Xfce News » Olivier

KDE memory usage

Olivier — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 06:10:47 +0000

I came out across an article from Lubos Lunak on KDE memory usage, relayed by OSNews.com.

I find the article very interesting as memory usage is a topic that pops up regularly on our mailing lists. I’d just like to point out a small detail, regarding the methodology used for measuring “plain” desktop usage with real life apps.

Both OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Thunderbird used with Xfce to measure its memory usage, are quite heavyweight applications. Usually, people use lighter alternatives with Xfce, like Abiword. Abiword can be plain GTK+ and doesn’t require GNOME libs (it can make use of GNOME libs, but there are not mandatory and Abiword can compile and operate w/out).

Same goes with Thunderbird, people sometime prefer a plain GTK+ mailer like Sylpheed or Sylpheed-Claws which are very capable mailers instead of Thunderbird. With these apps, you can run plain GTK+ apps w/out KDE and GNOME libs.

Still, I agree that people who want to use a Web browser will probably choose Firefox. But similarly a lot of people I know use Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org or Firefox with either KDE or GNOME too.

NVidia drivers updated

Olivier — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:49:20 +0000

NVidia has finally released a 8xxx version of its driver for Linux.

The 7xxx had a serious problem with accelerated render, and was causing random freeze with Xfce WM embedded compositor. The 8xxx version seems to be a lot better in this regard.

So if you use xfwm4’s compositor with NVidia, make sure you get the latest driver from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Patch for Compaq R3000 laptop

Olivier — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 21:34:44 +0000

Off topic, but since I’ve been working on this mostly for the past few weeks… I’ve prepared a workarround to an incredibly crappy harware bug that cause the timer to run 3 times too fast on some of the Compaq R3000/HP zv5000 laptops.

The page is here : http://www.xfce.org/~olivier/r3000

Xfce, project of the week on “OSDir.com”

Olivier — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 20:23:19 +0000

Xfce is the Open Source project on the week on OSDir.com.

You can rate Xfce from this link at O’Reilly’s OSDir.com.

Xfce window manager now includes its own compositing manager

Olivier — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 11:56:56 +0000

It tooks me a while and a lot of work to get the compositing manager working in xfwm4, the Xfce window manager (obligatory screenshot)

I’ve been asked why making a separate compositor rather than using X.org’s xcompmgr.

To make it short, because it makes perfectly sense. The compositor is like a WM on its own, it manages a stack of all windows, monitor all kinds on X event and reacts accordingly.

Having the compositing manager embedded in the window manager also helps keeping the various visual effects in sync with window events.

An RPM archive for fedora with compositor enabled is available here (source RPM here)

This package is to be used in place of the regular xfwm4 package from Xfce 4.2 RC2 available here

Menu shadow effect for gtk+-2.4.3

Olivier — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 21:10:50 +0000

Hey, I took some time to prepare RPM packages and pre-patched source archives of gtk+-2.4.3 with the menu shadow patch applied (the patch remains the same and applies fine on gtk+-2.4.3)

Updates from the usual xfce page or from Sourceforge.

xfwm4 native multihead support

Olivier — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:25:03 +0000

Hey, xfwm4 now supports native multi screen and is able to manage all the screens connected to a display from a single xfwm4 process.

Adding this caused deep and complex changes in the core of xfwm4, so that might be still a bit rough on the edges…

If someone with the HW could just test… What’s needed is a multiscreen configuration but without running Xinerama (ie, a setup with :0.0 and :0.1 as screens, for example)

Cheers,
Olivier.

xfwm4 theme how-to

Olivier — Sat, 29 May 2004 23:17:35 +0000

An xfwm4 theme how-to is available here:

http://www.xfce.org/xfwm4-theme-howto/

Enjoy!
Olivier.

Libxfcegui4 Xinerama support dropped

Olivier — Tue, 18 May 2004 22:14:22 +0000

Since gtk+ now provides all required tools for dealing with Xinerama, I’ve removed my own implementation from libxfcegui4.

Both the taskbar and the panel have been changed to use GdkScreen.

Partial struts support in taskbar

Olivier — Tue, 18 May 2004 22:11:54 +0000

The taskbar now sets partial struts. That makes the configurable width a lot more useful.

Another neat effect is with Xinerama. The taskbar should not waste space on all screens anymore.

