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Exo 0.12.4 Released

  • January 20, 2019
  • Sean Davis

Exo 0.12.4 is now available with an improved icon view, better icon rendering, and reduced disk usage. Come and get it!

What’s New?

General

  • Exo once again uses the same thumbnail directories as other applications (Xfce #14799), resulting in reduced disk usage.
    • Where everything else moved to ~/.cache/thumbnails quite some time ago, Exo continued to use ~/.thumbnails. Enjoy all the extra disk space!

Bug Fixes

  • ExoCellRendererIcon: Fix highlight rendering with GTK 3 (Xfce #14971)
  • ExoIconView: Fix search popup placement (Xfce #14994)
    • Additionally, a long-standing bug where the type-ahead search widget would be drawn partially off the screen for maximized windows, has been fixed!

Translation Updates

Belarusian, Catalan, Chinese (China), German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Thai

Downloads

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

 

Xfce & Xubuntu 2018 Year In Review

  • January 2, 2019
  • Sean Davis

2018 has been a busy year for Xfce & Xubuntu. As we enter 2019 and continue to inch closer to Xfce 4.14, let’s look back at one of the busiest development years in a while.

January

News

Major Releases

  • MenuLibre 2.1.4 introduced some useful new features to the popular menu editor, including a Test Launcher button to try out a launcher before saving and the Parsing Errors dialog to easily identify menu configuration issues.

Other Notable Releases

The Parsing Errors dialog in MenuLibre simplifies menu cleanup and debugging.

February

News

Major Releases

  • Exo 0.12.0 was the first stable Xfce 4.14 release for the Xfce application development library. The new release included support for both GTK+ 2 and 3, and added Brave, Geary, Google Chrome, and Vivaldi to the natively supported application defaults.
  • MenuLibre 2.1.5 expanded it’s support of desktop environments. With this release, MenuLibre’s powerful menu editing options are available for Budgie, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Pantheon, Unity, and Xfce.

Other Notable Releases

March

News

Major Releases

  • MenuLibre 2.2.0 was finally released with an expansive list of improvements. Expanded desktop environment support, easy window identification, launcher testing, and parsing error reporting are just a few of the key improvements.
  • Parole Media Player 1.0.0 included playback performance updates, automatic video output selection, and improved podcast and live stream support. The new Mini Mode reduces the player to a small window that simultaneously stays out of the way and in reach.
  • Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.0 introduced device manage and MPRIS support to the audio management plugin. Available input and output devices can be selected from the plugin menu, immediately moving streams to the new device. MPRIS support adds media player controls for supported applications.
  • Xfce Settings 4.12.2, 4.12.3, and 4.13.2 improved multi-monitor support for both stable and development releases. The mouse cursor can now be shown with the press of a key, configurable with the Xfce Settings Manager.

Other Notable Releases

Xfce PulseAudio Plugin
The Xfce PulseAudio Plugin makes it easy to manage devices and play your jams.

April

News

Major Releases

  • Xubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver”, an LTS release supported for 3 years, was released with 32-bit and 64-bit downloads available. This release included some new desktop applications: Some MATE components replaced their GNOME counterparts for improved desktop consistency; Xfce PulseAudio Plugin replaced the Sound Indicator; and the Xfce Notifications plugin, featuring a new Do Not Disturb mode, was added to the panel.

Other Notable Releases

Wallpaper Contest
The results of the Xubuntu 18.04 wallpaper contest were exceptional.

May

This was the first month I started published monthly news roundups. For an in-depth look at May’s development progress, check out the June Development Update.

News

Notable Releases

June

June Development Roundup

Major Releases

  • Thunar 1.8.0 and 1.8.1 were the first stable GTK+ 3 releases of the Xfce file manager, offering major usability and developer-friendly improvements. The pathbar now includes navigation buttons and a much tidier location selector. GObject Introspection for Thunar’s plugin library makes it possible to develop plugins in a number of programming languages.
  • Xfce Settings 4.12.4 and 4.13.4 featured improvements to display manufacturer recognition. The mappings were updated and various manufacturer names were simplified for better screen real estate. 4.13.4 introduced Xrandr display scaling, making it possible to scale the X display and all applications.

Other Notable Releases

A comparison of Thunar’s old and new pathbar. Image credit: Andre Miranda (see link to Thunar 1.8 release announcement)

July

July Development Roundup

News

Major Releases

  • Xubuntu 18.04.1, the first point release in the Bionic Beaver series, became available. At this time, users of a prior release should have received an upgrade notice. This release included several stability and performance improvements.
  • Xfwm 4.13.1 included a massive amount of updates, including a full port to GTK+ 3 and various fixes. This component is one of the critical pieces of the Xfce 4.14 release, so it’s great to see it humming along.

