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1 • Xfce (by GayeTurkan on 2015-02-16 05:06:32 GMT from North America)
I'm happy to hear that Xfce is still alive. I have been using it as my main desktop environment for a long time but I switched to Cinnamon lately because it is being constantly updated, more user friendly and more importantly it is light. I hope Xfce can come up with innovative developments with this release because it still has a loyal user base.
2 • ElementaryOS donation controversy (by eco2geek on 2015-02-16 07:25:04 GMT from North America)
As those of us who've downloaded the latest version from the Distrowatch link know, you can get it directly from Sourceforge:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/elementaryos/elementaryos-unstable-amd64.20150208.iso
Slashdot covered this, and their commenters weren't very kind:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/02/11/1753219/elementary-os-why-we-make-you-type-0
3 • @2 Money... So hard to get in free software world ! (by Frederic Bezies on 2015-02-16 08:03:51 GMT from Europe)
Since I started using free software (back in 1997, ending in linux-only computer in 2006), I've read about problems getting money to pay development.
Problem is for a number of people, free means : "I don't have to pay to get and use this software".
You're giving a link to download ISO without giving any money. But you can download eOS 0.3 beta 2 ISO without using this link.
There is a big problem giving money to free software project. Back in 2013, PearOS developer asked for money in order to work on its ubuntu-based distribution using indiegogo.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pear-linux-efficient-modern-and-free-operating-system
It needed 35000€ ($39970), it only received 115€ ($131).
Until somebody finds a working way to get money, a lot of project will suffer from lack of resources.
4 • XFCE (by Johnny on 2015-02-16 08:08:46 GMT from North America)
I love XFCE, and can't really think of anything else it *needs* to do offhand, so slow updates are fine by me. Software that updates quickly for the sake of updating quickly always seems to bring unwelcome/unnecessary changes.
5 • @3: Money to fund free software ... Answer: teamwork. (by gregzeng on 2015-02-16 08:41:42 GMT from Oceania)
Linux, Microsoft has many ego-publishers, asking for money for "development". If the person(s) have the proven, reputable team skills, goodies of all kinds will go to the competent, winning TEAM.
Money is just a small part of team health. Open transparency is more important. Alpha- & Beta-testers are also required, plus other team workers; not just coders and beggars. So many "engineers" (software coders in this case) lack team & people skills. Even Ubuntu's financiers have yet to convince myself & many other benefactors that they can make a better "Docky" than Linux already has.
6 • @Johnny (by Chris on 2015-02-16 08:51:06 GMT from Europe)
Absolutely spot on, Johnny - I completely agree. Why change for change's sake?
7 • Xfce % Cinnamon (by Glasiad on 2015-02-16 09:11:10 GMT from Europe)
Xfce has a lot to commend it, like a fast, snappy low-on-resources DE, but I have always shied away from using it as a main DE because it suffers from clunky permission access problems and procedures. I for one have no desire to go command line just to access a file on another partition. It's simply not time efficient.
Cinnamon is a worthy DE for those largely accustomed to Window OS's and those who prefer icons to text. Need I say more?
Which leads me to my question - why is it that modern Linux-based systems, on the whole, require ever more hardware resources to perform as well as pre 2010 Linux systems with much less resources. In many cases they are slower despite having 10 times the RAM and much faster dual core processors. What gives?
This is the road Windows seems to have gone down. Are open-source systems bound to follow the same mistake?
8 • @7 (by mandog on 2015-02-16 10:35:16 GMT from South America)
The answer to your Question is in your last paragraph If you want all the bells and whistles then you need more ram, Also since when did you need to to use the command line to access a file on another partition, there are several methods to give permanent mount permissions for xfce just read the distros wiki.
9 • @7 (by morgan on 2015-02-16 11:24:03 GMT from Europe)
It is simply not true, you really need to be more specific in 'what is slower'.
Most distro's load far faster than they used to thanks to upstart/SystemD, on the whole desktops require less resources to run than they did (including cinnamon) , for example Plasma 5.2 (kde) uses approx 20 - 40 % less RAM than KDE4 (however it uses more GPU processing power)
Do you have an intel GPU- I know for a fact that many intel GPU's have worse performance with Ubuntu 14.10 for example.
10 • Xfce 4.12 (by Charles Bos on 2015-02-16 12:03:09 GMT from Europe)
Very happy to hear about Xfce 4.12. In spite of competition from MATE and Cinnamon I still think Xfce is relevant. It's customisation is the least cumbersome of the three (in my opinion) and compared to Cinnamon at least it's much lighter - especially on the rather weak laptop I run it one. But that's not surprising seeing as Cinnamon started out as a fork of GNOME Shell.
@7 "I for one have no desire to go command line just to access a file on another partition."
Without more details I can't be certain of this but, I think the issue you are describing is not actually a problem with Xfce/Thunar per se. File managers like Thunar et al need a polkit authentication agent to display a graphical prompt for a password. Xfce doesn't come with its own polkit agent so this may be the root of your problem (again this is only a guess as I don;t have more details). Cinnamon and GNOME Shell have a polkit agent built into their shells and MATE has mate-polkit (a fork of the old polkit-gnome). What I do is just autostart polkit-gnome with the Xfce session and that's the problem solved.
11 • Xfce (by Corporal Lint on 2015-02-16 12:37:45 GMT from North America)
Graeme Gott's wonderful Whisker Menu plugin for Xfce appeared a couple of years ago, and has steadily improved while becoming the default menu/launcher for Xubuntu and Mint's Xfce variant. Even though it's not an official part of the Xfce project, it's been a wonderful and very noticeable, almost fundamental, addition to the environment. So, so me at least, Xfce hasn't felt stagnant, even if there hasn't been a new release in a couple of years.
12 • @3 (by Mike W. on 2015-02-16 13:34:43 GMT from North America)
@3 There is a way to try and get money from your user base, it is not calling them cheaters for using your DE that you have put over Ubuntu. I was there from the start, talking to devs on reddit who have since been trying to backpeddle and delete entire comment blocks all together.
Essentially they believe everyone who was not paying any money for their project was a cheater and at one point called a thief for having the audacity to download the ISO without paying. People linking directly to the sourceforge page had their comments deleted and were told to stop helping cheaters.
In a post that has since been deleted, I asked how much they contributed to the actual projects they rely on (Ubuntu or Debian) and they immediately went on the defensive about how they cant contribute upstream because this is their project and their team doing all the hard work and need money and not the teams working on Ubuntu or Debian.
With this scam team, I fully expect to see in future releases a limited functionality version released for people who want to use it for free, but you will need to pay to unlock access to everything. These people are simply doing this for a buck, they could care less about Linux users or the FOSS movement. The second they figure out how to legally make a version of Windows they can put their DE over and sell it, they will wave goodbye to Linux.
Luckily they accidentally exposed themselves for what they are now, and everyone I know that uses or recommends eOS has since switched out and is now actively campaigning against people using it as am I.
13 • 32 bit only? (by massysett on 2015-02-16 13:35:21 GMT from North America)
Makulu is 32 bit only--why? Everything else is going in the other direction, getting rid of the 32 bit binaries and going 64 bit only. These days even obsolete hardware is 64 bit.
14 • Xfce...couple of things (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-16 13:48:23 GMT from North America)
Similar to the comments #4 and #6, Xfce 4.10 and even 4.8 are still fine by me and I'll happily keep using them. There's nothing I could think of that's missing. Being a fan of the traditional menu that is spot on. Perhaps a menu editor would be nice, but why would you want to hide entries? It's easily done adding/deleting .desktop files anyway.
Cinnamon gets a lot more updates because it is younger and trying to achieve much more, a lot more comprehensive in its aspirations. Xfce otoh is mature, and why change something that's (almost) perfect for what it's supposed to do.
Not a fan of labelling projects 'dead' just because they haven't had a lot of updates or development going on on git for a few months. Some of us just want to use their computers and get work done.
@7: Never run into this issue. Most likely a problem with how your distribution implemented Xfce, or did you add it afterwards?
