Hi everyone, this article is all about what is Xfce Desktop Environment, installation procedure and some features of the new release of Xfce ie version 4.12 .
There are a lot of Desktop Environments in the world of Linux Distributions. Most of the Desktop Environments are usually maintained by their respective Distribution maintainers like Cinnamon and Mate is maintained by Linux Mint Developers, Unity which is also maintained by the Ubuntu Developers,etc but there are also some awesome famous Desktop Environments like Gnome, Xfce which are not usually maintained by a Linux Distribution Developers. They are ported to other Distributions so that they can be compatible with them. Likewise, Xfce also gets ported to other distributions for better performance in those Operating Systems. Most of the major Linux Distributions maintain Xfce in their own way per their own taste.
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. Xfce is based on GTK +2 which is all time favourite desktop environment which is amazingly fast with a set of cool features. Xfce 4.12 is still based on GTK+2 for but there is partial support for GTK+3 with Xf* programs being optionally allowed to support GTK3 in parallel (libxfce4ui already supports an optional parallel GTK3 install).
Here is the list of changelog of the release of the latest Xfce 4.12. But some of the awesome major features of Xfce 4.12 are listed below:
- The intelligent panel hiding feature has been implemented.
- Windows preview in alt+tab (Compositor need to be enabled too).
- Better monitor and multi monitor support
- Xfce’s Thunar file manager finally supports tabs.
- Thunar now also has support for multiple file properties, support for binary file size units, inverting the selection, improves volume / remote location handling, and improvements to the shortcuts side pane.
- The xfwm4 window manager has smart placement optimizations for determining the best area to place a new window where it’s least covered on the screen. Xfwm4 also now supports aligning windows next to each other rather than using random gaps.
- The xfce4-panel has improvements to its clock plug-in, including a popup calendar and support for timezones.
- The xfce4-settings area has improved display settings with the ability to clone displays via the GUI and other basic monitor management options. There’s also now mouse settings as part of xfce4-settings.
- There is support for imgur uploads added in xfce4-screenshooter.
Here are some quick steps on how we can install Xfce 4.12.0 in Linux Operating System.
1. Downloading Xfce 4.12.0 Package
First of all, we'll need to download the whole xfce compressed tarball by running the following command in a shell or terminal.
$ wget http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.12/fat_tarballs/xfce-4.12.tar.bz2
2. Extracting the Package
Now, we'll want to extract the downloaded tarballs. So, we'll need to run the following command.
$ tar xvjf xfce-4.12.tar.bz2
All the necessary packages will be extracted by the above command inside src directory.
$ cd src/
Now, we'll need to extract all the packages so that we can compile them accordingly.
$ for i in `ls *.tar.bz2| awk '{print $NF}'`; do tar xvjf $i; done
3. Compiling Xfce
Now, after we finishing the extraction process, we'll need to compile them. We should compile Xfce v 4.12.0 in the following order.
- xfce4-dev-tools (only required if you build from GIT)
- libxfce4util
- xfconf
- libxfce4ui, garcon
- exo
- xfce4-panel
- thunar
- xfce4-settings, xfce4-session, xfdesktop, xfwm4, xfce4-appfinder
Before we start to compile, we must install necessary dependencies for the compilation of the packages using the command below. Here, I am running Ubuntu so, I am running apt-get to install the required dependencies, this command may differ from distros to distros.
$ sudo apt-get install autoconf automake intltool pkgconfig glib2.0 gtk+-2.0 dbus-glib2.0 xfconf gio2.0 libglade2.0 perl libwnck* gudev-1.0
We need to compile these packages using the same command lines. We should enter into the package directory using cd command then run the following command as:
$ ./configure
The above command will check whether the dependencies are properly installed or not. If there's something missing then, it is highly recommended to install them and rerun the above command.
$ make
The above command compiles the packages and gets ready to be installed.
4. Installing Xfce
After compiling the packages, we want to install them in our system by running the below command.
$ sudo make install
Note: It is highly recommended to run and compile every packages listed in the above list in step 3 and install them using the above command and rerun the commands in order until every packages are installed successfully.
5. Running Session
After we finish installing each and every packages with their dependencies, we would surely like to test or run our latest XFCE 4.12.0 Desktop Environment out of the box. To do so, we'll need to logout from the current session and then, choose our newly installed XFCE Desktop session.
Note: If you are trying to upgrade your old Xfce Desktop Environment to version 4.12 then, after completing above steps please run the following command to take effect.
$ mv ~/.config/xfce4 ~/.config/xfce4.bak && cp -r /etc/xdg/xfce4 ~/.config ;
Conclusion
Hurray! We have successfully install our latest XFCE Desktop Environment version 4.12.0 . Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems that aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. It is based on GTK+2 which is cool. So, Xfce 4.12.0 is an awesome amazingly fast Desktop Environment. If you have any questions, comments, feedback please do write on the comment box below and let us know what stuffs needs to be added or improved. Thank You! Enjoy Xfce 4.12.0 :-)
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