Other Notable Releases

August

August Development Roundup

Notable Releases

September

September & October Development Roundup

News

Notable Releases

Elementary Xfce’s Manila folder icons headline September’s development updates.

October

September & October Development Roundup

News

Major Releases

  • Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish” featured a number of appearance updates and Xfce 4.14 components. Our icon theme, elementary-xfce, was updated with new manila folder icons and optimized, resulting in a smaller install size and improved performance. Many more GTK+ 3 Xfce applications were included.
  • Xfce Screensaver 0.1.0 (and 0.1.1) was announced as a new screen locker and screensaver for Xfce. This application is a port of MATE Screensaver, adapted to tightly integrate with the Xfce desktop. It shares theming with LightDM GTK+ Greeter to guarantee a consistent login and lock experience for users of both.
  • Xfce Settings 4.13.5 featured the new display profiles: saved multi-monitor layouts that are automatically applied when a new monitor configuration is detected. This works with multi-monitor layouts as well as switching a laptop to use only the external display when connected.

Other Notable Releases

November

Major Releases

  • Xfce Screensaver 0.1.3 is the first beta release of the new Xfce Screensaver. It features an expanded configuration dialog, better support for X11 Screensaver and XDG Screensaver, and fully documented functionality. With a focus on improved code quality, contributors should have a much easier time with the project going forward.

Other Notable Releases

Xfce Screensaver is compatible with all Xscreensaver themes.

December

News

  • Lubuntu and Xubuntu announced that they will no longer ship 32-bit ISOs for Ubuntu 19.04 and onwards. Ubuntu 18.04 will continue to be supported for the 3-year LTS support window.
  • André Miranda published The Ultimate Contributor’s Guide to Xfce, which is definitely a worthwhile read for new and existing contributors.

Notable Releases

Cheers to 2019

Look out for Xfce 4.14, we’re so close! Keep an eye out for more updates in the coming months.

Xfce Screensaver 0.1.3 Released

  • November 25, 2018
  • Sean Davis

After 3 weeks of dedicated development time, the first Xfce Screensaver beta release is now available! With better event handling, a significantly upgraded preferences dialog, and a tidier codebase, the new version is nearly ready for prime time. 🎉

What’s New?

Features

  • All available configuration options are now available in the Preferences dialog, boosting the easily accessible options from 4 to 13!
  • Idle time is now based on the X11 Screensaver plugin instead of the GNOME Session Manager.
  • Xfce Screensaver now respects the xdg-screensaver state, inhibiting the screensaver when using apps like Caffeine or watching a fullscreen video.
  • Screensaver and lock screen functionality can easily now be toggled separately.

General

Preferences

  • Dropped unused configuration options [1, 2, 3]
  • Renamed all Xfconf properties for improved clarity and easier maintenance [1, 2]

Bug Fixes

  • Replaced Help link with a link to the Xfce Docs (Xfce #14877)
  • Added /usr/lib and /usr/libexec as trusted engine paths, enabling local installs on Linux with access to existing screensavers (Xfce #14883)
  • Fixed screen blanking and locking on FreeBSD and OpenBSD (Xfce #14846)
  • Fixed lock screen crash on laptop lid-close events (GTK #1466)
  • Fixed daemon crash when scrolling through available themes
  • Improved window size resizing for smaller displays
  • Renamed included screensavers to avoid conflicts with MATE Screensaver
  • Reduced flicker rate when multiple keyboard layouts are available (still not fully fixed, but greatly improved)

Build Improvements

  • Silenced warning: ar: ‘u’ modifier ignored since ‘D’ is the default
  • Fixed warning: Target given more than once in the same rule

Code Quality

  • Applied cpplint fixes and added cpplint configuration file
  • Cleaned up unused variables, trailing spaces, and deprecated code
  • Glade templates were cleaned up and organized for easier maintenance

Translation Updates

Albanian, Basque, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, French, Galician, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Malay, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Turkish

Screenshots

Downloads

This is the first beta release of Xfce Screensaver. While still not recommended for production machines, this is a great time to test and report bugs so we can put together an awesome stable release soon.

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

Xubuntu users (18.04, 18.10, and 19.04) can grab the package from the Xubuntu QA Experimental PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/experimental
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4-screensaver

Remember to also remove or exit light-locker and start xfce4-screensaver (or log out and back in) and add support for xfce4-screensaver to the xflock4 script.