15 • 13 # Why only 32 bits? (by Pmulax on 2015-02-16 14:11:22 GMT from Europe)
Massyset, even though I use Mint KDE 64 bit on my 8 Gb desktop, my 32 bit only laptop cannot boot a 64 bit system, and even if it could it's 2 Gb RAM would have a higher overhead with a 64 bit system...and no "visible" benefits. I am not alone, as many users have similar CPU/RAM limitations...the present crisis has pardoned many "old" PC's from the scrapyard. Having in mind the potential users of Makulu, I too would have built first the 32 bit version.
16 • Netrunner 15 (by DblMtn on 2015-02-16 15:30:01 GMT from North America)
I love Netrunner 14, but Netrunner 15 does not seem to be ready for primetime. I think I will wait for a revision or two before replacing 14. Anyone else having problems with 15, or is it just my system?
17 • Makulu 32-bit (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-02-16 15:40:23 GMT from North America)
The core developer addressed this issue in their forum. For 32-bit (i686+PAE) there's a rich accumulation of efficient debugged code. For those who so prefer, he pointed to an of-site guide for migrating an Ubuntu-based install to 64-bit ... though I doubt he wants to support it yet,
Perhaps advocates of 64-bit OSs should review the tradeoffs involved, other than bragging rights for 'more RAM' (and power consumption?), and describe appropriate applications or use cases.
18 • FOSS donations (by cykodrone on 2015-02-16 16:41:19 GMT from North America)
Let the market decide, as it does with proprietary anything. I've made donations to projects big and small, depending on if they were good, and-or useful. In-your-face demands turn me off, they make me go away, it's that simple. For example, testdisk has saved my butt numerous times (after doing stupid rookie idiotic $#1+, lol), I went out of my way to give Christophe Grenier $50CDN, it's not much but it's a monetary 'thank you'.
19 • @18 (by jadecat09 on 2015-02-16 16:52:15 GMT from Europe)
That's the way to do it.
BTW! I'm from England. UK if you must. Not Europe!
20 • Xfce 4.12 and beyond (by mark on 2015-02-16 17:05:10 GMT from North America)
I definitely agree with #11 that Xfce became dramatically more usable after Whisker Menu came around. It's one reason why I stick with Xfce in spite of the flurry of development that's been going on with LXQT.
There are practical reasons why we've gone so long between Xfce updates; it's reached the state where it meets the needs of its target audience. The Xubuntu and Mint versions of Xfce strike a balance between resource usage, simplicity and usability that I can be happy with.
With that being said, Xfce will need to evolve by replacing GTK+2 with GTK+3. We've seen how LXDE adapted to the deprecation of GTK+2, by switching over to Qt. Hopefully Xfce will become the lightweight GTK+3 desktop, in response to LXQT as the lightweight Qt desktop.
21 • So What? (by Ulf on 2015-02-16 18:45:55 GMT from Europe)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
22 • @13 (by gnnnnnnnnnew on 2015-02-16 18:49:36 GMT from Europe)
The dev's reasoning for keeping it 32 bit (for now):
"Now, I am all for building 64bit OS, BUT and here comes the BIG BUT, You arent the one who must offer support on it, I am. so all these little issues and niggles that 64bit suffers from, where do you think users go for support ? These forums will be filled with driver issues, software issues, wine issues, steam issues and all kinds of other crap. Take a look at Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and all the other forums, it is plagued with such shit….
686 PAE works out the box, detects all your ram, and look how little bugs we deal with, we get 2 or 3 bug posts a day, sometimes we go few days without any bug reports… ( this week being exception because its launch week ) And honestly, have you ever seen a linux with so much eye candy run so fast or smooth ? Ever seen software run so fast ?
So now, looking back at all this info, you still think it is a good idea to make a 64bit OS at this point in time when clearly linux is not ready for it ?
I will make 64bit when 64bit offers the same speed and reliability that the current 686 PAE does or when I have the man power to sit and offer support to hundreds of topics with issues. Until then, the logical thing to do is keep riding this awesome wave and keep putting out distro’s that performs as intended and looks great at same time"
(source: http://makululinux.com/forums/topic/64bit-version-of-makulu/)
23 • @22 Makulu 64bit. (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 19:28:35 GMT from Africa)
@22 - That is quite an old thread that was started a year ago and carried into new forums. Since then 64bit has come quite a way.
I am looking at moving to 64bit at some point this year, I must first do some research on Secureboot and UEFI, look at how to implement stable Steam and Wine, And then I also want to explore the possibility to make a hybrid 32/64 bit Edition so that you only download 1 ISO. I am surprised no one has even looked at this possibility. I am not saying it is possible, but its also never been explored before, so who knows. Point is there is a lot to look at than simply just following the trend like a blind sheep.
I have tried constantly to NOT be like every other linux developer, hence my releases are always colorful and always doing something out of the ordinary, take my latest KDE release for example, or the new Hybrid LXDE release i am working on. if i followed everyone else like a blind sheep you would have simply another distro with a plain wallpaper, top panel, and a menu...
My original statement still stands, compare Makulu forums to most others and ours look almost empty in comparison, and this is largely due to regular issues on 64bit systems.
Research is the key before i make any bold moves and commit to a course of action. For now PAE is good enough, it works on both 32bit and 64bit machines without issues.
24 • @21 (by jadecat09 on 2015-02-16 19:31:17 GMT from Europe)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
25 • Makulu (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-16 19:36:13 GMT from Europe)
^ As a fan of Slackware's philosophy I go with your conservative approach. People don't even know why they want 64 bit except that it's newer when in reality 32 bit might serve them better when their needs are Skype and Wine.
26 • @25 (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 19:46:35 GMT from Africa)
@25 Well, it not just the move to 64bit that is the problem, but largely it is Wine and Steam. Both have their issues with 64bit and what is the point on making a 64bit version if i remove those 2 applications. They are 2 of my favorite software and many of the current user-base i have. This leaves the messy option of 32bit libraries to get Wine working, and i know where users will run to with all their Wine problems ...
So really it is a big decision, and i do know i cant delay forever, but i cant also rush in blindly.
It is a VERY small percentage of users that actually need 64bit, there is one or two games and less than a handful of software that requires 64bit, and even then there is 32bit fixes or work arounds for those software.
The biggest reason anyone is really moving to 64bit is UEFI support... which to me is completely stupid, if you gonna run linux, why would you want to enable UEFI ? before UEFI was released ( which is not that long ago ) everyone was happy with how everything booted. but now MS implemented a new boot standard and suddenly everyone MUST support it on the fly ...
27 • Xfce and choice @10 @ @8 @9 (by Glasiad on 2015-02-16 19:49:24 GMT from Europe)
"In spite of competition from MATE and Cinnamon I still think Xfce is relevant."
I can't say I see it in a competitive sense. The great thing about open source is that people have choice and will make choices based on their needs and experiences.
Also the idea that the most popular DE / OS (the one with most appeal to the masses) is the 'winner' is odd.
Likewise I do not look forward to the day when Linux OS's become mainstream. I'm certain it would suffer as a result. Linux OS's are already in a decline and have been so for the past few years - (partly due to increased popularity I believe).
I was stating that my experiences with Xfce was bit awkward. Any DE where I have to read the wiki guides on how to do things I can accomplish on other DE's with ease is not ideal - at least for me. Perhaps I am simply getting old and get tired of learning new tricks for new OS's and DE's
If Xfce works for you and is your preferred DE, that's grand. I have no bones to pick.
At the end of the day, it's the choices and liberty to choose that's important and in that regard open source wins hands down. Popularity and uptake doesn't even come into the equation.
28 • Netrunner 15 (by JohnW on 2015-02-16 19:54:13 GMT from Europe)
@16 Maybe 2/3 months to early?
Did read some KDE developers blogs that KDE Frameworks 5, Plasma 5 and KDE applications are ready for distributions at April or May or maybe later.
29 • @27 XFCe and choice. (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 19:56:46 GMT from Africa)
What do you mean by not competitive ?
Xfce is still one of the best around, it has more features than most put together, far more functional, faster than most, able to run on almost any hardware and it can look prettier than even the most modern distro around if you know what you are doing.
Go take a look at the latest Makulu Xfce 7.1, you probably wont even recognize that it is Xfce running, it looks better than gnome and KDE put together, faster than most out there and it is very functional.
