Xubuntu Development Update November 2018

October 31, 2018
Sean Davis

Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish”

Xubuntu Development Update November 2018

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

Tumbler 0.2.2 / 0.2.3
Xfce Battery Plugin 1.1.1
Xfce Cpufreq Plugin 1.2.1
Xfce Weather Plugin 0.9.0 (New GTK+ 3 release!)
Thunar 1.8.2 (Major bugfix release)

October New Releases

Exo 0.12.3
Gigolo 0.4.90 (New GTK+ 3 release!)
Xfce Clipman Plugin 1.4.3
Xfce Notifications 0.4.3
Xfce Screensaver 0.1.0 / 0.1.1 (New Xfce Application!)
Xfce Sensors Plugin 1.3.90
Xfce Settings 4.13.5
Xfce Whisker Menu Plugin 2.3.0

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

October 31, 2018
Sean Davis

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
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)
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)

Xfce Screensaver 0.1.0 Released

October 15, 2018
Sean Davis

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

Downloads

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.

xfce4-terminal 0.8.7.4-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
- This is a new upstream release with a number of improvements (LP: #1782327).

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 Session 4.13.1
Xfce Screenshooter 1.9.3
Xfce Appfinder 4.13.1

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.

Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.0 (and 0.4.1) Released

April 21, 2018
Sean Davis

Stable as a rock. Xfce PulseAudio Plugin hit a new stable milestone with the 0.4.0 release. This release wraps up the awesome development cycle we’ve had on this over the last few months and is recommended for all users.