Thanks and enjoy!

Xubuntu Development Update November 2018

  • November 1, 2018
  • Sean Davis

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, we’re back! After skipping last month’s development update, there’s a lot of new developments to unpack for the previous 2 months. Let’s get right to it.

Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish”

We wrapped up development on Xubuntu 18.10 throughout September and October, landing the following changes in the last month and a half of work.

This release includes 6 new GTK+ 3 Xfce components, giving users a snapshot of the Xfce 4.14 development. More information about the release can be found in the release notes.

Upcoming Fixes

Since the 18.10 release, we’ve identified fixes for two of our documented bugs. We’ll be pushing these fixes to our users via the stable release updates.

  • Panel: Window buttons are not clickable at the top pixel of the screen (LP: #1795135)
    • Resolution: Export GDK_CORE_DEVICE_EVENTS = 1 (Xfce Git)
  • Settings Manager: Mouse fails to scroll embedded panels (LP: #1653448)
    • Resolution: Export GDK_CORE_DEVICE_EVENTS = 1 (Xfce Git)

Xfce

September New Releases

October New Releases

4.14 Roadmap Updates

The Xfce development team has worked on tidying up the Xfce 4.14 roadmap over the last few days. Statuses have been updated, pending work has been moved to the top of each section, and completion percents have been adjusted to better reflect each project’s progress. With these updates, we can now see that…

Xfce 4.14 is now approximately 83% complete.

Of course, we need all the help we can get to get this milestone out the door. Check out the Xfce Contribute page to find out how you can help.

What’s Next?

With the 18.10 release now behind us, and the 19.04 cycle starting today, it’s time to get back to work! No release goals have been determined yet, so stay tuned to the Xubuntu Development mailing list for updates about Xubuntu 19.04 “Disco Dingo” development.

Xfce Screensaver 0.1.1 Released

  • November 1, 2018
  • Sean Davis

The second release of Xfce Screensaver is now available! Featuring a number of bug fixes, translations, and general improvements, this release is a big step forward for the newest Xfce application.

What’s New?

General

  • Added support for color settings from Xfdesktop 4.12 and 4.13
  • The black fallback color has been replaced with the Xfdesktop default
    • #152233 or super dark blue
  • The interface files for the preferences dialog and lock screen are now compiled and included in the binaries
  • The warning displayed as the root user is now an InfoBar to make it more visible
  • Screensaver Preferences can now be embedded in the Xfce Settings Manager

Bug Fixes

  • Fix crash when no background placement is configured (Xfce #14769)
  • Redraw the screensaver on monitor configuration events (Xfce #14796)
  • Automate detection of PAM configuration, add a new flag to override (Xfce #14779)
    --with-pam-auth-type=<common|system>
  • Notify the user when Xfce Power Manager has an incompatible configuration and include a button to resolve it (Xfce #14782)
  • The unlock dialog is now correctly drawn with the Adwaita GTK theme
  • Fix builds on OpenBSD, build status can now be tracked on the Xfce Build Bot

Translations (All NEW!)

Albanian, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

Packaging

With just a single release, packaging for the new screensaver is starting to appear all over the place! If you know of any other places it’s been packaged, drop me a line. 🙂

Screenshots

Downloads

Please be aware that this is alpha-quality software. It is not currently recommended for use in production machines. Please continue to test it, report bugs, provide feedback, and submit patches so we can make the best screensaver and locker possible for Xfce.

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

Xfce Screensaver 0.1.0 Released

  • October 15, 2018
  • Sean Davis

I am pleased to announce the release of Xfce Screensaver (xfce4-screensaver) 0.1.0! This is an early release targeted to testers and translators. Bugs and patches welcome!

About

Xfce Screensaver is a screen saver and locker that aims to have simple, sane, secure defaults and be well integrated with the Xfce desktop.

It is a port of MATE Screensaver, itself a port of GNOME Screensaver. It has been tightly integrated with the Xfce desktop, utilizing Xfce libraries and the Xfconf configuration backend.

Homepage · Bugzilla · Git

Features

  • Integration with the Xfce Desktop per-monitor wallpaper
  • Locking down of configuration settings via Xfconf
  • DBUS interface to limited screensaver interaction
  • Full translation support into many languages
  • Shared styles with LightDM GTK+ Greeter
  • Support for XScreensaver screensavers
  • User switching

Requirements

  • DBus >= 0.30
  • GLib >= 2.50.0
  • GTK+ >= 3.22.0
  • X11 >= 1.0
  • garcon >= 0.5.0
  • libxklavier >= 5.2
  • libxfce4ui >= 4.12.1
  • libxfce4util >= 4.12.1
  • Xfconf >= 4.12.1

Screenshots

Click to view slideshow.

