Xfce 4.14pre2 released!
As scheduled, the team has released the second pre-release for Xfce 4.14, which is due later this summer, yesterday evening. As this release was mostly focused on bugfixing there are not that many highlights, but as with Xfce 4.14pre1 I’ll try to point out a few – as before, not completely unbiased.
Some highlights
xfce4-panel
Several bugs were fixed, most notably Bug #15044, which caused applications used with multi-touch devices to regress into single-touch.
A new visual indicator for grouped windows was introduced to the tasklist plugin and the default panel layout was refreshed, adding several plugins (if not installed/shipped, they will simply be automatically and silently removed from the panel on its first run).
Furthermore some usability tweaks were done (e.g. more mnemonics) and translations have been updated.
xfwm4
Several fixes and improvements to compositing (GLX backend), HiDPI and theming have made it into the latest release.
thunar
A bug where writable shares were wrongfully detected as read-only was fixed as well as some other, less critical bugs.
xfce4-settings
Several regressions and bugs were fixed in the color dialog, the display dialog (the display settings were not retained across sessions) and the settings manager.
xfdesktop
The new “Add Next Background” option was added as well as several fixes around interactivity (drag-and-drop, open items on keypress) and theming.
xfconf
The settings backend of Xfce gained support for GObject introspection and vala.
Testing
If you want to get a taste of Xfce 4.14 pre2 without compromising your main system you can grab the Docker container of xfce-test that we tagged today as ubuntu_19.04-xfce-4.14pre2 with all the components in their up-to-date versions from dockerhub. If you haven’t used xfce-test before I heavily recommend reading its helpful Readme.
Furthermore, several distributions have already commenced on packaging (Xubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, OpenBSD etc) so we hope to get even more testing and feedback until the final release of Xfce 4.14.
Next steps
The next release – aka pre3 – is optional, so we may decide to skip it and go straight for the final release if the release team is confident that there are no showstoppers.
Until then enjoy Xfce 4.14pre2!
Exo 0.12.6 Released
With Xfce 4.14 rapidly approaching, development efforts have shifted to bug fixes. Exo 0.12.6 is no exception, with several old and new bugs finally meeting their end.
What’s New?
Missed the release announcement for Exo 0.12.5? Click here to check it out!
Bug Fixes
- Add trailing “;” to mimeapps.list (Xfce #15087)
- Clear bad entries from mimeapps.list (Xfce #15046, #15238)
- Synchronize default applications to gio-mime (Xfce #14633)
- Disable emoji menu in type-ahead search (Xfce #15451)
- Enable dismissal of “Failed to open default” dialogs
- Related Issue: Brave Browser #4142
- If the error can be safely ignored, the user is able to dismiss
it. After changing defaults, the dismissal is forgotten.
Translation Updates
Albanian, Armenian (Armenia), Bulgarian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Interlingue, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 Released
A new version of the Xfce Screensaver is now available! The latest release fixes a number of bugs while also making the codebase leaner and more efficient. Check it out!
What’s New?
New Features
- Added support for elogind (Xfce #15243)
- Added support for profile images from AccountsService (Xfce #15235)
General
- Removed a lot of unused code (2,700+ lines)
- Simplified monitor-handling logic
- More consistent spacing in makefiles
Bug Fixes
- Added categories to display in the Settings Manager (Xfce #15507)
- Added a fallback idle timer for when X11 screensaver doesn’t notify
- Fixed warning during configure stage (Xfce #15552)
- Fixed Inhibitor lock (Xfce #15551)
- Hid screensaver themes from “Open with” options (Xfce #15531)
- Made numerous cppcheck, cpplint, and Coverity Scan fixes
- Constant variables guarding dead code
- Dereferencing before/after null
- Unchecked return values
- Unused variables
- Memory leaks
Translation Updates
Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Exo 0.12.6 Released
What’s New?
Missed the release announcement for Exo 0.12.5? Click here to check it out!