Xinerama support improved in xfwm4

Olivier — Thu, 13 May 2004 22:02:53 +0000

Today Jasper and Brian suggested that we could replace our own Xinerama related routines with Gdk ones (provided by GdkScreen which appeared in 2.2.x).

I’ve now replaced all calls to our libxfcegui4 Xinerama routines with GdkScreen equivalents in xfwm4. As a side effect, that makes xfwm4 compatible with SUN Xinerama which is supported by GTK+. Another nice side effect is that xfwm4 doesn’t require Xinerama to be enabled in libxfcegui4, since it doesn’t use libxfcegui4 for Xinerama anymore.

At last, I’ve also added a fairly nice theme called “Waza” I did some time ago. It uses gtk colors with nice gradients (that is only available in xfwm4 from CVS, and all 3 themes shipping with xfwm4 now use that feature)

Partial struts commited

Olivier — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:23:00 +0000

Beside a huge code reorganization (that should not affect the user, hopefully ;) ) xfwm4 now supports partial struts. It might not be perfect yet, as it has not been very well tested, especially with Xinerama. So if someone has the required HW (read Xinerama with preferably different resolutions betweens physical displays), it would be cool to check xfwm4 from CVS with it.

While I was at it, I’ve also added support for NET_SHOWING_DESKTOP. The panel plugin should be able to make use it it (ideally, it should keep the old code and use NET_SHOWING_DESKTOP only when supported by the WM) – Dunno who’s in charge of that plugin though.

shadow menu for gtk+-2.4.1

Olivier — Thu, 06 May 2004 21:29:29 +0000

I try to keep patched versions of gtk in sync with the official releases. Prepatched gtk+-2.4.1 tarballs and RPMs has been available for a fe days from here

PARTIAL_STRUT support in xfwm4

Olivier — Thu, 06 May 2004 21:26:52 +0000

Hey, it’s been a while… Anyway, partial strut support in xfwm4 seems to be on its way, I should be able to commit something mostly working to CVS shortly. Stay tuned.

Still need to update libxfcegui4 API and implement partial strut in taskbar (could be pretty cool with the configurable taskbar width Benny has added some times ago)

gtk menu shadow ported to gtk 2.4.0

Olivier — Sat, 20 Mar 2004 17:18:43 +0000

Well, not much to add…. Point your browser here for more info.

Olivier.

xfce session for gdm fix in cvs head

Olivier — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:39:07 +0000

While trying to get the gtk shadow patch for gtk 2.3.6, I ended up with gdm being totally unusable because of the gtk upgrade;

As the version I used was fairly old, I went and got a more recent (2.4.4.7) version. That indeed fixed my problem with gdm not starting (so I could at least log onto the system), but I was a bit disapointed when I realised that my xfce session was gone and I could not get it back.

While digging into the issue, I found that gdm now uses .desktop file in $sysconfdir/dm/Sessions to describe the available sessions. With that in mind, I created a xfce.desktop file in xfce-util package so that xfce is now compatible withe recent gdm versions.

That should prolly explain (and fix the issue that caused) the few messages on the ML from people not being able to get xfce in the list of gdm available sessions.

Cheers,
Olivier.

gtk menu shadow ported to gtk 2.3.6

Olivier — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:30:59 +0000

I took some time to port the gtk menu shadow patch to gtk 2.3.6. You can grab it from the shadow patch page or directly from sf.net as usual.

It should apply to gtk+-2.4.0 once it’s released. For the moment, I just provide a patch (which applies cleanly though ;) ), I might eventually provide a “prepatched” tarball once 2.4.0 is out.

Enjoy!
Olivier.

xfwm4 theme reorg

Olivier — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:32:19 +0000

I finally took some time to reorganize the theme stuff in xfwm4 for Xfce 4.2.

Theme are now located in themes/theme name/xfwm4 instead of xfwm/themes/theme name as in xfce 4.0

This means that older themes placed in the older location won’t be seen by xfwm4.2. This breakage was necessary to be consistent with the standard.

I also moved most themes from xfwm4 package to xfwm4-themes. That should make xfwm4 archive a bit smaller (and help keeps things clean)

Default 4.2 themes

Olivier — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 21:37:50 +0000

I did it again, I changed the default xfwm4 theme for 4.2… I know I said I wouldn’t, I know I said it no earlier than yesterday… But oh well, now, I’m pleased with the theme so there is a good chance it won’t change within the next 12 hrs :)

PS: This pupose of this post is mainly to try the weblog!