[grok]

catering to beginners is not a bad thing per se, only when a cater to a beginner (an adult one) I set them up with lxde.
I set them with file manager + Audacious to play music too, because if there's one thing you gotta learn to use it's the file manager. an itunes clone is distraction and an additional layer. I also give them firefox so the browser has "file edit view.."

any "modern" stuff is more stuff to learn (there's already a lot to do with right click, drag'n'drop, web navigation - have http://google.fr as home page, with a home button)

I would like KDE, maybe : if there's some place you could choose a "profile" or template, one where you're given a classic start menu, all effects disabled, activities disabled. I have no incentive to get rid of the cruft myself while I can use another desktop.

[xeizo]

Lot's of Doom here. Personally I've switched to xfce as well, but it is a rather primitive desktop-environment, on the positive side of things mabe this mess will accelerate xfce-development and attract new xfce-developers implementing feature-fullness....

[Hamish Wilson]

How is Xfce a "primitive desktop" environment? As compared to what? It is very much like Gnome 2 if that is what you want, only a little leaner (but not by much) and a bit cleaner. But it offers most of the same features as Gnome 2 did, including a built in compositer which I personally find to be the most configurable and easiest to use.



My main complaints at the moment centre purely around Thunar (lack of tabs, search, some mounting issuesetc) and xfdesktop (icons have trouble staying in position); other than that I do not have many complaints. However, as you can see, I am still on Fedora 16 and as such Xfce 4.8. I will see what 4.10 brings in the fall.

Even LXDE is getting to a point where I am want of complaint, and it has done this while maintaining it's lightweight stature. With a little work you can even get it to clean up fairly well and make it even look quite modern.



Of course, if you want bling or other more advanced features you should choose Gnome 3 or KDE. But I do not think it is fair to call either Xfce or LXDE primitive anymore.

[BO$$]

When gnome 3 appeared I tried using it but it sucked. Going to a corner to switch between applications is one of the most retarded achivements in UI history. Then went to gnome classic which is a gnome 2 under gnome 3 implementation. It was decent enough to be usable, but then I switched to xfce and all is well. I hope the idiots who came up with the idea to go to corner to switch applications die a slow horribly painful death. Then Unity appeared with basically the same concepts and now Windows 8. It's like a fucking trend in stupidity. Sheep UI designers....

[grok]

you have "Gigolo" on one of the desktops, is that software with a penis?

[Hamish Wilson]

Eschewing the legitimately odd name for a moment:

Gigolo is a frontend to easily manage connections to local and remote filesystems using GIO/GVfs. It allows you to quickly connect/mount a remote filesystem and manage bookmarks of such ... Gigolo itself provides a frontend to manage connections to those resources, to create bookmarks and automatically connecting to bookmarks.

You may ask why it is called Gigolo, a strange name for an application. But actually it fits pretty well for what it does: It mounts what it is told to. That's all.

http://www.uvena.de/gigolo/index.html

[skurk]

XFCE is not primitive at all. It's got all I need. A panel, a systray, proper multi monitor support (i.e no retarded global app menu like OSX and Gnome 3) and enough configuration options. Like someone above pointed out Thunar is a bit lacking though. Would like proper support for network bookmarks (nfs, ftp, smb) and tabs. But other than that I am a happy camper.

http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb107228/Sc...2021:37:31.png

I'm guessing XFCE's userbase increase is a linear function relative to Gnome 3's userbase decrease. Hopefully something positive emerges from that (or pacmans, pun intended).

[elanthis]

Lot's of Doom here. Personally I've switched to xfce as well, but it is a rather primitive desktop-environment, on the positive side of things mabe this mess will accelerate xfce-development and attract new xfce-developers implementing feature-fullness....

Yeah, sure. After I got fed up with the characters in charge of GNOME and had my one last big surge of Linux enthusiasm, I tried getting involved with XFCE. I basically got told that they were entirely happy with their slow-as-shit pace and that my patches would languish in bug reports for ages before they even started on a road map for major new features.