[Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

xfcebsduser · 2011-01-17 06:15:19

Hi

Before I had time to be glad for your team with 4.8 release, both came to "Sadly, this will not be the case as the folks using any of the BSD systems will notice a sudden loss of features."

I use xfce on BSD system many years. It seems that it was time to go to more _serious_ Windows Manager. I do not understand one thing - if you write the software - you write it for people. Not so few people use BSD as destkop. If there were any difficulties in adapting the code for cross-platform - why not be just to clarify the technical details in the mailing lists, such as FreeBSD. Very sorry to see that OpenSource software is now calling LinuxSoft.

ManOfSteel · 2011-01-17 10:10:04

What does "sudden loss of features" means anyway? Is Xfce 4.8 now using API that is too incompatible (i.e. too difficult to port) with *BSDs' port of Xserver or something?

Could someone please clarify this matter? Because it would be a damn shame as Xfce has been available for systems such as FreeBSD for many years. Many people have used (and still use) it, including at least one mod at the FreeBSD official forums, if I'm not mistaken. There's even an Xfce-based FreeBSD "distro" made by a FreeBSD dev.

Nick · 2011-01-17 12:36:56

Did a bit of asking around, but the situation is not as bad as it seems. However is varies between BSD distos.

On OpenBSD is seems to work fine, although for example polkit/upower doesn't work, sudo is used and mounting file system with thunar is working too. Thunar-volman never worked on openbsd, so neither will the latest release with uses udev.

On Freebsd there seems to be some problems with ports after hal, but it gio works, Xfce should be fine too. Probably the same situation here; no polkit/consolekit, but sudo for shutdown.

So the problems seem to be udev (only needed for thunar-volman) and polkit (optional for xfce4-session). Maybe the support in GIO/GVFS isn't as good as it was with Thunar-vfs; well that's a shame from our side, but for the majority of the users (linux) this brings new features and we simply didn't had the capacity to maintain a VFS that brings the features of GIO.

The other modules in Xfce (Garcon, panel, xfdesktop) use GIO, but only for local files, so I doubt this is a problem.

ManOfSteel · 2011-01-17 18:21:08

Thanks for the information Nick. It isn't as bad as it appears in the announcement after all.

xfcebsduser · 2011-01-18 06:09:49

Thanks - really is not quite bad. But for me, nevertheless it was strange to see it. Other people have spent the efforts to porting and testing the XFCE on various BSD - thus spending their time and making your project better, and now these works are lost. Seeing the announcement and the movement toward Linux-only, I was amazed - how such huge projects as the E17, KDE4, Gnome retain affection for Linux and programmed so that these WM work everywhere, when little XFCE now required to be linux-only.

Nick · 2011-01-18 08:39:42

Well hopefully gio/gvfs will work on bsd too in the near future and it won't be too gnomish. Regarding polkit/consolekit; I think we'd be happy to rip that out sooner than later, because it only gives us problems...

ole · 2011-01-18 08:41:15

xfcebsduser, I think you'll soon be able to see the xfce ports: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=21043

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#1 2011-01-17 06:15:19

[Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#2 2011-01-17 10:10:04

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#3 2011-01-17 12:36:56

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#4 2011-01-17 18:21:08

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#5 2011-01-18 06:09:49

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#6 2011-01-18 08:39:42

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

#7 2011-01-18 08:41:15

Re: [Solved] XFCE developers, why your guys drop BSD support?

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