Xfce 4.12 Desktop Release Ends Up Behind Schedule

[Rexilion]

Just what the linux desktop needs right now is more toolkit fragmentation. gtk3 may have its problems, but forking gtk2 would be even worse.

Yes, and the other 50% of the Linux crowd claims that: choice is good!. Well, here it is! Look at the display servers: X, Mir and Wayland. Toolkits GTK3+, QT, Enlightenment etc. Look at the office suites. Multimedia applications. But most of all, look at the huge amount of different distro's.

If people want to 'waste' time on fragmentation then let them be. If it works really well, the project will become important. If it's not important to everyone else but you, you are free to maintain it.

[JS987]

Just what the linux desktop needs right now is more toolkit fragmentation. gtk3 may have its problems, but forking gtk2 would be even worse.

gtk3 is useless if it doesn't keep backward compatibility between minor releases like 3.4 and 3.6
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/a...spiracy-theory

[gilboa]

Standard response. No, it was a suggestion not an order for anyone to do anything lol. Besides, it's probably easier to just stick with a gtk2+ distro then.

For now, people who really dislike Gtk-2 can stick to LTS distro's such as RHEL/CentOS or Ubuntu LTS.
But in the long term, using an old toolkit with zero support and possible security vulnerabilities that no-one will ever fix is a very bad idea.

- Gilboa

[gilboa]

gtk3 is useless if it doesn't keep backward compatibility between minor releases like 3.4 and 3.6
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/a...spiracy-theory

I've got a fairly large python application that uses Gtk-3 via PyGI and I can say that I had any issues moving from say, Fedora 15 to Fedora 18.
Granted, its not a big application and some of the underlining changes might be handled by PyGI, but I at least in my experience, Gtk-3 is far from being useless.

BTW, my actual desktops either run XFCE 4.10 or KDE 4.10.

- Gilboa

[korrode]

xubuntu

No.
Bad.
Don't do that.

Last i looked at Xubuntu it was Xfce after Canonical had severely beaten it with the bloat stick.

[ArtKun]

No.
Bad.
Don't do that.

Last i looked at Xubuntu it was Xfce after Canonical had severely beaten it with the bloat stick.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I don't like *buntu at all, but Xubuntu is definitely the best "out-of-the-box" Xfce Linux distro.

[korrode]

I have no idea what you are talking about. I don't like *buntu at all, but Xubuntu is definitely the best "out-of-the-box" Xfce Linux distro.

Have they fixed it yet so it's resource footprint isn't the same size as a full Gnome install?

In my opinion; the only argument for calling Xubuntu the "best" out-of-the-box Xfce experience has little to do with how well Xfce has been pre-configured and setup. The underlying Ubuntu infrastructure is what makes it a good choice for joe-user. Ubuntu's large software repo, support and being start-point for popular commercial software endeavours (eg. Steam) is what would sway me to recommend it. If we're going to debate only on the merits of the Xfce pre-configuration, and not consider the benefits of the underlying distro (which have nothing to do with Xfce itself); I don't see how Xubuntu is better than the offerings from Linux Mint (which retains much or all of the underlying Ubuntu benefits) or Manjaro (which gets the underlying Arch benefits, and also "non-free" stuff like Flash and nvidia drivers literally out-of-the-box - they're on the disc and even operational when just running it as a 'LiveCD'), both of which offer better system responsiveness and general performance than Xubuntu, last I checked.

[Rexilion]

No.
Bad.
Don't do that.

Last i looked at Xubuntu it was Xfce after Canonical had severely beaten it with the bloat stick.

Could that be because Xubuntu also starts gconf and gnome-keyring? Maybe also a VNC server as well?

And maybe some of the autostart gtk+3 apps that take a new gtk+3 lib into memory, next to a gtk+2 lib. I.e. nm-applet?

I did a Ubuntu install based on cli.seed with 'base-installer/install-recommends=false'. Then I 'topped' it with only XFCE deps and some user apps. The memory usage after start is about 120 MB.

[bwat47]

No need to bash xubuntu, it is definitely the best out of the box XFCE out there. I especially like that by default they use a fork of xfce4-volumed that actually supports pulseaudio properly, they use ubuntu's volume indicator instead of xfce's mixer panel plugin which plays much nicer with pulseaudio, and uses pavucontrol as the mixer which is way better than xfce's mixer. Its really not that bloated and uses less resources than gnome or unity for sure.

On login it only uses around 320mb of ram for me (running 64-bit, and I have a few extra startup items like synapse, and I'm using gala as my window manager instead of xfwm). system boots in about 10 seconds and logs in instantly on my laptop, I'm very satisfied with its performance.

[Rexilion]

No need to bash xubuntu, it is definitely the best out of the box XFCE out there. I especially like that by default they use a fork of xfce4-volumed that actually supports pulseaudio properly, they use ubuntu's volume indicator instead of xfce's mixer panel plugin which plays much nicer with pulseaudio, and uses pavucontrol as the mixer which is way better than xfce's mixer. Its really not that bloated and uses less resources than gnome or unity for sure.

On login it only uses around 320mb of ram for me (running 64-bit, and I have a few extra startup items like synapse, and I'm using gala as my window manager instead of xfwm). system boots in about 10 seconds and logs in instantly on my laptop, I'm very satisfied with its performance.

Ah, that could explain it as well. I'm using alsa down here as well. However, I don't believe that pulseaudio is a memory hog these days...