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Xfce

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XFCE
Original author(s)Olivier Fourdan
Developer(s)Free software community[1]
Initial release1997;27 years ago(1997)
Stable release
4.18[2]Edit this on Wikidata / 15 December 2022
Repositorygitlab.xfce.org/xfce
Written inC(GTK)
MiddlewareX Window System, Xorg
EngineGTK
Operating systemLinux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and GNU/Hurd
PlatformUnix-like
Available inat least 31 different languages
TypeDesktop environment
LicenseGPL,LGPL,BSD
Websitexfce.org

XfceorXFCE(pronounced as four individual letters) is afree and open-sourcedesktop environmentforLinuxand otherUnix-likeoperating systems.

Xfce aims to be fast andlightweightwhile still being visually appealing and easy to use. It embodies the traditionalUnix philosophyofmodularityand re-usability. It consists of separately packaged parts that together provide all functions of the desktop environment, but can be selected in subsets to suit user needs and preferences. Another of its priorities is adherence to standards, specifically those defined atfreedesktop.org.[3]

Features

[edit]

LikeGNOME,Xfce is based on theGTKtoolkit, but it is not a GNOME fork. It uses the Xfwmwindow manager,described below. Its configuration is entirely mouse-driven, with the configuration files hidden from the casualuser.[4]It does not feature any desktop animations, but supportscompositing.[5]

History

[edit]

Olivier Fourdanstarted the Xfce project in late 1996 as aLinuxversion of theCommon Desktop Environment(CDE),[6][7]aUnixdesktop environmentthat was initiallyproprietaryand later released asfree software.[8]The first Xfce release was in early 1997.[9][10][11]However, over time, Xfce diverged from CDE and now stands on its own.

The name Xfce originally stood for “XForms Common Environment”, but since then Xfce has been rewritten twice and doesn't use the XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but it is no longer capitalized as “XFCE” and is no longer an abbreviation for anything (although suggestions have been made, such as “X Freakin' Cool Environment” ).

— Frequently Asked Questions, Xfce Wiki[12]

TheSlackwareLinux distribution has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", a loose interpretation of the initialism.

Mascot

[edit]
See also:List of computing mascots

Per the FAQ, the logo of Xfce is "a mouse, obviously, for all kinds of reasons like world domination and monsters and such."[12]In theSuperTuxKartgame, in which various open source mascots race against each other, the mouse is said to be a female named "Xue".[13]

Early versions

[edit]
Xfce 3

Xfce began as a simple project created with XForms.Olivier Fourdanreleased the program, which was just a simpletaskbar,onSunSITE.[14]

Fourdan continued developing the project and in 1998, Xfce 2 was released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm. He requested the project be included inRed Hat Linux,but it was refused due to its XForms basis. Red Hat accepted only open-source software released under aGPL- or BSD-compatible license, whereas, at the time, XForms was closed-source and free only for personal use.[14]For the same reason, Xfce was not inDebianbefore version 3, and Xfce 2 was distributed only in Debian's contribrepository.[15]

In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based onGTK,a non-proprietary toolkit then rising in popularity. The result was Xfce 3.0, licensed under the GPL. As well as being based completely onfree software,it gained GTKdrag-and-dropsupport, native language support, and improved configurability. Xfce was uploaded toSourceForge.netin February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1.[16]

Modern Xfce

[edit]
An Xfce 4.4 desktop showcasing various Xfwm effects:drop shadowsbehind windows,alpha-blendedwindows and panel

In version 4.0.0, released 25 September 2003, Xfce was upgraded to use theGTK2 libraries.[17]Changes in 4.2.0, released 16 January 2005, included acompositing managerfor Xfwm which added built-in support for transparency and drop shadows, as well as a new defaultSVGicon set.[18][19]In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included theThunarfile manager, a replacement for Xffm. Support for desktop icons was added. Also, various improvements were made to the panel to prevent buggy plugins from crashing the whole panel.[20]In February 2009, Xfce 4.6.0 was released. This version had a new configuration backend, a new settings manager and a new sound mixer, as well as several significant improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce's core components.[21]

In January 2011, Xfce 4.8.0 was released. This version included changes such as the replacement of ThunarVFS andHALwithGIO,udev,ConsoleKit andPolicyKit,and new utilities for browsing remotenetwork sharesusing several protocols includingSFTP,SMB,andFTP.Window clutter was reduced by merging all Thunar file progressdialog boxesinto a single dialog. The panel application was also rewritten for better positioning, transparency, and item and launcher management. 4.8 also introduced a new menu plugin to view directories. The 4.8 plugin framework remains compatible with 4.6 plugins. The display configuration dialog in 4.8 supportsRandR1.2, detecting screens automatically and allowing users to pick their preferreddisplay resolution,refresh rate,anddisplay rotation.Multiple displays can be configured to either work inclone mode,or be placed next to each other. Keyboard selection was revamped to be easier and more user-friendly. Also, the manual settings editor was updated to be more functional.[22]

