Xfce Forum

rsv

Member

Registered: 2012-06-06

Posts: 2

Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

Its an awesome desktop system! Congratulations...

I am a potential co-developer of XFCE now cause I know how to contribute code and use git and ....

Here is my story:

I am very annoyed with ubuntu/DELL as of recently. My xps 15 (L502X) stopped suspending after I upgraded some packages on my system. A lot of forum/bugtracker searching took me 2 days with no success..

Somewhere in the process my kde 4.8 got to a point where I could not use the Start Menu button any more. All the kde apps crashed and could not be launched...

I searched for the error messages I was getting and it turned out all kinds of people were having them...

This is not the first time I have problems / instabilities after KDE upgrades. So to use my laptop I switched to LXDE at first... Several first sight annoyances made me wanna try XFCE. And now I am happy. Looks good. It is fast. And has all the everyday things I need from a desktop environment... All in all one could say google chrome is my OS/desktop env really these days ..

So things to take away:
- kde was not the cause for the suspend problems - it is 95% certain that it has sth to do with a faulty nvidia/dell/intel driver (aka the big hardware vendors dont have the time/desire to help open source ...) and from the other side of it - maybe not enough suport in the 3.2.0 kernel...
- KDE was too buggy for me. Maybe I got emotional after the suspend bug made me angry...
- XFCE is easy enough and not buggy so far

TRying for a few days if I will get nostalgic about KDE. Currently cant think of a logical reason why...

Stay tuned.

I like what XFCe comes by default with :
- the tooltips
- the settings are easy to find
- the right click menus are minimal and contain only stuff I actually need
- the overall visuals - awesome
- the lightness
- the app launcher program
- all the necessary plugins are here
- I can very easily change the start menu icon...
- the brightness/volume Fn keys work and display a nice OSD while changing... this was screwed in KDE last time. Generally it worked...

I dont like:
- when the main panel is put to the left in a vertical mode - the text goes vertical too - kinda funny to have to rotate my head each time to read the win title
- there is no search bar in the start menu (but the Application Finder is easy to find  - both in the start menu and also easy to setup as a separate widget in the panel...)
- I cant make the desktop show a folder of my choosing or no icons at all
- the alt+f2 launcher is too simple - am I missing sth ? I use it in conjunction with the app finder - depending on what I want to do
- there is no fast everuday calculator in the alt+f2 launcher - I miss the "=5+5" functionality from KDE. Tried running krunner - no luck. Gnome do is prolly what I have to use - but it depends on mono - which is a shame for me... cause mono is Microsoft's backdoor into screwing linux...

wkr

Member

Registered: 2011-01-01

Posts: 88

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

Welcome rsv

I dont like:
- when the main panel is put to the left in a vertical mode - the text goes vertical too - kinda funny to have to rotate my head each time to read the win title

fixed in 4.10

- I cant make the desktop show a folder of my choosing or no icons at all

Preferences > desktop > Icons tab > Icon type menu > no icon at all

- the alt+f2 launcher is too simple - am I missing sth ? I use it in conjunction with the app finder - depending on what I want to do

Alt-f2 had been much improved in xfce 4.10 http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-appfinder/usage

- there is no fast everuday calculator in the alt+f2 launcher - I miss the "=5+5" functionality from KDE. Tried running krunner - no luck. Gnome do is prolly what I have to use - but it depends on mono - which is a shame for me... cause mono is Microsoft's backdoor into screwing linux...

I use Synapse : incredibly fast, full featured and no mono dependencies (ppa:synapse-core/ppa). But perhaps you may add a calculator function in the Alt-f2 of Xfce4.10 by custom actions http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-appfinder/preferences

Hope it will help

rsv

Member

Registered: 2012-06-06

Posts: 2

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

Awesomeness!

I came back here today to share my excitement over a Panel trick that KDE cant do!

Its this - see my blog - http://rsvelko.wordpress.com/2012/06/07 … esomeness/

--

rsv wrote:
I dont like:
- when the main panel is put to the left in a vertical mode - the text goes vertical too - kinda funny to have to rotate my head each time to read the win title
--
fixed in 4.10

= How do I install 4.10 via apt? Is it buggy in some major way ? When was the release?

----
rsv wrote:
- I cant make the desktop show a folder of my choosing or no icons at all
--
Preferences > desktop > Icons tab > Icon type menu > no icon at all

= super! Thanks.

----
I tried synapse - nice!

I will also add the calc into the alt+f2 runner.

And last one - where do I dl the .deb packages for 4.10 ? Is there a ppa ?

mm google gave me this - http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/install- … -1204.html

nice!

Thanks man!

stqn

Member

Registered: 2010-10-11

Posts: 174

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

You can use [ quote ] [ /quote ] (without the spaces) to quote the previous post when you reply.

wkr

Member

Registered: 2011-01-01

Posts: 88

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

I came back here today to share my excitement over a Panel trick that KDE cant do!
Its this - see my blog - http://rsvelko.wordpress.com/2012/06/07 … esomeness/

Clever idea ! Thanks for sharing

mm google gave me this - http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/install- … -1204.html

I have installed xfce 4.10 with this ppa in xubuntu 12.04 and it works fine so far.

vasa1

Member

Registered: 2012-05-12

Posts: 22

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

...

mm google gave me this - http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/install- … -1204.html

I have installed xfce 4.10 with this ppa in xubuntu 12.04 and it works fine so far.

Link is broken or incomplete? Does it point to the launchpad ppa (https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/xfce-4.10)?

wkr

Member

Registered: 2011-01-01

Posts: 88

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

...

mm google gave me this - http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/install- … -1204.html

I have installed xfce 4.10 with this ppa in xubuntu 12.04 and it works fine so far.

Link is broken or incomplete? Does it point to the launchpad ppa (https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/xfce-4.10)?

The correct link is http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/install- … -1204.html
To add the ppa :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10

HalfNote5

Member

Registered: 2012-04-24

Posts: 7

Re: Hi ! - here is what a former KDE user notices in XFCE on first glance

Occasionally (although I'm not at all sure it has anything to do with your problem) Dell will have a proprietary version of a common chip (I know they were doing it with some Atheros wifi cards, wherein the Atheros driver didn't work quite right, but the Dell driver would.)

It will, on the odd occasion, make it difficult under Windows to be sure what driver you need, much less Linux. 

(We used to have a box of those secondhand wifi cards for repairing systems. Some Dell, others not. They looked identical. I was sooooo glad when the last one was gone, and I could quit playing "guess which driver.")

This is why I tend to avoid Dell in favor of manufacturers who use the stock standard stuff, although I will say I've gotten some really good and stable results installing Linux on some old Dell comps.