Downloads

Please be aware that this is alpha-quality software. It is not currently recommended for use in production machines. I invite you to test it, report bugs, provide feedback, and submit patches so we can get it ready for the world.

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

Xubuntu Development Update September 2018

  • September 8, 2018
  • Sean Davis

A week later than expected, it’s the September development update! The theme for August (and early September) has been visual improvements, with a few bug fixes tossed in for good measure. Check it out! 

Xubuntu

Bionic Beaver (18.04)

Bionic was pretty stable in August, with only one of our packages making it through the SRU process and into the hands of our users.

We’re currently looking to get these new releases and fixes into Bionic.

  • Catfish 1.4.6
    • This is a new release with numerous bug fixes and a much-improved thumbnailer.
  • Xfce Settings: Mouse acceleration not configurable in Xubuntu 18.04 (LP: #1758023)
    • This issue is related to libinput taking over mouse configuration, and will be resolved by building xfce4-settings with libinput support.

Cosmic Cuttlefish (18.10)

The following source package updates landed in Cosmic in August.

  • elementary-xfce 0.12-1ubuntu1
    • The elementary-xfce icon theme is now available on Debian! Previously, this theme was part of the xubuntu-icon-theme package.
  • ristretto 0.8.3-1 (Debian sync)
  • thunar-archive-plugin 0.4.0-1 (Debian sync)
  • thunar-media-tags-plugin 0.3.0-1 (Debian sync)
  • xfce4-taskmanager 1.2.1-1 (Debian sync)
  • xubuntu-artwork 18.10
    • The development wallpaper is set on boot and the desktop.
    • The xubuntu-icon-theme is now a branding package, that upgrades the elementary-xfce icon theme with the Xubuntu distributor logo.
  • xubuntu-default-settings 18.10
    • “Square icons” were enabled in all supported plugins, improving size and shape consistency on the panel.
    • Orage configuration was updated to use the “paplay” command for sounds by default (LP: #1054396)
    • The panel was updated to be 80% transparent at all times. This is a settings migration to support the new GTK+ 3 panel.
    • The Xubuntu session was updated to correctly set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP (LP: #1590089)
  • xubuntu-meta 2.227
    • This package release replaces the fwupdate dependency with the newly minted fwupd.

Xfce

New Releases

Xfce had 3 new releases in August, featuring a variety of bug fixes and usability improvements.

Xfce Display Profiles (Preview)

Simon has been hard at work implementing a nifty new feature for the Xfce Display Settings, display profiles! This feature allows you to save and switch between various display setups, useful for users on the go or presenters. This hasn’t been merged into master yet, so designs are not final.

Spacing Improvements

I’ve spent the last week submitting patches to the Xfce core applications, panel plugins, and Thunar plugins. My goal is to improve the overall look and feel of Xfce by improving the consistency of it’s preference dialogs. A few before and after screenshots are below.

I’ve based my work on the excellent GNOME 2 HIG Window Layout documentation. Xfce has long borrowed the design philosophies from this document (to varying degrees) and is once again benefiting from the well-written work.

Shimmer Project

Elementary Xfce Icon Theme

Xubuntu’s beloved icon theme has had a few significant updates in recent weeks. From build optimizations to new upstream icons, there’s a lot to unpack.

The theme has added a Makefile and build tool to convert the theme’s SVG sources to PNG. Xubuntu has included the PNG-building functionality for some time, and now it’s available for everyone. PNG-based themes are faster to load and generally crisper at various sizes. Included in the new build options are PNG optimization. Optipng is now used to optimize each of the generated files, reducing the overall file size.

Updated icons coming from upstream this month include dialog-password, selection icons, graphics icons, and manila-colored folders. The manila folders are a sharp contrast from the longtime blue, but after using them for a few days, they’re actually pretty nice.

Other Updates

Mugshot 0.4.1

I released Mugshot 0.4.1 early last month with a number of bug fixes and code quality improvements. You can check out the release notes and find downloads here.

Contributing

Ready to start giving back to your favorite open source projects? Remember that there’s something for everyone, and you can get started quickly with the Xubuntu and Xfce contributor docs. If you don’t know where to start, join us at #xubuntu-devel on Freenode… we’ll point you in the right direction.