Xfce is still King and will be for quite some time.
Gnome 3 was the dark horse that had so much potential to be king, but o how they screwed that up...
30 • XFCE relevance (by linuxista on 2015-02-16 20:09:28 GMT from North America)
IMHO Xfce doesn't do anything particularly well. If I want a polished mouse oriented desktop I can use Gnome3, and if I need (or just want) something low on resources I think a well configured Openbox, like Crunchbang, beats the pants off of Xfce for usability and stability. And if I had to go for something in the middle, I'd probably try my luck with Mate or Enlightenment, or hold out for LXQt before settling for Xfce. If Xfce were already an excellent DE, then there would be no need to improve it, but it's only an adequate DE and it's not even rock solid. Sorry for the rain!
31 • @30 (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 20:14:53 GMT from Africa)
@30.
"If Xfce were already an excellent DE, then there would be no need to improve it"
WoW ... O_O ...
there is always room for improvement, hence EVERY os out there is getting daily updates. That does not make them very buggy or unusable. software and packages used on linux is constantly evolving and forcing the os to change and adapt along with it.
You clearly have no experience using Xfce, So i wont bother to educate you.
32 • majority versus minority (by Ulf on 2015-02-16 20:20:17 GMT from Europe)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
33 • Competition (by Charles Bos on 2015-02-16 20:29:35 GMT from Europe)
"I can't say I see it in a competitive sense."
"Also the idea that the most popular DE / OS (the one with most appeal to the masses) is the 'winner' is odd. "
I don't think I expressed quite what I was trying to say correctly in post 10. You seem to think I'm coming in here with some sort of corporate ideology whereby I feel that one software project must triumph over all others. That really wasn't what I was trying to say at all.
What I was getting at is that if there is situation where a number of projects are all producing something similar, one or more of those projects might consider merging with another project - much like with LXDE and Razorqt. I was just saying that I still feel Xfce has something to offer in and of itself, not that Xfce needs to 'embrace and destroy' or something like that!
For what it's worth, I genuinely like GNOME Shell and would use it much more extensively if I had better hardware.
34 • @33 (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 20:41:10 GMT from Africa)
@33
In a perfect world projects would merge, but its unlikely that will happen. I have worked on Gnome, Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon and now LXDE. and i dont mean from a user perspective, I have dug into code, packages, software, gotten my hands dirty where most would not venture... Been there and done that for 15 hours a day. I think i spent more time on Xfce in the last few months than the Xfce developers have spent most of their lives... And my goal was simple, to push boundaries. My point is i know most of these operating systems very well. and You are right in a sense, they all have pro's and con's. but from a functionality stand point, Xfce is the clear winner in terms of features and functionality.
Gnome 3 is a broken mess, Who in their right mind makes a Plug-in based OS which breaks almost every plug-in you have with every major update ? it is a headache to maintain and completely leaves the user stranded if the third party plugin developer decides to stop working on his plugin. Plugins should work on EVERY version of gnome, a plugin a developer makes for gnome 3.0 should still work on 3.12... I think this is originally how they intended it to be, because if it is not it is poor planning, and if it is then they screwed up somewhere. Gnome 3 reminds me of Mac os, except Mac os works better, there the actual plugins do carry over many versions of the os without issues.
35 • ElementaryOS (by JT on 2015-02-16 20:42:08 GMT from North America)
The big problem with ElementaryOS was that it held so much promise for creating a good UI to counter GNOME, in terms of beauty and usability (to be honest, GNOME isn't as usable as Pantheon). In my opinion, that's why everyone's so butt-hurt over the dev poor reaction for not getting any monetary gain.
Another thing, Pantheon was (and still is, I believe) being ported to many other distros (Arch & Fedora mostly). It could have very easily swept a lot of people away with its elegance (and it being easier to use than OSX UI).
That being said, calling your user-base cheaters, for doing something that is perfectly legal to do, is not something that I take lightly. Any money that I would have donated (thankfully I haven't), will be spent/donated elsewhere.
There are many more devs and projects that are far more deserving of the money, because they have contributed more to OSS/FOSS/FLOSS or simply because they have a better quality product at the end of the day.
@19 Us pesky Americans consider England apart of the European continent. ;)
36 • Gnome 3 (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 20:48:10 GMT from Africa)
Gnome is broken at the core... so until that is fixed its nowhere near the top 5 of best OS of the year.
it is a plugin based OS, therefore they need to find a way to stabilize the core from radical changes and have longer support for third party plugins. you CANNOT have a plugin that works only on the current version of the OS but not the next version. it kinda defeats the whole point of the os in the first place
If they find a solution for this problem, it could be a GREAT os. I can think of half a dozen great plugins written for gnome, all dead in the water now because plugin developers decided it was too much work having to keep the code updated with every new version of gnome. it is a huge weakness.
37 • @30 (by kernelKurtz on 2015-02-16 21:13:47 GMT from Europe)
"IMHO Xfce doesn't do anything particularly well."
As the Jacque implied, this opinion doesn't seem very informed to me.
What does it do well?
Customizability.
It is not only flexible in the extreme, but also quite easy to intuitively figure out how to get there. My DE of choice.
38 • @32 (by jadecat09 on 2015-02-16 21:40:34 GMT from Europe)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
39 • Desktops (by M.Z. on 2015-02-16 21:42:01 GMT from Planet Mars)
"Synapse doesn't just locate and launch applications, it can also be used to find documents, audio files..."
I just checked, & KRunner does all that as well, though I don't normally open files, folders, or mp3s that way.
@7
I have found that the exact opposite is true! I set up a separate /Data partition for my files when I started to boot multiple versions of Linux on the same machine, but XFCE worked better than any other DE. When I installed Mint 17 XFCE on my old PC it automatically showed my other hard drive with the /Data folder on it. All I have to do is click the semi-transparent drive on my desktop and boom, there is my data partition with all my files on it.
@29
It is just a matter of taste, but the KDE releases before the flat theme craze are by far the best looking DE's around in my opinion. XFCE fairly nice looking for a lighter weight DE though.
@30
Gnome 3? Really? I know some people use it & like it, but it is in no way comparable to XFCE if only because XFCE stays with a sane interface. It also is fairly useless with just a mouse, you need to know all sorts of special key combos and secret hand shakes just to minimize an application or turn the freaking thing off, or at least you did initially. I can't imagine how you could think Gnome 3 was comparable to any other DE, it is really off in a strange world of its own. If you like it fine, but it just can't be compared with anything else because of how odd it is. I find Gnome 3 beyond useless, but that's just me. If you like it call it something different, but don't compare it to a normal desktop, it is too different to be compared to any traditional DE.
40 • @34 (by Charles Bos on 2015-02-16 21:43:29 GMT from Europe)
My post wasn't meant to be an Xfce vs GNOME Shell debate. I was just saying that I like more than one project.
A few points in defence of GNOME extensions, I don't think it's fair to expect extensions to work all of the time with absolutely no maintenance at all. I think extensions were introduced in GNOME 3.2 so that would be around September 2011. Could you point to a Firefox extension that has received no maintenance since late 2011 and still works as expected in Firefox whatever version we're on now?
41 • XFCE (by Bonky Ozmond on 2015-02-16 21:43:52 GMT from North America)
I Don't really like any of the 2 big DEs Preference for me is DMs and on a number of machines I have Openbox, Fluxbox, Awesome, and 1 with Icewm. 1 with Pekwm.
I do have XFCE on my Gentoo box mainly for the sake of Marital bliss .
I have always thought that with XFCE the reason they don't update frequently is from the old addage " if it ain't broke don't fix it"....
Gnome had a great DE untill they decided to change it....now for many it's a disaster,, KDE the same.. admittedly i havent tried Mate...But i see no reason to either ...personally i just don't see the need for DEs
@21-35 England is No more part of Europe than Mexico is to USA..same problems with Immigrants though
42 • Xfce (by linuxista on 2015-02-16 21:53:14 GMT from North America)
Sorry. Xfce is not the most flexible or customizable DE by a longshot. I've tried to get xfce to an acceptable state on a number of distros over the years (Ubu, Deb, Arch, Manjaro), and, inevitably, after getting it as far as it will go toward acceptability for me, I say, "meh," and move on to something else. It just doesn't do anything particularly well. Maybe fans think it's great b/c they think the ultimate is something that behaves like XP out of the box, and don't want too much more. If I want scale and expo functionality, I have to use compiz, but compiz seems to work better with Mate. There are certain things the Xfce panel doesn't do in vertical mode that I've had to create other hidden panels for, and the applets are better with Mate.