Bug Fixes
- Add trailing “;” to mimeapps.list (Xfce #15087)
- Clear bad entries from mimeapps.list (Xfce #15046, #15238)
- Synchronize default applications to gio-mime (Xfce #14633)
- Disable emoji menu in type-ahead search (Xfce #15451)
- Enable dismissal of “Failed to open default” dialogs
- Related Issue: Brave Browser #4142
- If the error can be safely ignored, the user is able to dismissit. After changing defaults, the dismissal is forgotten.
Translation Updates
Albanian, Armenian (Armenia), Bulgarian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Interlingue, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Exo 0.12.6 Released
What’s New?
Missed the release announcement for Exo 0.12.5? Click here to check it out!
Bug Fixes
- Add trailing “;” to mimeapps.list (Xfce #15087)
- Clear bad entries from mimeapps.list (Xfce #15046, #15238)
- Synchronize default applications to gio-mime (Xfce #14633)
- Disable emoji menu in type-ahead search (Xfce #15451)
- Enable dismissal of “Failed to open default” dialogs
- Related Issue: Brave Browser #4142
- If the error can be safely ignored, the user is able to dismissit. After changing defaults, the dismissal is forgotten.
Translation Updates
Albanian, Armenian (Armenia), Bulgarian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Interlingue, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Exo 0.12.6 Released
With Xfce 4.14 rapidly approaching, development efforts have shifted to bug fixes. Exo 0.12.6 is no exception, with several old and new bugs finally meeting their end.
What’s New?
Did you miss the release announcement for Exo 0.12.5? Click here to check it out!
Bug Fixes
- Add trailing “;” to mimeapps.list (Xfce #15087)
- Clear bad entries from mimeapps.list (Xfce #15046, #15238)
- Synchronize default applications to gio-mime (Xfce #14633)
- Disable emoji menu in type-ahead search (Xfce #15451)
- Enable dismissal of “Failed to open default” dialogs
- Related Issue: Brave Browser #4142
- If the error can be safely ignored, the user can dismiss it. After changing defaults, the dismissal is forgotten.
Translation Updates
Albanian, Armenian (Armenia), Bulgarian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Interlingue, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish
Downloads
Download Exo 0.12.6 from the link below.
Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)
Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 Released
What’s New?
New Features
- Added support for elogind (Xfce #15243)
- Added support for profile images from AccountsService (Xfce #15235)
General
- Removed a lot of unused code (2,700+ lines)
- Simplified monitor-handling logic
- More consistent spacing in makefiles
Bug Fixes
- Added categories to display in the Settings Manager (Xfce #15507)
- Added a fallback idle timer for when X11 screensaver doesn’t notify
- Fixed warning during configure stage (Xfce #15552)
- Fixed Inhibitor lock (Xfce #15551)
- Hid screensaver themes from “Open with” options (Xfce #15531)
- Made numerous cppcheck, cpplint, and Coverity Scan fixes
- Constant variables guarding dead code
- Dereferencing before/after null
- Unchecked return values
- Unused variables
- Memory leaks
Translation Updates
Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 Released
What’s New?
New Features
- Added support for elogind (Xfce #15243)
- Added support for profile images from AccountsService (Xfce #15235)
General
- Removed a lot of unused code (2,700+ lines)
- Simplified monitor-handling logic
- More consistent spacing in makefiles
Bug Fixes
- Added categories to display in the Settings Manager (Xfce #15507)
- Added a fallback idle timer for when X11 screensaver doesn’t notify
- Fixed warning during configure stage (Xfce #15552)
- Fixed Inhibitor lock (Xfce #15551)
- Hid screensaver themes from “Open with” options (Xfce #15531)
- Made numerous cppcheck, cpplint, and Coverity Scan fixes
- Constant variables guarding dead code
- Dereferencing before/after null
- Unchecked return values
- Unused variables
- Memory leaks
Translation Updates
Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Downloads
Source tarball (md5, sha1, sha256)
Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 Released
A new version of the Xfce Screensaver is now available! Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 fixes many bugs while making the codebase leaner and more efficient. Check it out!