The 4.8 development cycle was the first to use the new release strategy formed after the "Xfce Release and Development Model" developed at theUbuntuDesktop Summit in May 2009. A new web application was employed to make release management easier, and a dedicatedTransifexserver was set up for Xfce translators.[23]The project's server and mirroring infrastructure was also upgraded, partly to cope with anticipated demand following the release announcement for 4.8.[citation needed]

Xfce 4.10, released 28 April 2012, introduced a vertical display mode for the panel and moved much of thedocumentationto an onlinewiki.The main focus of this release was on improving the user experience.[24]

An Xfce 4.12 example desktop running on Fedora 22; notice the file manager has been rewritten in GTK 3.

Xfce 4.12 was released on 28 February 2015,[25]two years and ten months later, contrary to mass Internet speculation about the project being "dead".[26]The target of 4.12 was to improve user experience and take advantage of technologies introduced in the interim. New window manager features include anAlt+Tabdialog, and smart multi-monitor handling. Also, a new power management plugin for the panel'snotification areawas introduced, as well as a re-writtentext editorand an enhancedfile manager.Xfce 4.12 also started the transition toGTK3 by porting application and supporting plugins and bookmarks. With 4.12, the project reiterated its commitment toUnix-likeplatforms other than Linux by featuringOpenBSDscreenshots.[27]

Xfce 4.13 is the development release during the transition of porting components to be fully GTK3-compatible, including xfce-panel[28]and xfce-settings.[29]

The planned release of Xfce 4.14 was announced in April 2016 and was officially released on 12 August 2019.[30]The main goals of the release included porting the remaining core components from GTK 2 to GTK 3; replacing the dependency ondbus-glibwithGDBus,GNOME's implementation of the D-Bus specification; and removing deprecated widgets. Major features were postponed for a later 4.16 release.[31]The minimum GTK 3 version was bumped from 3.14 to 3.22.[32]

Xfce 4.16 was released on 22 December 2020.[33]Some notable changes in this release include new icons with a more consistent color palette; improved interfaces for changing system settings; various panel improvements like animations for hiding, a new notification plugin with support for both legacy SysTray and modern StatusNotifier items, and better support for dark themes; and more information included in the About dialog.

Xfce 4.18 was released on 15 December 2022.[34]This release mainly focused on new features and improvements to the Thunar file manager including an image preview sidebar, split view, recursive file searching, better mime type handling, per-file color highlighting, undoing up to 10 actions, a recently opened files location, restoring open tabs on startup, and a customizable toolbar. Other changes include a keyboard shortcut editor and merging the date and time plugins.

Software components

[edit]
Whisker Menu - an alternate application launcher for Xfce

Applications developed by the Xfce team are based onGTKand self-developed Xfce libraries. Other than Xfce itself, there are third-party programs which use the Xfcelibraries.[35]

Development framework

[edit]

Xfce provides a development framework which contains the following components:

  • exo, an application library for the Xfce desktop environment
  • garcon, a Freedesktop.org compliant menu library
  • libxfce4ui, a widgets library for the Xfce desktop environment
  • libxfce4util, an extension library for Xfce

One of the services provided to applications by the framework is a red banner across the top of the window when the application is running withroot privileges,warning the user that they could damage system files.

Xfce Panel

[edit]

Xfce Panel is a highly configurabletaskbarwith a rich collection ofplug-insavailable for it.[36]

Many aspects of the panel and its plug-ins can be configured easily through graphical dialogs, but also by GTK style properties and hidden Xfconf settings.[37]

Xfce Terminal

[edit]
XFCE Terminal in February 2007

Aterminal emulatoris provided as part of the Xfce project, but it can be used in other X Window System environments as well. It supports tabs, customizable key bindings, colors, and window sizes. It was designed to replaceGNOME Terminal,which depends on the GNOME libraries. Like GNOME Terminal, though, it is based on the VTE library.[38]Xfce Terminal can be configured to offer a varying background color for each tab.[39]It can also be used as a drop-down terminal emulator, similar toGuakeorTilda.[40]

Xfwm

[edit]

Xfwm is a window manager, supporting custom themes.[41]Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm integrates its owncompositing manager.[42]

Catfish

[edit]

A file searching tool, able to perform in-name and in-text matching, as well searching by file type and last modified time. It is also capable of performingindexingby using anmlocatedatabase.[43]

Thunar

[edit]
Main article:Thunar

Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce, replacing Xffm. It resembles GNOME'sNautilus,and is designed for speed and a low memory footprint,[44]as well as being highly customizable through plugins. Xfce also has a lightweightarchive managercalled Xarchiver, but this is not part of the core Xfce 4.4.0.[45]More recently,Squeezehas been started as an archive manager designed to integrate better into the Xfce desktop, and though no releases have been made since 2008,[46]the git repository of squeeze has been active and this version is more feature-rich than the last stable release.