If you want flexibility, Openbox is way better. The keyboard shortcuts are unlimited, and you can actually have a tiling and stacking WM at the same time, effectively. It's much more stable, uses far fewer resources, and looks just as good if not better. So like I said, I don't see what Xfce has to offer except for being a middling kind compromise.
I like the comment above @31 where if you critize Xfce you are ignorant by definition ("You clearly have no experience using Xfce, So i wont bother to educate you.") Lol!
43 • Xfce (by Diego Rodrigues on 2015-02-16 21:57:35 GMT from Europe)
All I wanted to say is:
Whooooooooohooooooooooo Xfce4 :)
While I have used many DE's and WM's over the years, Xfce4 has always been my one and only true love.
I can not wait to see what the new version will bring.
44 • @43 (by Jacque on 2015-02-16 22:05:13 GMT from Africa)
@43 have you tried the latest makululinux xfce 7.1 ? it is based on Xfce4 and it will blow you away ...
45 • XFCE4 (by kc1di on 2015-02-16 22:21:58 GMT from North America)
xfce4 is a good middle of the road DE that works for me. It's seems to be the one I always end up with.
preforms well on a vast variety of setups and is quite stable.
use it everyday here.
That's MHO :)
46 • Gnome is broken (by M.Z. on 2015-02-16 22:44:58 GMT from Planet Mars)
@40
Doesn't Firefox have the jetpack API which remains constant between releases? I think they have a way to prevent those breakages in Firefox, but Gnome breaks things almost intentionally.
@41
I agree with you about Gnome, but KDE seems to me to be a nearly perfect desktop. What is there to complain about, especially when you have lighter options for older hardware? XFCE is a good middle weight DE, but KDE seems to me to be perfect for recent hardware. KDE looks nicer & has more & better customization, effects, & desktop management features.
__________
Why am I from Mars instead of Florida, or N. America? Is it no script related, or just a glitch that generates a funny error message?
47 • Re: Elementary OS (by MoreGee on 2015-02-16 23:22:41 GMT from North America)
The same should be said for Robolinux. If uou don't pay the install stops at about 300mb. The upgrade tool will not update to the next release and your purchased keys won't work after upgrading.
48 • Personal favourite DEs/WMs (by Carlos on 2015-02-16 23:44:38 GMT from Europe)
This is IMO, so take it with a grain of salt.
1. Gnome 2 -> yes!!!
2. XFCE, Mate, LXDE, Openbox -> I can configure all these to my linking and find all of them a pleasure to use.
...
9. PekWM (not bad at all!!!)
...
99996. Cinnamon -> Tried it some years ago. Pretty but it had performance issues, even the mouse cursor couldn't follow a window being dragged around. It seems to be better now, but I lost interest.
99997. Enlightenment -> Can be configured to look awesome but I get tired fast. It's a pain to use for everyday computing.
99998. KDE 4 -> Never liked it, no matter what. And I tried. Many times. I feel like I'm on Windows.
99999. Gnome 3 -> Gnome who?
49 • XFCE (by alteschule on 2015-02-17 00:45:16 GMT from Europe)
check the history books....xfce in the older days: a stable working environment for unix users. not only linuxers. do not forget this.
then the change to GTK+
and years later to dbus and such things.
and remember: xfce has had a menu-editor in the past. it was stable & good.
50 • 32bit (by alteschule on 2015-02-17 00:52:37 GMT from Europe)
as said in most comments: 32bit and also the single-core-CPU. this is all there. all in function. nothing wrong. all is working.
laptops over 10 years old. smooth. no hurry, no worry.
51 • How much does ElementaryOS worth ? (by Kroy on 2015-02-17 00:59:00 GMT from North America)
If you use and love a given piece of software, you contribute to it either financially (i.e. pay for it, donation etc.) or anyway the development team calls for (e.g. translation, helping others in the forum etc.).
I have no problem ElementaryOS asking for money - I wonder how many suckers would find it valuable enough to pay for it though. :-0
52 • reminders (by alteschule on 2015-02-17 01:05:36 GMT from Europe)
no talk about monowall
no talk about pc-bsd updater
no talk about ksplice in kernel
this is desktop-watch??
53 • LXDE (by Jacque on 2015-02-17 01:05:59 GMT from Africa)
Wait till you see what i am doing with LXDE, now there is a OS i am taking and not only making it look out of this world, but i am turning it into a hybrid OS, adding a lot of the functionality of Xfce and adding some gnome elements as well. The end result will be a beautiful, very functional Os running on a mere 240mb ram, capeable on running on very old computers or very new computers and performing equally well on either. I have also written its own control center that ties many of these features into a single panel.
here is a preview video : http://youtu.be/6p1AU-be4bg
keep in mind its still quite a early build.
54 • Jacque (by alteschule on 2015-02-17 01:18:43 GMT from Europe)
about 240MB of RAM? on 32bit?
55 • Jacque (by alteschule on 2015-02-17 01:30:42 GMT from Europe)
do you start all services in background?
an LXDE on debian, buntus, etc, etc is about the 80MBs
56 • elementary OS- by butthurt devs, for butthurt users (by Milo on 2015-02-17 02:48:03 GMT from Europe)
"the new website is considered a beta and hasn’t replaced the old site yet for a reason: it’s still being worked on. The payment and download process could be tweaked before the final release of elementary OS Freya . . . currently the only people who have received money for working on elementary OS have been community members through our bounty program [www.bountysource.com/teams/elementary]."
I personally don't care for elementary OS as a deliverable; for me, Jupiter (0.1) was elementary's most interesting release. But I will hold off final judgment of elementary's website changes until those changes have actually gone live. Beyond that, since elementary is a private limited company seeking funding from users, it is not unreasonable to expect that the community manager/lead writer who wrote that users are "cheating the system" will be replaced in that capacity, as those kinds of comments don't make for quality community relations (petty bickering begets petty bickering). I say this as someone who doesn't have a stake in elementary LLC, elementary OS or the elementary community, and who really couldn't care less.
57 • elementary OS (by Hoos on 2015-02-17 04:32:37 GMT from Asia)
I donate to various Linux distros and other open source projects.
I've even donated to elementary Luna - AFTER I had used the FINAL version for a while and decided it was a nice distro worth supporting. Pantheon with its smooth desktop effects worked on my old desktop with weak graphics card while Gnome 3 could not due to its high resource requirement. So with elementary older hardware could get the sort of refinement and visual boost previously reserved for more powerful machines.
The thing is, most people understand requests for donations in the open source world. But NO ONE wants to be pushed into donating with manipulative guilt-tripping.
So someone in elementary absolutely messed up with the use of the phrase "cheating the system". Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
Further, their request to "not cheat the system" is in respect of the Beta 2, not even the final version. Can you imagine, you're asking people to try this out for you, report bugs and give feedback, and you tell them they are cheating the system if they don't pay for it. Oh boy.
But I think it may not be too late to redeem themselves if they apologize officially and expressly and unreservedly. Grovel a little. Not just quietly edit away that phrase from their blog post and then removing blog replies they aren't happy with.
Say sorry to the people who supported you, put in place a donation system that is more palatable and move on. Don't let the the release of the final verson of Freya be tainted by this unpleasant episode with cheesed-off supporters having turned from you.
Will they do it? Who knows.
For me, I entered $0 and downloaded for free. I don't feel guilty at all. If I decide I like it and eventually install the final version, I'll contribute something. Otherwise, it's gone from my system.
58 • donations (by Dave Postles on 2015-02-17 09:31:54 GMT from Europe)
I'm an associate of Trisquel (direct debit), have made donations to the development of Mageia and Uberstudent. I make the donations for the common good. Some of us can afford to support stuff for the common good, but others don't have those resources. That's fair. IMHO, that's how it should be.
