Xfce Forum

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What's New in Xfce

Retirement of the brightness plugin? All changes are either improvements or regressions. The brightness plugin allows us to simply tap a spot on the panel (the brightness plugin) and then adjust the slider that appears, a simple two-step process. Will this new power manager provide a method of adjustment that is at least equally easy (one click, then a slider adjustment)? Or is this change another regression?

Thanks,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Looks like its being merged into the battery plugin. I'm just building Xfce on a spare laptop that i got my hands on. I'll have a better idea shortly how its being implemented.

EDIT: Yes, its been merged into the battery plugin:

Last edited by ToZ (2014-07-27 21:37:35)

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kshade

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Registered: 2014-07-27

Posts: 1

Re: What's New in Xfce

I like the look of the new mousepad, might become my new go-to small GUI editor.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

System Load Monitor plugin:
- add capability of running a command when clicking on the plugin

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MountainDewManiac

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From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What's New in Xfce

Thanks for addressing my concerns. (And thanks for the thread in general). Looks like when the user clicks on the panel app and it appears, the brightness slider is right there, so no additional steps required to adjust.

Seems kind of a dumb place to put it, IMHO, but they can stick their soddy new menu, Thunar, VLC, and my cripple-headed brother's birth certificate in their power manager applet for all I care - as long a everything both works as well as and is as quick and easy to use as the current setup. I've never been one to insist that a thing be "pretty," so I'd be a bit of a hypocrite to stop using it just because they're making sure that it won't be...

As long as they don't decide to remove the good XFCE menu and force use to start using that KDE-looking Whisper one, anyway.

Regards (and thanks again),
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

xfdesktop
- added option to toggle display of hidden files on desktop
- added "--next" option to force cycle of wallpapers

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ToZ

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From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

A couple more screen grabs demonstrating hidden file displays on desktop:

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MountainDewManiac

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From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What's New in Xfce

Wonderful improvements (keep them coming, lol). As always, thanks to the developers and to ToZ for keeping us updated about the, err, updates.

Several of us run either distros which are built on Ubuntu (ex: Mint) or one of the Ubuntus and have recently updated to the "Ubuntu 14.04" series. Unfortunately, for those of us who have long had the XFCE 4.12 (and 4.10) PPAs in our sources list, this upgrade forced a downgrade to our XFCE, its window manager, and its related components/apps - those two PPAs seem to only be set up to work with distros that are or are based on Ubuntu 13.10, 12.10, and 12.04. Two of those are past their support periods and the other one... It looks like if we want a currently-supported distro which can easily use the newer XFCE, we've got to go with a distro which is four versions behind the current one (???).

That doesn't sound right to me. I occasionally show my ignorance by thinking some pretty stupid thoughts when I'm trying to figure out something linux-related on my own and end up having to ask for help. I guess I'm at that point now because, let's face it, the above, no matter how many times I repeat it to myself... still sounds pretty stupid, lol. So...

What do I need to add to my sources list - I'm using Mint (XFCE) but haven't had any trouble arise or breakage happen from using PPAs that were meant for Ubuntu in the several years that I've used it - in order to get the newer XFCE stuff into my distro and to have it automatically update like before?

I assume that the 4.10 & 4.12 PPAs were added for two reasons: so that people who use XFCE can have easy access to the newer things and so the developers can get them tested in the real world by many people. Forcing people to use an old distro or a newer - but still old - one that is out of support does neither of those things. So an attempt at thinking logically tells me that there must be a way and that I'm just not seeing it.

ToZ, you appear to be one of the brighter lights on this forum and you certainly win the award (as far as I can determine) for the most helpful person here (although there are several that provide a lot of help). Can you help with this one?

If, OtOH, what I first thought <SHUDDERS>, is actually reality, do you or someone else here have the ear of one of the developers, and would you mind asking about it?

