Xfce 4.10 released

After 1 Year and four months of development, the Xfce Team released the final 4.10 version of their well known Desktop Environment which is used by various distro's out there.

Our Lead Developer is currently working on getting the stable Xfce 4.10 to our Phinx Desktop distro.

Quote:

Today, after 1 year and 4 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.10, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.8.
In the 4.10 cycle we mainly focused on polishing the desktop and improving the user experience in various ways. Highlights of this release are:

• A new application finder that has been completely rewritten and combines the functionality of the old xfce4-appfinder and xfrun4.
• The panel now has an alternative vertical display mode (a deskbar). What is more, panel plugins can be arranged in multiple rows, which is particularly useful in the deskbar mode.
• A new MIME type editor that allows you to easily change applications used for opening different file types. The mouse and touchpad settings dialog and the settings editor were extended in terms of functionality. The former now supports tablets in a much better way.
• It is now possible to launch applications and open files on the desktop with a single click of the mouse. In addition, the 4.10 desktop can display thumbnails and automatically advance through the wallpaper list.
• The window manager can be configured to tile windows when dragging them to the screen edges. The tab window (Alt+Tab) supports more flexible theming and cursor key navigation.

An online tour of the changes in Xfce 4.10 can be viewed here:

http://xfce.org/about/tour

A detailed overview of the changes compared to Xfce 4.8 and Xfce 4.10 preview releases can be found on the following page:

http://xfce.org/download/changelogs

This release can be downloaded either as a set of individual packages or as a single fat tarball including all these individual versions:

http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.10

Thank you all the contributors, bug reporters, as well as translators and packagers for your efforts in making this release possible.

Best regards,

The Xfce development team

Info Source: http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1335571200

Phinx Desktop 2012.04 RC2a is Released

Our lead developer has released a RC2a iso yesterday, 2 days after the RC2.
He has fixed most of the bugs encountered in the previous RC2 release.

This, we hope, is a last RC before Xfce 4.10 is released and the big Final 2012 Phinx release. Before we get there it's important that we, the users and testers, give it a real good spin and provide all feedback on the forum and the Phinx Desktop Testers Google Group. This so that a great final iso can be released.

Also installed with this RC2a come a few codecs and Flash Player to give you a more out of the box experience on the web and with the multimedia players.

Enjoy this release and the further testing.

I also would like to thank Kori for his hard work on this. It's really awesome.

You can download the RC2a from here:

Phinx Desktop 2012.04 RC2a

Info Source:  Phinx Desktop

Phinx Desktop 2012.04 RC2 Released

Today our head developer has released the long awaited RC2 from the Phinx Desktop project.

Currently the RC is available for download in a 32 bit version and it has the Xfce 4.10pre2 on board.

Grab yourself a copy of the RC iso at:

Sourceforg Phinx Desktop Project Page

All feedback is welcome on the Phinx Desktop forum:

Feedback Thread


Any bugs or other problems can be reported on the Phinx Desktop Testers Google Group:

Phinx Desktop Testers

Enjoy the further testing!


Info Source:  http://phinxdesktop.slyip.net/phinxdesktop/?p=280

Xfce 4.10pre2 has entered the Phinx repo

Kori has been working on packaging for and uploading the Xfce 4.10pre2 to the Phinx repo's.

Open Synaptic, click Reload, Mark All Upgrades and click on Apply to pull in the updates. Reboot after that.

Only one thing isn't amongst the updates and will be kept back by our developer, due a packaging error, until a patch or new version is available to fix the bug.
It's the xfce4-panel package/update. Thunar seems to keep removing it somehow.
So we have to wait for that.

Everything else works fine.

Enjoy! :)

Info Source:  http://phinxdesktop.slyip.net/phinxdesktop/?p=268

Turpial in the Phinx Repo's

Yesterday Kori build and uploaded the twitter client Turpial to the Phinx repo's so that we are able to enjoy our twittering on our desktop.

Turpial is a great twitter client with many great features. More info can be found here about Turpial:

 http://turpial.org.ve/

Enjoy.

Many thanks to our Phinx developer for this. You rock! :D

Xfce 4.10pre2 Released

On the 14th of April the Xfce development team announced the release of Xfce 4.10pre2.

The Xfce development team is proud to announce the second preview release for Xfce 4.10. Together with this preview release, the Xfce project announces the string and code (only critical bug fixes or regressions) freeze for the final 4.10 release which is set to be pushed out to the world on April 28th, 2012.

This release incorporates some new features like improved responsiveness of file operations in Thunar and tiling improvements in Xfwm4. Everything else is bug fixes and a _lot_ of translation updates.

We hope you will enjoy this release. Please give us feedback by sharing your thoughts, blogging, tweeting or by filing bug reports! With your help, 4.10 will be the best release ever (at least until 4.12)!

Kind regards and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release,
 
The Xfce development team

Changelog for Xfce 4.10pre2

Download Xfce 4.10pre2

Info source:

Xfce 4.10pre2 Announcement

XFCE 4.10pre1 now available in the repo's

Yesterday, after working the whole easter weekend on it, the head developer of the Phinx Desktop project, Kori, finished up packaging Xfce 4.10pre1 and pushed them to the repo.

