Road to Xfce 4.14
The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce !
As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :).
The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x.
It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16.
You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now.
The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14.
Roadmap / Planned Features :
- All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3.
- Replace dbus-glib with GDbus.
- Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible
- Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable
- Replace deprecated widgets.
Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done !
Core components
Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though.
Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender…
Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch
The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3.
Xfce4-power-manager
One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS
Xfce4-notifyd
A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :)
Xfce4-Appfinder
xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html
Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;))
Plugins
Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins.
Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin.
One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well.
Stay tuned !
Road to Xfce 4.14
The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce !
As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :).
The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x.
It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16.
You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now.
The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14.
Roadmap / Planned Features :
- All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3.
- Replace dbus-glib with GDbus.
- Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible
- Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable
- Replace deprecated widgets.
Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done !
Core components
Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though.
Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender…
Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch
The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3.
Xfce4-power-manager
One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS
Xfce4-notifyd
A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :)
Xfce4-Appfinder
xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html
Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;))
Plugins
Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins.
Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin.
One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well.
Stay tuned !
Catfish 1.3.4 Released (New PPA)
With a slew of updates and a new build system, Catfish 1.3.4 is now available! This update fixes a number of bugs, adds initial support for PolicyKit, and introduces a new PPA for Ubuntu users. What’s New? New Features Initial PolicyKit integration for requesting administrative rights to update the search database. Bug Fixes Fixes for … Continue reading Catfish 1.3.4 Released (New PPA)Clock applets in the Xfce panel in Xubuntu 15.10
Both Xfce and Xubuntu have had new releases relatively lately. In a way or another, this has resulted in an issue with Xubuntu 15.10 release: the Orage clock doesn’t show a transparent background even if it is set to show one. (Upstream bug in Xfce: 11915.)
Don’t be afraid! Instead of using the Orage applet, you can use the DateTime and Clock applets to get a transparent background – and while they itself do not allow for changing the color of the text in the applet, you can work around that with a .gtkrc-2.0 file in your home directory. Here’s how.
Set up the applets
To set up the applets, simply add the DateTime and/or Clock applets to your panel. You can control the format in which the time/date is shown in the applet via their preference dialogs found from their right-click context menus.
Bear in mind, if you wish to have two different clocks in the panel, we will be using the regular panel foreground (text) color for DateTime (white for Greybird) and modify the text color for the Clock applet in the steps below.
Modify the Clock applet color
To modify the Clock applet foreground color, we will need to make a modification in a theming file. The best way to do this is to use the per-user config file, found at ~/.gtkrc-2.0. If you don’t have this file, simply create one.
The code snippet to modify the Clock applest text color is the following:
style "panel-clock-custom"
{
fg[NORMAL] = "#66CCCC"
fg[PRELIGHT] = "#66CCCC"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#66CCCC"
text[NORMAL] = "#66CCCC"
text[PRELIGHT] = "#66CCCC"
text[ACTIVE] = "#66CCCC"
}
widget "Xfce*Panel*clock*" style "panel-clock-custom"
In this snippet, we’re setting the foreground color for all the Clock applets to a certain turquoise – #66CCCC – which compliments the 15.10 wallpaper well.
You can substitute this hex color value with any other that fits your needs.
The end result
For me, the end result looks like this:
Have fun modifying your own!