59 • @43 (by Cymru on 2015-02-17 13:20:22 GMT from Europe)
"Xfce4 has always been my one and only true love"
You should get out more often ;)
60 • Open source money matters (by Cymro on 2015-02-17 14:18:26 GMT from Europe)
It's interesting reading about the donations fiasco with Elementary which led me to think ...
Has anybody tried a OS project where instead of donating for use of the software you invest in the project and share the risks of a potentially profitable enterprise? It would blur the distinction between users and owners and could lead to who new was of organising in an open and transparent way. Along with crypto-currencies it could initiate a whole new way doing business on line.
61 • ElementaryOS (by Jericho on 2015-02-17 15:12:15 GMT from Europe)
They've made a bad choices of words in that post. They should focus on creating a cross-distribution Desktop Environment, because honestly I've tested their distro just once and never crossed into my mind to test it again. I felt locked inside Ubuntu with a poor choice of default programs.
What makes them shine is their DE, so they should focus just on that and stop demonizing users who want to spin-off another distro to see what it feels.
62 • Oracle Suing Opportunity (by Sasha on 2015-02-17 15:15:58 GMT from North America)
Very comforting to see businesses, such as RedHat and SUSE contributing to the ecosystem they are using to make money.
The new live kernel patch features sounds like a potential for Oracle to do to them what they did to Google about Java. I hope this does not give them an oportunity to start suing Linux vendors, both large and small, who ship the new feature.
63 • @46 Planet Mars (by cykodrone on 2015-02-17 16:02:17 GMT from North America)
This is just a wild guess but maybe if DW's server can't properly categorize an IP, possibly because of being behind a TOR or proxy, "Planet Mars" is a catch-all?
Somebody at DW has a sense of humour, lol. :D
64 • WM/DE preferences (by Corbin Rune on 2015-02-17 17:10:07 GMT from North America)
At this point, I'd have to stick with my usual "main" three: (no real order of preference, tbh.)
Openbox, Enlightenment, KDE.
No matter what else I try, I always go back to that combo. Past that, WM/DE preference is just like distro likes and dislikes ... everyone's got their options..
65 • ElementaryOS (by Alex on 2015-02-17 17:52:23 GMT from Europe)
Elementary OS has one simple problem; the arrogance of the developers. It looks like a fast responsive distro, but if you'd want to use popular browsers, such as FF or Chromium, you'd have to download a lot, the resulting distro would be larger. Then again, it doesn't have an office suite. Practically Elementary OS doesn't have much useful popular applications. Let's say Pantheon is good, but would it work with other popular apps, for example file managers, text editors, terminal emulators? Try and install Calibre and you'd see how much other dependencies it had to download. In other words, if you want to download any useful app, you'd have to download quite a lot of dependencies. What the use of such a distro?
66 • Elementary os (by Loup on 2015-02-17 20:32:51 GMT from North America)
So elementary want us to pay .... are they going to use a percentage of my money to pay their ' royalties ' to ubuntu / debian ?
67 • m0n0wall & DEs (by M.Z. on 2015-02-17 21:26:55 GMT from Planet Mars)
@52
I for one am glad that m0n0wall existed, even though I never used the distro directly. I guess it and pfSense are a bit like Ubuntu & Mint for me, as I've only really used the derivative distro rather than the original. If m0n0wall has done nothing else for me, it made it easy for the pfSense guys to create an outstanding firewall OS. I highly recommend pfSense, and am a bit curious about the pfSense fork mentioned in the post about m0n0wall. I feel much more secure running behind my BSD based firewall with snort turned on, so thanks to all the FreeBSD, m0n0wall, pfSense, & Snort folks who made that happen.
Also just to annoy you about desktops some more...
@48 - Carlos
KDE is too like Windows? Funny if I'm stuck on Windows for very long I start to miss the feature richness and customization options of KDE! For me I'd list my favorite DEs as
1. KDE - best overall full DE, with best features, look, & customization
2. Cinnamon - a great runner up for best full DE
3. XFCE - best middle weight DE
4. LXQT - (razor/LXDE) looks very promising & started as two projects I liked
...
9. Mate/Gnome 2 - I started on Linux with Gnome 2 & its decedent is still fairly solid
...
99. Unity - strange & Mac like bit of spyware with poor GUI interface (though they will remove the spyware soon... I think)
100. Gnome 3 - a bizarre thought experiment gone wrong, loses to Unity because of poor design & promises that Unity won't be spyware soon, while Gnome only promises to get worse
@63
Sounds about right to me ;)
68 • XFCE / Cinnamon / Mate (by Johannes on 2015-02-17 22:21:23 GMT from Europe)
I have tried all DE in the last 15 years, many times. Never could use KDE after the catastrophic switch to 4.x - that was such big mistake... Then they ruined Gnome year after year, and I'm really glad that Mint came up with Cinnamon and Mate. XFCE has always been great, but somewhat limited.
More instersting than my own experience: I have been keeping relatives and family PCs running on linux for the last 10 years. 5+ PCs, it's not huge, but still worth a comment. My relatives never really liked XFCE, but never complained about Mate / Cinnamon. It just works, fore everyone.
So IMHO, Cinnamon is a step further solving Bug #1...
69 • Flash-killer (by Marty's McFly's Mom on 2015-02-18 11:05:46 GMT from North America)
Mozilla's Flash-killer 'Shumway' appears in Firefox nightlies
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/16/mozillas_flashkiller_shumay_appears_in_firefox_nightlies/
"Open source SWF player promises alternative to Adobe's endless security horror"
70 • elementary OS & XFCE (by Georgia on 2015-02-18 13:54:46 GMT from North America)
@57 +1 I think they may put off a lot of potential supporters with a presentation that smacks of bait and switch.
@45 I like XFCE because it's clean, simple, and easy on resources. It works just fine for me.
PS Pink Rabbit Linux; what a great name for a distro?
:-D
71 • Elementary (by Bonky Ozmond on 2015-02-18 15:16:03 GMT from North America)
After reading about Elementary OS and its $10 fee ?? I thought i would try it out...not that I would generally try an Ubuntu based distro ..... I downloaded it freely without any hassle just by closing the payment window....
I guess its and OK OS..though it doesnt offer so much...very basic.. it didnt run too good in V box...for me anyway
would I pay $10-00 for it ....NO
72 • Why I like XFCE (by Jason on 2015-02-18 16:06:18 GMT from North America)
XFCE is great because it launches apps and stays out of my way, and I can easily change things that I want to change. I've generally wanted to like LXDE as I love using PCFileMan, but not as unified, pretty and worse of all, if you move the task bar to the top, it keeps blocking the title bar of your windows.
73 • Paying back a FOSS project by the users (by Transform Humanity on 2015-02-18 17:55:53 GMT from Asia)
I am not justifying my current inability to pay money to a FOSS project but am I not paying back just by say ...
1. using the project. (of what use is a FOSS project if you don't have users - even if only free (riding) users?)
2. Routinely applying patches so the project has a count of active systems.
3. Once in a while ask in the forums so you come across an issue that missed through the entire dev. process.
4. Beta testers, even unregistered ones.
5. I guess firefox is so good today, partly, only partly, because lots of us send crash reports?
6. For a moment assume, people like me go off eOS, the over million downloads they are talking of would vapourise soon enough.
I have been using free software for over 15 years now - no proprietary ones at all but never for once felt my $1 was more important than just using it. Tens of people I have converted and one of my students called me some time back to say he was finally impressed with my approach. He now develops entirely on a 100% open source stack.
For More than 3 billion people living in the developing/ under developed world, FOSS is the salvation that will allow them to leap frog decades of being behind ... centuries of oppression and exploitation.
I am not at all sure we should even feel the slightest guilt if we could not donate $1. Just the act of using it is contribution enough?