Xfce4 Panel Profiles (Formerly Xfpanel Switch) 1.0.8 Released

  • July 28, 2018
  • Sean Davis

Xfpanel Switch has a new name and home. With the 1.0.8 release, the application is now known as “Xfce4 Panel Profiles”, and is a part of the Xfce family. The latest release improves profile management and includes a number of translations.

What’s New?

At Home With Xfce

Bug Fixes

  • Failure to save some panel configurations (LP: #1765565)
  • Crash on corrupted panel configs (LP: #1765565)
  • Apply more strict logic when removing bad plugins
  • Remove orphaned plugins when loading configuration

General

  • Tidied up pylint notices

Translation Updates

Albanian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

Downloads

New releases of Xfce4 Panel Profiles will now be found at the Xfce release archive. Previous releases are still available on Launchpad.

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

Catfish 1.4.6 Released, Now an Xfce Project

  • July 15, 2018
  • Sean Davis

It’s a great day for fans of the fast and powerful Catfish search utility. With the 1.4.6 release, Catfish now officially joins the Xfce family. Additionally, there’s been some nice improvements to the thumbnailer and a large number of bugs have been squashed.

What’s New?

Xfce Transition

Catfish has long been included with most Xfce installations. It’s lightweight, fast, and a perfect companion to the Thunar file manager. With the transition from Launchpad to Xfce, things have moved around a bit. Update your bookmarks accordingly!

Improved Thumbnailer

Based on the FreeDesktop.org Thumbnail Specification, now featuring:

  • Improved error handling
  • Proper permissions for thumbnail directories and files
  • Logging of failed thumbnail generation
  • Saving of thumbnail file attributes
  • Support for relative thumbnail directories

Bug Fixes

  • Added inode/directory mimetype to desktop entry (Xfce #14505)
  • Disabled overlay scrollbars to improve interacting with the results list (Xfce #14487)
  • Enabled launching of executable AppImage files (Xfce #14500)
  • Fixed invalid date in appdata (Xfce #14502)
  • Replaced stock icons with standard Mime Type icons (Xfce #14503)
  • Improved handling of exceptions when parsing settings (Xfce #14491)
  • Improved handling of UnicodeDecodeErrors (Xfce #14490)
  • Improved handling of PermissionErrors (Xfce #14488)
  • Improved support for hidden files (Xfce #14497)
  • Remember window size and position between sessions (Xfce #14504)
  • Xfce: Open directories with the preferred file manager (Xfce #14483)

Translation Updates

Albanian, Belarusian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

Downloads

New releases of Catfish will now be found at the Xfce release archive. Previous versions will be added there soon. In the meantime, past releases are still available on Launchpad.

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

Xfce Settings 4.12.4 and 4.13.4 Released

  • June 21, 2018
  • Sean Davis

The latest developments in Xfce Settings continue to make their way to both the stable and development releases. Both 4.12.4 and 4.13.4 include a number of improvements, and 4.13.4 is steadily marching toward the 4.14 future.

What’s New?

Bug Fixes (4.12 and 4.13)

  • xfsettingsd --replace does not replace old daemon (Xfce #14381)
  • Uninitialized scalar variables (CID #292062, #292063)
  • Resolved warnings for -Wcast-function-type (GCC 8)
  • Fixed redefinition of DISTCLEANFILES in Makefile.am
  • Fixed typo in display manufacturers, “PRECISON” to “PRECISION”

Improved Display Manufacturer Recognition (4.12 and 4.13)

  • Refreshed PNP IDs from hwdata
  • Added support for VBX (VirtualBox)
  • Standardized and shortened manufacturer names
  • Updated laptop detection to include eDP in XfceRandr

Xfce 4.14 Progress (4.13 Only)

  • Xfce Settings has been ported from D-Bus GLib to GDBus as of 4.13.3
  • D-Bus GLib was deprecated in favor of GDBus with GLib 2.26

XRandr Display Scaling (4.13 Only)

  • This new feature is equivalent to xrandr --scale and is used to scale the entire display area
  • The scale values are stored in Xfconf under /Default/<NAME>/Scale/{X,Y}
  • For now, this setting can only be configured via Xfconf. If you’d like to submit a patch to add it to the GUI, we’d love to have it! 😉

Translation Updates

Belarusian, Catalan, English (Australia), Galician, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

Downloads

XFCE SETTINGS 4.12.4

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)

XFCE SETTINGS 4.13.4

Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)