(MUCH) thanks,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

I run both Xubuntu 14.04 (work) and Arch Linux (home). With Xubuntu 14.04, yes, it has some older components - but it is, imo, very stable. They put alot of effort into developing a stable, feature-rich and (dare I say) an attractive distro. With Arch, using the AUR, you can get git-based package installs automated - though not for all components, and you have to force a re-install if you want to get an updated release (not really automatic in the sense that you are asking). I personally just build directly from git so I can get access to the latest commits. However, what you don't see is when things don't go so smoothly with the builds. It really is a fine line between stability and having access to the latest and greatest that depends on your comfort level and ability/willingness to fix the breakage. (Apologies to other distros, I don't know them well enough to comment).

As for Ubuntu-based PPAs, I am unaware of any that have the most recent versions. I would guess that the 14.10 development builds would have newer versions, but I'm not sure which versions they are or how far away from the current git tree they are. The 4.12 PPA is managed by the xubuntu-dev team. There is contact information on that page if you want to follow up with them. However, their focus is probably on stability. If you're into IRC, you can get a hold of them at the #xubuntu-devel channel.

From what I can tell, the various Xfce developers use different distros themselves. I would hazard to guess that they haven't the resources or interest to put out and manage pre-packaged copies for the different distros. They have their build instruction page that shows you the way. If you want, you can contact them at the xfce4-dev mailing list.

I've started working on a ubuntu-minimal build with Xfce built from git on top. Its still a work in progress. There are no guarantees that it will work over time, but when I finish it I can share the build script. A good idea would be to run this in a VM so that you can have the benefit of both a stable OS and a development version so that you can see and work with the new developments. The updates though, would all need to be performed manually.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the Xfce developers are planning to release 4.12 by christmas in time for the next Debian release which means that most probably, the main distros like Xubuntu will start releasing PPAs for that version.

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gedaliah_atl

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Registered: 2014-08-05

Posts: 2

Re: What's New in Xfce

The other thing to keep in mind is that the Xfce developers are planning to release 4.12 by christmas in time for the next Debian release which means that most probably, the main distros like Xubuntu will start releasing PPAs for that version.

I thought the Debian Jessie feature freeze is Monday, November 5, 2014. So either XFCE 4.12 is going to get in Debian get to SID and then Testing by Nov 5th, or Debian's feature freeze is going to happen later than Nov 5th, or Debian is going to have to make an exception for XFCE 4.12 to get promoted to Testing past the feature freeze. You'd think since XFCE is the default DE for Jessie instead of Gnome 3.x that XFCE 4.12 will get some priority to be a part of Jessie by both parties (XFCE and Debian). Thoughts?

Last edited by gedaliah_atl (2014-08-05 16:51:45)

ToZ

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From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Here is the mailing list thread about 4.12 stabilization, and yes, it was in advance of the Nov 5th freeze.

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gedaliah_atl

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Registered: 2014-08-05

Posts: 2

Re: What's New in Xfce

Here is the mailing list thread about 4.12 stabilization, and yes, it was in advance of the Nov 5th freeze.

Great, thanks!

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Updating the xfce4-power-manager screenshots to reflect recent changes:
- laptop lid management added to Controls tab
- brightness reduction moved to Display tab

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ToZ

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From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

New versions of xfce4-power-manager and xfdesktop released:

ANNOUNCE: xfce4-power-manager 1.3.0 released
ANNOUNCE: xfdesktop 4.11.7 released

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Jerry3904

Member

Registered: 2013-11-09

Posts: 863

Re: What's New in Xfce

Not sure what this means exactly, but both releases carry this caveat:

[Please note that this is a development release.]

Last edited by Jerry3904 (2014-08-11 18:17:25)

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MX-23 (based on Debian Stable) with our flagship Xfce 4.18.

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What's New in Xfce

It means that 4.11 code is not guaranteed stable. You might see a statement that those who encounter problems or who want guaranteed (inasmuch as such a thing is possible, I mean) stability should use 4.10 until 4.12 - which will not be a development version - is released.