What’s New?
New Features
- Added support for elogind (Xfce #15243)
- Added support for profile images from AccountsService (Xfce #15235)
General
- Removed a lot of unused code (2,700+ lines)
- Simplified monitor-handling logic
- More consistent spacing in makefiles
Bug Fixes
-
Added categories to display in the Settings Manager (Xfce #15507)
-
Added a fallback idle timer for when X11 screensaver doesn’t notify
-
Fixed warning during configure stage (Xfce #15552)
-
Fixed Inhibitor lock (Xfce #15551)
-
Hid screensaver themes from “Open with” options (Xfce #15531)
-
Made numerous cppcheck, cpplint, and Coverity Scan fixes
- Constant variables guarding dead code
- Dereferencing before/after null
- Unchecked return values
- Unused variables
- Memory leaks
Translation Updates
Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Downloads
Download Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 at the link below.
Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)
Xfce 4.14pre1 released!
Good news everyone, finally the first pre-release of the long-awaited Xfce4.14 is here! \o/
Some highlights
Note: A lot has happened since Xfce 4.12 was released four years ago and this announcement only covers the changes that were included in the latest development releases dubbed as Xfce 4.14pre1. Also, we have noticed some confusion by people or news outlets that seem to mistake xfdesktop for the “Xfce Desktop Environment”¹. The comprehensive changelog will be provided with the Xfce 4.14 final release, but here go some select highlights that were released in the last week (chosen subjectively by the author). xfce4-session Most notably the so-called FailSafeSession (which is the default session for every user that doesn’t specifically save a session) has been fixed to use startup priority groups. Previously xfce4-session started all applications at once, leading to all kinds of race conditions (unthemed xfce4-panel, multiple instances of nm-applet etc.). Now xfce4-session launches only all applications per priority group at once, leading to a much more controlled session start. Several UI improvements have also landed as well as allowing users to trigger scripts on logout, restart, suspend etc. Finally it’s worth mentioning that we decided to drop the splash screens.
xfwm4
Lots of improvements to vertical blanking support have been added, including a switch to GLX as default method. Furthermore the support of Gtk+3’s window scaling feature – aka HiDPI support – has received many fixes.
Also, lots of other bugfixes (and a new default theme).
xfce4-settings
A new colord frontend has been added to xfce4-settings, meaning you can now manage the color profiles you created. Furthermore the display profile functionality has been improved and expanded, ensuring a more flicker- and frickle-free experience when changing display setups frequently.
xfce4-panel
Most notably a bug with (semi-)transparent background images was fixed.
Other components
Many of the other components have seen mostly bugfix releases, but in any case, we have to keep some stuff for the final announcement of Xfce 4.14, right? 
Each of the core components (aka everything listed in the xfce group here) has very recently had a release that has been tagged as xfce-4.14pre1 (in addition to the normal release tag). As an example, for xfwm4 4.14pre1 corresponds to xfwm4-4.13.2.
These additional tags shall help packagers who want to provide a testing environment with a quick and reliable way to get all core components in the correct versions. The full version table is available here (with hyperlinks to the respective git tags).
Where can you get it?
It’s probably worth mentioning that several major Linux distributions (Fedora, Xubuntu etc) have already decided to ship Xfce 4.13 components, so you can expect to find a lot of Xfce 4.14pre1 in their next releases. (For Xubuntu specifically the packages will show up in the
(Or through bountysource.)
Next steps
Our next very obvious step is Xfce 4.14pre2, which is scheduled for June 30, and after that the – optional, depending on overall stability – Xfce4.14pre3. Feel free to check out our roadmap page for more detailed infos! (Also, if you’re wondering what the pre-releases mean feel free to take a peek into our release model.)¹ The Xfce Desktop Environment is a collection of components of which xfdesktop is one. Xfdesktop is the 'desktop manager' and as such mostly responsible for setting a background image ("wallpaper") or color and drawing icons on the desktop.