News from xfce 4.12, part 2 !

on xfce

Update 19/02/2015 : A new post is available !

Following my first post about the Xfce development status 4 months ago (you can (re) read it here), let’s go for a bunch of reviews of the last commits.

A little clarifications about comments on my 1st post : I’m NOT a core xfce dev, I’m just a small contributor, who try to help as much as I can.

Note: You can see lots of screenshots about all theses news features on the xfce forum, in the What’s New in Xfce topic from ToZ.

xfce4-power-manager :

  • A new xfce4-power-manager release (compatible with xfce 4.10), thanks to Eric Koegell and Simon Steinbeiss
  • Provide a better support of systemd and upower
  • Brightness plugin has been merged into the battery indicator plugin so a new plugin is born, “Power Manager plugin”
  • Some design changes, see screenshots
  • The roadmap to 1.5 : https://wiki.xfce.org/design/power-manager

xfdesktop :

  • Add a –next option to force wallpaper changes
  • Add a move to trash menu option
  • Add an –enable-debug option added to xfdesktop-settings
  • Add optional blurring on shadow on text of icons, see Screenshots

xfce4-panel :

  • Implementation of a intelligent auto-hide functionality by Jannis Pohlmann !
  • Whenever the active window changes or whenever the geometry of an already active window changes, the algorithm checks whether the active window and the panel overlap. If this is the case, the panel is hidden. Otherwise, it is made or remains visible.
  • A quick demo (only available in git version for now)

xfce4-session :

  • Add logind runtime detection to support suspend/hibernate
  • Support for upower 0.99
  • Add DragonflyBSD to host check

xfce4-settings :

  • Reapply settings when external keyboard connects
  • New display settings dialog
  • Add support for upower 0.99

Thunar :

  • Default application not respected with glib >= 2.4
  • Check for thumbnails in the location
  • Add appdata file
  • Add pkexec policy. This way if the user of a desktop system wants to use thunar to modify files as root and has the proper credentials they can.

Apps / Plugins :

  • Mousepad and Parole have been ported to gtk3 !
  • Partial rewrite of squeeze (Archive manager)
  • Multiples releases/bugfixes of xfce4-netload-plugin, xfce4-weather-plugin, xfce4-equake-plugin

Development Releases of core components :

Maintenances/New Releases (for xfce 4.10 ) :

Others :

  • A side note about light-locker, a simple session-locker for lightdm, which work really great with xfce :). If you want a nice and modern locker, try it !
  • Debian Jessie will use xfce 4.10 (as 4.12 is not ready on 5th November, the date of Debian Freeze)
  • If you are an ArchLinux user, and want to test the devel version of xfce, you can use my [xfce411] repo. NO WARRANTY, support or whatever ! Use it at your own risks. Read the README ;)
  • Last minute : A reorganisation of the team is running, to list our current force, identify weak spots (where we urgently need new contributors), welcome new members etc. See https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2014-November/030946.html for more informations !

Sources :

  • Thanks to ToZ on the xfce forum
  • The #xfce-dev IRC chan on Freenode, the best way to be involved in Xfce development
  • Xfce4 dev list