74 • self-inflicted (by Milo on 2015-02-18 18:49:57 GMT from Europe)
As mentioned in Miscellaneous News, elementary.io as it currently exists features a "Download Luna for free" option (underneath the blue download button), which doesn't require zeroing the payment amount. Via the current website, "Users have downloaded Luna over 2,000,000 times. Around 99.875% of those users download without paying. Of the tiny 0.125% who do, the most common payments are the default $10, followed by $1." beta.elementary.io features the proposed change, where 0 must be entered for those who don't wish to give payment; not exactly an Earth-shattering change. My sense is that most people who are upset are so because the original explanation given by the community manager was that users are "pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software". If elementary LLC doesn't want people to download elementary OS for free, they shouldn't provide that option. It's hardly cheating to make use of an option which is provided. "Cheating the system" sounds like the language of emotional blackmail.
To further quote, "elementary is under no obligation to release our compiled operating system for free download." While this is true, they should move to another revenue model if there is to be an expectation of payment. Donations are inherently voluntary. Furthermore, I can envisage that some unsavvy people (exactly the kind of new-to-Linux users to which elementary might cater) might be confused by the new website design into thinking that payment isn't optional.
Originally the explanation given for continuing gratis downloads was that, "While we could rightfully disallow free downloads, someone else could take our open source code, compile it, and give it away for free. So there’s no point in completely disallowing it." That has since been reworded to, "While we could rightfully disallow free downloads, we don’t want to." I think the community manager was being more honest with the originally worded explanation. That they still allow gratis downloads seems to be more driven by fear (of potential remixes or forks eating their lunch) than by a desire to be accommodating to their user base. Yet the poorly handled interaction with the community may in fact inspire rebranded derivatives, regardless of whether payment remains optional.
I have sympathy for their position, as well as for other developers seeking to make a living from their personal projects and to grow those projects, but this has been poorly handled by elementary LLC. There probably would have been less grumbling had they said nothing, and just rolled out the change, perhaps with a note in the blog that 0 can be entered for gratis downloads. As it is, they have needlessly antagonised some of their users. This situation was further inflamed when a director for SPI took it upon himself to unsolicitedly proposition elementary LLC, and then blog disapprovingly (now deleted) when his efforts weren't received enthusiastically.
elementary LLC didn't handle it well, some of the user response has been overblown, and the aforementioned director of SPI looked a bit like a resentful unrequited suitor. But it all started with poor community relations on the part of the elementary community manager (and by extension, elementary LLC). Not a good way to run a fledgling enterprise. elementary OS might have competition in its niche when Ozon OS is released. Hopefully the Ozon team will have learned from elementary's missteps.
75 • giving back (by M.Z. on 2015-02-18 20:22:34 GMT from Planet Mars)
@73
I think you forgot one of the most important parts of giving back to open source projects even though you mentioned doing it, encourage people to try open source projects. If you can get some folks to try open projects and more than a handful of them like it and stick with it, then the project has likely future donors. Perhaps it could take a few years, but I think many uses will feel a sense of debt to the projects that give them free & open software & eventually give back when they feel that they can. Users should be reminded of the importance of giving, but guilt tripping should be avoided if at all possible. Some projects seem to be able to get a decent amount of money with out the guilt trip. Mint raised over $14k in a month while PCLinuxOS received over $3500 in the past couple of months from their GoFundMe campaign:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2764
http://www.gofundme.com/pclinuxos
76 • Acquired taste (by far2fish on 2015-02-18 20:59:43 GMT from Europe)
Personally I start liking any DE once I have used it long enough:
XFCE, Gnome 3, KDE, Unity, Cinnamon, Openbox, Gnome 2 (all in random order)
The only exception to confirm the rule is LXDE, which I for reasons unknown never have fancied.
77 • Donating to the cause (by John on 2015-02-18 21:06:13 GMT from North America)
First: I'm a KDE man. I find Gnome3 just harsh.
Second. Annually I for a subscription to the RedHat Desktop (now $50 a year0 and pay for/towards another distro. The last two years it has been Suse's Enterprise Desktop.. (although since they no longer KDE, I won't subscribe this year).
To me, it is $100 a year and well worth continuing to fund these projects. Not a ton of money, but certainly more than I was paying for Windows.
78 • @75 (by Milo on 2015-02-18 21:41:30 GMT from Europe)
Mint also gives monthly status reports via its Monthly News blog entries, something elementary could learn from, as the elementary blog, while full of entries, is somewhat lacking in this particular regard. That way elementary could keep users abreast of the project's status, both in terms of acknowledging donors, as well as expressing project needs and growth opportunities as these present themselves.
elementary should determine how much funding they need to keep the project going, as well as any additional funding for stretch goals, and perhaps provide a donations meter visual, similar to www.freebsdfoundation.org, www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2015.html & www.netbsd.org/donations.
More than anything, they need better communication with their users. Take the following quote: "Around 99.875% of those users download without paying [emphasis theirs]. Of the tiny 0.125% who do, the most common payments are the default $10, followed by $1." Tiny is an unnecessary adjective. People can grasp 0.125%, no adjectives needed. By placing emphasis on the 99.875%, and then stressing the meagreness of the donations received both in terms of percentage and monetary amount, as a whole it reads as if the donations that have been received, particularly of smaller amounts, are taken for granted, and that the focus in on monetising the remaining 99.875% of users. Rather than trying to shame 99.875% of their user base as freeloaders, they would be better off expressing that they genuinely need funds to keep the project in good health. The GNU/Linux ecosystem isn't the Mac ecosystem in terms of the average user profile, but that doesn't mean there are no opportunities to earn a living in the service of users. I'm not saying it's easy. Bryan Lunduke's experiments were interesting to watch. There are over 20 blog posts in his search for a viable model, beginning on 2012-05-28 ("Want to make this software Open Source? Now’s your chance.") and ending on 2013-12-02 ("Linux Tycoon is now Shareware… Again."). Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from them.
79 • KDE (by linuxista on 2015-02-18 23:34:33 GMT from North America)
It's taken me a long time to warm up to KDE, and I'm still not quite there. I have Plasma 5.2 installed right now, and it's definitely an improvement. It's still buggy in places (even 4.14 was), and you just seem to have to work around them. I hate that it won't recognize hyper or super keys as modifiers because I like to use keyboard shortcuts. It seems like desktop appearance changes don't take immediately, or only partially, or sometimes the various schema write over each other. It's frustrating. It's overly complex and lacking focus, which is why I never start newbies out with it.
If you think of KDE as a purely amateur project it's amazing, but as a professional, OSX competitor, it's not up to snuff. The closest thing linux has to that sort of polish is Gnome3 and Cinnamon at this point. I suppose Unity as well, but I've never warmed to it, though some newbies I've started with it seem to like it just fine.
80 • Netrunner 15 (by Herbert Thornton on 2015-02-19 04:55:52 GMT from North America)
I have an older (M58 series) Lenovo computer with 6 gb of RAM and an SSD hard drive.
A day or so ago - on the day I first noticed it here on Distrowatch - I downloaded and installed the new Netrunner 15 on it. The more I use Netrunner the better I like it.
I used Wine to install my favorite Photoshop (Elements 2) on it and I've found that it works better under Netrunner than under any other Linux version that I've ever used. It feels, to me, just the same as operating it under either Windows or Mac. The same goes for other programs - e.g. Faststone Image viewer.
But that's not all. Both my email and Internet operate faster too.
81 • Xfce (by Kazlu on 2015-02-19 10:44:11 GMT from Europe)
@34
" I think i spent more time on Xfce in the last few months than the Xfce developers have spent most of their lives...".
Don't you think that's *a bit* pretentious?
@37
"It is not only flexible in the extreme, but also quite easy to intuitively figure out how to get there. My DE of choice."
Very well said.
@42 Xfce
"It just doesn't do anything particularly well. Maybe fans think it's great b/c they think the ultimate is something that behaves like XP out of the box, and don't want too much more."
If it "behaves like XP out of the box", doesn't that mean it can do the essential quite well? This is a huge way from "doesn't do anything particularly well" don't you think?
"There are certain things the Xfce panel doesn't do in vertical mode that I've had to create other hidden panels for, and the applets are better with Mate."
Although I agree there is a greater variety of applets in MATE, vertical panels in MATE are terrible. You cannot even have horizontal text in applets such as the clock... So xfce4-panel has the upper hand here, but there are even more flexible ones, like lxpanel... which lacks applets a bit :) Yet another story about compromises!