Orage

[edit]

Starting with version 4.4, Xfcalendar was renamed toOrage(French for "thunderstorm" ) and several features were added. Orage has alarms and uses theiCalendarformat, making it compatible with many other calendar applications, e.g.vdirsyncerto sync viaCalDAV.[47]It also includes a panel clock plugin and an international clock application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different time zones. With Xfce 4.16, and the dropping of GTK2 support for panel plugins, orage was replaced with DateTime plugin.[48][49]

Mousepad

[edit]
Main article:Mousepad (software)

Mousepad is the defaulttext editorfor Xfce in some Linux distributions, includingXubuntu.[50]Mousepad aims to be an easy-to-use and fast editor, meant for quickly editing text files, not a software development environment or an editor with a large plugin ecosystem. It does offer tabbed files, syntax highlighting, parentheses matching and indentation features commonly found in software editors.[51]It closely follows theGTK-system release cycle. It originated as aforkofLeafpad,[52]was developed by Erik Harrison and Nick Schermer, but has since been rewritten from scratch.[53]

Parole

[edit]
Parole 1.0.5 (2019–11)[54]
Parole 1.0.5

Paroleis a simple media player based on theGStreamerframework. It is designed with simplicity, speed and resource usage in mind, and is part of the Xfce Goodies[55]and uses at least three libraries from the Xfce project (libxfce4ui, libxfce4util, and libxfconf).[56]

It is similar toGNOME Videos,but it has some advantages and disadvantages compared to it:

Advantages
  • It has (X11/XShm/Xv) video output that provides a much higher frame rate thanClutter-based video output of GNOME Videos which relies upon OpenGL or OpenGL ES for rendering
  • Traditional text-based playlist on the main window for both audio and video files which provides an easy and fast switch between the files and shows their time
  • Audio visualization
  • Showing a banner upon the videos that have multiple audio or subtitle files
Disadvantages
  • Lacks a mechanism to speed up or slow down the media playback[57]
  • Lacks many advanced features of GNOME Videos
  • As of version 1.0.5 (2019–11) it cannot run underWayland

Ristretto

[edit]

Animage viewer(supporting slideshow mode). Ristretto operates on folders of images, displaying thumbnails along with the active image.[58]

Xfburn

[edit]

A CD/DVDoptical disc authoring software.Starting with the 4.12 release of Xfce, Xfburn is also able to burn Blu-ray discs.

Xfce Screensaver

[edit]

A screen saver and session-locking program first packaged with the 4.14 release of Xfce. It uses screensaver themes compatible with Xscreensaver.[59]Although forked from MATE Screensaver, it depends only on Xfce libraries.

Table of Xfce 4 components

[edit]
Components Descriptions Notes
Catfish Desktop search
Clipman Clipboard manager
Mousepad Text editor
Orage Graphical calendar With XFCE 4.16 Orage was replaced by new DateTime plugin
Parole A front-end for theGStreamerframework
Thunar File manager
Xfburn Optical disc authoringsupports CD/DVD/BRD
Xfce4-appfinder Application finder for Xfce4
Xfce4-mixer A volume control plugin for the Xfce Panel and a standalone sound mixer application UsesGStreameras a backend
xfce4-notifyd A simple, visually-appealing notification daemon for Xfce that implements the Freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification
Xfce4-Panel Desktoptaskbar
Xfce4-power-manager PC power managementprogram
Xfce4-session Xfce4 Session Manager
Xfce Screensaver Screensaver
Xfce-terminal Terminal emulator
Xfwm X window manager With optionalcompositing

Products and distributions using Xfce

[edit]
Xfce on thePandora

Xfce is included as one of thegraphical user interfaceson thePandorahandheld gaming system.

It is the default desktop environment in the followingLinux distributions:

It is also included as a standard desktop option onFreeBSDand derivatives such asGhostBSD,and in many other Linux distributions not listed above, includingArch Linux,Debian,Ubuntu,openSUSE,Fedora,Kali,[64][65]Linux Mint,Slackware,Mageia,OpenMandriva,Void LinuxandZorin OS.Kali Linuxalso uses Xfce as the desktop environment when running on the ARM platform. Debian makes a separate netinstall CD available that installs Xfce as the default desktop environment. In 2013, Debian briefly made it the default environment, replacing GNOME.[66][67]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
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