I could be mistaken, but that's my understanding.

Regards,
MDM

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Korrode

Member

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2012-12-19

Posts: 28

Website

Re: What's New in Xfce

New versions of xfce4-power-manager and xfdesktop released:

ANNOUNCE: xfce4-power-manager 1.3.0 released
ANNOUNCE: xfdesktop 4.11.7 released

I committed these to Manjaro Unstable branch last week[1] ...including post-release patch for the power manager to fix the brightness slider crashing the panel plugin on 32bit.[2][3]

They've already made their way to Testing branch, will be in Stable soon[4].

[1] https://lists.manjaro.org/pipermail/man … 01226.html
[2] https://lists.manjaro.org/pipermail/man … 01227.html
[3] http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-ma … 74214a871c
[4] https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=15820.0

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Rob McCathie - Manjaro Linux Team
http://manjaro.github.io/download/

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Some updates:
- many little back-end fixes for xfce4-power-manager plus a settings dialog reorg:

- change to the wavelan panel plugin properties dialog:

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Korrode

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From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2012-12-19

Posts: 28

Website

Re: What's New in Xfce

I see a new development release of the Power Manager has just been made, version 1.3.2.

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Rob McCathie - Manjaro Linux Team
http://manjaro.github.io/download/

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

I see a new development release of the Power Manager has just been made, version 1.3.2.

Here is the announcement: https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-d … 30840.html.

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ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Just a minor update. Some bug fixes I've seen come by:

- [xfce/xfdesktop] 01/01: settings: Fix background color loading
- [xfce/xfce4-settings] 01/01: Add support for versioned help desktop files
- [xfce/xfce4-power-manager] 01/01: Keep blank and DPMS timeout settings in order

EDIT: And a number of xfce4-session bug fixes:
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 01/10: Add logind runtime detection to support suspend/hibernate (Bug 9952)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 02/10: polkit_unix_process_new is deprecated (Bug 10793)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 03/10: Update copyright year (Bug 10768)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 04/10: Non-POSIX compliant test used in startxfce4 (Bug 10828)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 05/10: Handle gpg and ssh    agents separately.
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 06/10: Update xflock4 (Bug 10217)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 07/10: Use pkexec for xfsm-shutdown (Bug 9952)
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 08/10: trivial: update git ignore
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 09/10: Fix build with    --disable-polkit
- [xfce/xfce4-session] 10/10: Add the UPOWER_ENABLE_DEPRECATED for 0.9.23

Last edited by ToZ (2014-08-29 02:49:54)

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ToZ

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From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

Some more xfce4-power-manager bug fixes:

- [xfce/xfce4-power-manager] 01/01: plugin: Use the brightness-slider-min-level for the scroll wheel
- [xfce/xfce4-power-manager] 01/01: Sync the brightness slider with blank and DPMS settings
- [xfce/xfce4-power-manager] 01/01: trivial: fix    build warnings
- [xfce/xfce4-power-manager] 01/01: Only use batteries for current charge state that are used for power supply

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Jristz

Member

From: Sud-America

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 111

Re: What's New in Xfce

- [xfce/xfce4-session] 06/10: Update xflock4 (Bug 10217)

This was not reverted cause was «"'linux only'"»? I read something in the bug about that

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XFCE :: Arch Linux
:: AMD E-300 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics @ 1300 MHz
:: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]
:: LED with aspect ration of 16:9 in 14.0'' (1366x768) [Radeon driver]

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What's New in Xfce

They marked a bug "linux only?" What other OS do the developers of XFCE officially support?

Regards,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

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ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,486

Re: What's New in Xfce

They marked a bug "linux only?" What other OS do the developers of XFCE officially support?

Regards,
MDM

I believe they are referring to the BSDs. There were a number of other reasons why they reverted bug report 10217.

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