82 • Vertical panels (by Carlos on 2015-02-19 11:11:32 GMT from Europe)
If you want vertical panels, try Enlightenment.
83 • @7 memory ressources (by Kazlu on 2015-02-19 11:45:49 GMT from Europe)
"Which leads me to my question - why is it that modern Linux-based systems, on the whole, require ever more hardware resources to perform as well as pre 2010 Linux systems with much less resources. In many cases they are slower despite having 10 times the RAM and much faster dual core processors. What gives?"
I noticed the same thing and I am also sad about it. It is particularly true when you try to keep an old PC (10-15 years old) and intend to do about the same things you did with the same machine before, but with up-to-date OS and software. From my experience there are two major points where you need way more resources than before to execute about the same tasks: Desktop environments and web browsers. In the first case, the situation is not too bad yet, since there are several totally usable super-light desktop environments that will run well on old machines. But when it comes to web browsers... Firefox is really heavy and slow on old machines. Midori is fine but prone to crash on some websites (and I noticed it crashed more often on an old machine than on a more recent one). Last time I tried, Chromium was also quite heavy and Qupzilla had about the same stability issues than Midori, but I admit it was some time ago. I have yet to find a stable and lightweight web browser.
One might also mention office work, but by using an older version of OpenOffice (which does not present the same security risk than using an older web browser), eventually on an offline older OS, you can still work. Abiword and Gnumeric may even be of some use on modern OSes, that depends on your work.
84 • I'll build my own distro, with blackjack and Xfce (by Milo on 2015-02-19 19:15:16 GMT from Europe)
@84
Unless Rick James has been reincarnated as a software developer, you shouldn't stay up nights worrying about it.
Moving on...
@20 "With that being said, Xfce will need to evolve by replacing GTK+2 with GTK+3."
On that front, Ikey Doherty has recently volunteered to help with porting Xfce to GTK+ 3 (and possibly rallying a few others to the cause), so maybe the core Xfce devs will take him up on his offer.
85 • @81 Xfce Mate (by linuxista on 2015-02-19 20:28:54 GMT from North America)
@81 If it "behaves like XP out of the box", doesn't that mean it can do the essential quite well? This is a huge way from "doesn't do anything particularly well" don't you think?
I don't think so. I can't stand the Windows desktop. It's about as much fun as driving a dump truck, whether XP or Win7. I've often wondered whether all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about Unity and Gnome3 wasn't about having a task manager in a panel. For me I don't use it, I like either scale mode or keyboard shortcuts, so I wasn't affected by Gnome3 taking it away (there's always classic mode, but I don't use that either.) And since Gnome3 and Cinnamon have that as a central functionality (and easily enabled in KDE), I find the changes an improvement in workflow and stability. IMHO, flamers. :-)
You're probably right about vertical panels in Mate. I don't know about Lxpanel, but one of the reasons I like Tint2 is I can have one panel with a single task manager for multiple desktops. That's when a task manager starts to become useful for me at least w/ WMs like openbox where I don't have (or want to jerry rig) scale mode.
86 • @87 correction (by linuxista on 2015-02-19 20:31:55 GMT from North America)
Sorry, I mean "so I wasn't affected by Gnome3 taking it [TASK MANAGER IN PANEL] away (there's always classic mode, but I don't use that either.) And since Gnome3 and Cinnamon have that [SCALE] as a central functionality..."
87 • @83 Old hardware, modern browsers (by cykodrone on 2015-02-19 20:48:32 GMT from North America)
I had the same experience a few years back, my main (more modern) machine was temporarily out of commission, I scrambled to slap together an 'emergency' machine from spare used parts (Pentium 4 1.7GHz OC'd to a stable 2GHz, on purpose, squeeze every last drop, lol), I did have to buy some hardware to get it going, I couldn't find an AGP video card so I had to settle for a GeForce 6200 512MB PCI (that's the old PCI, NOT PCIe, ack), an 80GB IDE HDD (smallest and cheapest I could find) and a 1GB DDR(1) stick of value RAM (again, smallest and cheapest). I tried to run EVERY so-called 'lite' distro I could find until I was blue in the face, most of them struggled just to get to the desktop (with the GPL video driver, the proprietary driver made it 10 times worse), then trying to run any fairly modern browser was painfully slow. Libre and Open Office did work but were really slow to open. I wound up having to dig out an old XP install disk, yep, that's right, I'm extremely sad to say XP ran 'lite' enough (tweaked to high heaven, tons of background garbage disabled of course) to decently run Firefox (late 2012 version), I was on pins and needles security wise the whole time, I was quite relieved to get back to Linux on my main machine. It's a familiar story, it helps to have hardware 'overhead' to run other things once the OS and GUI are loaded, I used to tell people over the years (MS users), "if you're going to run a firewall and antivirus, make sure you have enough 'horsepower' left over to do other things, like photoshop programs for example" (quite popular back in the 00s). IMO, there's no cure for this, increased security and application features have proliferated causing insane software bloat, unfortunately, there's no turning back the clock. Older hardware might be OK for a CL mini-server, etc, but that's about it, unless somebody has the time to strip out a kernel and only load the necessities, but is it really worth it, and how many cash strapped average Joes or Janes have that knowledge?
I'm not poo-pooing old hardware, I 'recycle' whenever I can, it's just a fact of life now, there's a usable hardware age cutoff point, I'm finding more than 10 years old, expect problems. I can hunt down (used), buy or build a basic office and browser machine for a couple hundred bucks (peripherals extra), sadly even USED hardware from most retailers comes with the MS tax, I tell them "no thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere".
88 • Love the way you include who is responsible for the Distros (by Aaron B on 2015-02-19 22:40:04 GMT from North America)
I love the way you start the release notice by saying "this person or team has announced the release "........
They should get credit for all the hard work they put in. Now if only other sites would credit the work that people put into other works like programs, when they write about them, that would be great.
89 • @89 Linux works fine for me on old hardware (by Joseph on 2015-02-19 23:20:28 GMT from North America)
I have an old laptop circa 2005 that someone gave me after I helped them pick out a replacement. It has a 32-bit, single core AMD Sempron at 1.8GHz, 512MB DDR RAM, a 4200RPM(!!!) 75GB IDE hard drive, and ATI (not AMD) graphics that benchmark to about a TNT2 Ultra from 1999.
I tried some lite distros on it - I abandoned them because they weren't worth it compared to what you lose. Right now I'm running normal OpenSUSE 13.2 on it, full KDE desktop! It's quite usable so long as you don't expect to multitask or have lots of browser windows open. Running one of JetBrains' Java-based IDEs is indeed (too) slow, but I had no problem running a python & Qt-based python IDE. I could even run XBMC on it. Granted, playing a 720p video comes close to 100% CPU usage :-) but it does work without any skipped frames. Similarly, Banshee is a bit heavy for music, but Clementine is light enough to work just fine without losing features.
I need to be out of town two or three times a year, and fine this old beast (almost 7 pounds!) is just fine for browsing the web, checking e-mail, watching a DVD or television episode, writing some code. As long as I keep in mind its graphics power is circa 1999, I can even play 1999 era Windows game via WINE such as Dungeon Keeper II and even Half Life!
If I wanted to I could get up to 2GB of memory in this laptop, upgrade to a faster 160GB IDE drive and even use its PC Card slot(s) for an SSD.
That said, yes, one shouldn't expect to be able to use old hardware *forever*. However, as hardware as improved, we're now at the point where even old hardware is "enough" to perform all the average tasks a user would want. I recently completely replaced my desktop PC, which last had a motherboard/CPU refresh in 2009 while some parts like the monitor/keyboard/mouse/case dated to 2005 and the speakers (which I kept) go back to 1999! Between 1999 and 2005 my CPU (K6-III 450MHz) had grown very outdated - ripping a CD took 65 minutes! But between 2009 and 2014 honestly my $100 CPU (with unlocked core and modest overclock) was still quite usable and not a bottleneck at all. This new reality is going to make older hardware usable for longer periods of time.
90 • @82 • Vertical panels (by James on 2015-02-20 14:45:12 GMT from Planet Mars)
@Carlos - Can you please suggest any other alternative to Enlightenment.
91 • 74 • self-inflicted by Milo (by Alex on 2015-02-20 17:06:00 GMT from Europe)
Let's consider Pantheon DE as a good DE, but the rest of the Elementary OS apps without menus as not that useful, let's redo this Elementary OS into a useful distro and give it out free.
92 • @91 (by Milo on 2015-02-20 21:29:53 GMT from Europe)
Pantheon is okay, but it's not amongst my top choices, in light of the alternatives. I could say that about much of elementary (Maya, Pantheon Files, Noise, Scratch, Pantheon Terminal). If someone wishes to fork elementary OS, I promise to donate as much to the fork as I have to elementary :) Of the over 2,000,000 elementary Luna downloads, who knows how many permanent installs those have actually result in. My guess is substantially less than 2,000,000. As I do with many other distros, out of curiosity and an interest in software development, I take a look at elementary OS with every release. elementary OS always leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed, though it is somewhat sleek in its underwhelmingness. If they ever do something that strikes me as worthwhile, I will send some money their way. If that time ever arrives, hopefully by then their funding messaging will match their funding model. In the meantime, there are other projects that I feel have crossed the threshold of deservingness.
elementary OS's issues notwithstanding, I am NOT against developers seeking financial compensation, though the market may not value their work and thus may balk at their attempts. Even someone who only remixes Ubuntu with a different wallpaper and icon theme is free to seek payment from those willing to pay, though my hope would be those consumers are educated as to their options.
93 • @92 elementary's brass bahlz (by cykodrone on 2015-02-20 22:23:47 GMT from North America)
"who knows how many permanent installs those have actually result in"
Very true, I think I might have downloaded it once a long time ago, the DVD-R went in the garbage after a very brief live trial, borne from shear curiosity because of its page hit ranking, which incidentally was not really deserved, there are better Ubuntu remixes.
"Even someone who only remixes Ubuntu with a different wallpaper and icon theme is free to seek payment from those willing to pay"
That was funny, and oh so sadly true, I'm gunna whip together Schizzel-buntu and see if I can hold my hat and tin cup out, lol. Just kidding, I don't have that kind of time on my hands like some other people do.
94 • Supporting Freed Software, etc (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-02-21 07:51:49 GMT from North America)
Many people simply don't know what it costs to provide development or distribution, and such ignorance fosters trust issues. Most agree that supporting Freed-Software developers (and forum mentors, documenters, etc) is good; few appreciate denigration, nasty surprises, or charging for tryouts/test-drives/demos (pig-in-poke). Clearly the ElementaryOS devs need to improve their human-relations skills or recruit related talent.
Current extremism in "rights" and licensing make balanced market negotiations unlikely, but not impossible. A decentralized self-regulating market (bids/bounties/bazaar?) has not yet been fully developed ... yet. The challenge of our time?
Page hits may show seeker interest and a combination of earned-reputation and marketing - not distro "better"-ness, however that may be measured. They certainly don't show installs, or how long installations persist.
95 • @ 92, 93 (by Alex on 2015-02-21 12:48:13 GMT from Europe)
Pantheon has that headache of not having minimize button and also you cannot right click the desktop. I'm going to install Elementary Trusty on a vacant partition and get rid of all these Maya, Pantheon Files, Noise, Scratch, Pantheon Terminal etc and put back the normal apps with menus, and also get rid of the unconfigurable Wingpanel, while keeping new Slingshot application finder, or put back the old Slingshot, which is much prettier.
You guys can do the same (or similar) thing, only if you can use it without the minimize button. Remastering this Ubuntu based distro is not a big problem. I'd be doing this for fun, and I won't ever use Elementary OS for daily work, as the whole concept of this OS is annoying.
96 • Ekiga (by imnotrich on 2015-02-21 23:47:01 GMT from North America)
Anybody know when Ekiga will issue an update to include Pulse compatibility? Pathetic to think Ekiga is in the Debian,Ubuntu and other distro's repos but...isn't compatible in the slightest with Linux right now. Takes 10-20 minutes to register with my provider's server, won't dial out or when it does the dtmf tones work during a call so I can't navigate any menus, most of the time just crashes and locks up my desktop - I can't even kill the process using the command window.
Currently had to switch to SFL phone, not a bad option but no silk. If I want the best audio quality for my voip calls, I have to use Skype on Linux. Seriously, a microsoft product!?
Really odd, because Ekiga for windows runs great. Most of the time. Scary to think Microsoft does something better than open source. What's this world coming to?
97 • DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking (by Greg Zeng on 2015-02-22 03:07:54 GMT from Oceania)
From Dw:
"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."
Could this be extended further? Allow a random duration of several seconds before the hit page is counted? Also perhaps a sensor trap, to notice if their is a surge of unusual "popularity" in one site or another? Perhaps this is already being done?
Comments section of Dw ....
if inserted on a Sunday, have very few readers to read it, and to comment if wished. Bulletin Boards & Forum technology has improved much further before the WWW was invented. Can Dw please be more up to date with these comments, and even allow Google to search these, please?
98 • XFCE Pimping Tutorial (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-02-22 04:40:27 GMT from North America)
You didn't try hard enough to pimp XFCE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnH92h_QHf0
I use a minimalist WM and dislike GNOME, but all DEs deserve objective eval. I am glad someone is "minimizing" GNOME...the more the merrier.
99 • 97 • DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking - Greg Zeng (by Alex on 2015-02-22 14:48:52 GMT from Europe)
From Dw:
"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website."
Well, should the words "the popularity of Linux distributions" be changed to "curiosity of the users?"
100 • Searching DW Weekly (by Somewhat Reticent on 2015-02-22 17:45:14 GMT from North America)
using [site:distrowatch.com {pattern}] yielded only a few results, from years ago (2013, 2011). Given the spam sent to email addresses posted here, perhaps that's for the best. Still, it would be nice to have some kind of search access to the comments knowledgebase.
101 • open source market (by M.Z. on 2015-02-22 20:28:12 GMT from Planet Mars)
@94
I think software tends to have the same problem that water does, it seems readily available and no matter how useful it is there is no sacristy so it isn't valued by many users. The whole song piracy thing sort of demonstrates the issue, if you know where to look you can find folks willing to distribute an infinite amount of copies to anyone who wants one. The fact is the ability to produce and distribute a near infinite number of copies of digital data like open source software is imbedded in the design of computers and the internet. This means getting people to value free software is like getting them to value water in the Amazon during a monsoon, its an extremely uphill battle. It is very difficult to prevent file sharing/piracy when something is copyrighted simply because of the ease of transferring data means you many users don't feel like they're doing anything wrong. Now with open source you compound that issue by creating a license that explicitly allows giving the stuff away so all users can get it guilt free. Is it any wonder that few users give back?
The successful models of distributing something free are generally about packaging and support. For water some companies bottle it and claim its filtered or from a better source. Consumer buy it even in developed countries where tap water is of a superior quality compared to bottled, although it makes no rational sense. In the case of Linux you can get a support model in Red Hat Enterprise Linux that makes a lot of sense for big businesses who want guaranteed support. For technically minded home users with decent support forums available it is a lot harder to sell. There are just so many free & open options a free rider issue is inevitable, but you can still hope for future generosity from users. There are also ways to embed some support funding into the distro as has been done by both Mint and Ubuntu. I think Mint did it right by putting a funding mechanism in a browser search box where you expect ad laden results to pop up after a search. On Ubuntu it was embedded in the HUD interface and sending info to third parties any time you used a search on your local machine whether you wanted to search the web or not. Done right as seen in Mint this seems to be a good solution.
I suppose the real issue here is getting enough support though either direct donations or some secondary funding mechanism like a browser search. I think the combination of the two seems like enough for big projects like Mint, but it may never be enough for smaller distros. The smaller projects either have so suffer through initial lean years, or they have to be personal labors of love. It is difficult to conceive of a way to fund open source projects, though I suppose someone could start distributing donations to the most downloaded projects. Perhaps something like Debian popcon could be used to compile a list of most used software within major distros, & a similar pool of donations could be given out to the most used projects. I'm not really sure how else a market could be created for donating to distros or open projects.
Number of Comments: 101
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