Since i'm running Phinx on both machines, my good friend Kori asked me to open up Synaptic, click reload and mark all updates to pull in the new Xfce packages.
I have to tell you... it's really awesome and worth it. We noticed a drop in memory usage straight after the reboot. I went from 308MB to 243MB RAM usage on my main machine, the laptop, with only Xchat and Htop open.

Another thing that is worth to mention which made us go speechless yesterday and today.... At 17:10 Phinx was dowloaded 68 times. 3 hours and 20 minutes later 250 times. And today in total..... 383 times downloaded.

This is really amazing. Thanks to all who grabbed a iso and gave the current 2102.03 RC1 a spin or maybe even installed it. :D

Here is the changelog of Xfce 4.10pre1:

Dependency Changes:

• GTK+ dependency >= 2.20 and GLib >= 2.24.
• Libxfce4util soname changed.
• Garcon has a new libxfce4util dependency.
• Exo has a new libxfce4ui dependency.
• Libxfce4util only depends on glib (was gobject).
• Xfce-utils is not needed anymore. Functionality has been moved in xfce4-session, libxfce4ui, xfce4-appfinder or is removed.
• Xfce4-session does not (optionally) depend on xfce4-panel anymore. The plugin has been integrated with the actions xfce4-panel plugin.
• Xfce4-session does not check for consolekit, hal, upower and polkit. It has soft dependencies on consolekit and upower (communication over DBus).
• Xfce4-session does not (optionally) depend on gconf anymore.

Development Tools (xfce4-dev-tools):

• Add support for LT_PREREQ (bug #6920).
• Remove spec file and rpm build target.
• Do not create a gzip tarball.
• Never use xdt-autogen in autogen.sh.
• Fix FSF address and add missing licenses.
• Only use -fstack-protector on Linux systems.
• Don't use -g3 for full debugging.
• Support xldscope for Sun Studio.
• Skip -Wredundant-decls on OpenBSD.
• Disable --as-needed on OpenBSD (bug #7546).
• Use pkg-config macro for detection (bug #7787).
• Port exo-csource to xdt-csource (bug #6449).

Utility Library (libxfce4util):

• Make licenses static. You can only use xfce_get_license_text(...).
• Remove unused .h files.
• Remove xfce_strip_context(), use g_strip_context().
• Remove XfceDesktopEntry.
• Don't generate enum types.
• Only link against glib.
• Set version string to 4.10.
• Remove spec file and rpm build.
• Missing fallback for AC_RUN_IF_ELSE() when cross-compiling (bug #8166).
• Fix XfceRc group parsing with brackets in name (bug #8150).
• Reduce XfceRc structure size from from 216 to 176 bytes.
• Use some macros and drop unneeded strlen's in XfceRc.
• Use GSList in xfce-resource.
• Bump verinfo to 6:0:0.

Widget Library (libxfce4ui):

• Open docs.xfce.org when Help in xfce4-about is clicked.
• Cache header icons and avoid large icons in XfceTitledDialog.
• Restore glade directory information in .pc file.
• Update translator credits.
• A lot of improvements in the shortcuts code.
• Add Alt + F1 as a shortcut for applications menu.
• Remove unused code from the internal header widget.
• Add xfce4-about from xfce-utils package.
• Use xdt-csource instead of exo-csource, depend on xdt 4.9.0.
• Update to new xfce4-appfinder commands.
• Fix build against 3.9 Glade (bug #7334).
• Add shortcuts for XF86WWW and XF86Mail.
• Simplify the xfce_gdk_screen_get_active fucntion.
• Add xfce_dialog_show_help function.

Extension Library (exo):

• Drop gtk 2.24 api (bug #8461).
• Bump libxfce4ui dependency for help function.
• Send exo-open startup-id to child instead of using it (bug #7093).
• Add preferred app helper for Chromium (bug #8398).
• Remove package manuals and link to online documentation.
• Queue an icon view resize if the requesitions don't match.
• Add new API exo_icon_view_get_item_{column,row}.
• Add keynav-failed to ExoIconView.
• Show Preferred Application in settings category.
• Don't destroy already destroyed widget.
• Translation updates: Chinese, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, German, Bulgarian.
• Do not insert symlink icons in the icon chooser.
• Use libxfce4ui instead of support library.
• Drop the python bindings.
• Use new libtool macros and versions (bug #6920).
• Remove spec file and rpm build.
• Silenty save to local application is permission denied to origional file in exo-desktop-item-edit.
• Support hexadecimal xid and center exo-desktop-item-edit on parent.

File Manager (thunar):

• Fix crash when trying to thumbnail a file with unknown content type.
• Fix properties dialog crash with files with unknown content type.
• Fix crash when hovering a CD drive with a special icon (bug #7309).
• Use portable abicheck.sh from xfconf.
• Avoid segfaults due to interpreting display names as format strings.
• Improve the UI according to bugs #7496 and #7497.
• Treat backup files as hidden as with thunar-vfs (bug #7615).
• Fix crash when opening a mountable drive with no media (bug #7308) in a way that does not break SMB shares (#bug 7774).
• Fix segfaults in case icons are missing or not found (bug #7880).
• Allow exec bit of MS-DOS executables and MSI to be changed (bug #3545).
• Prevent falling back to an unexpected locale (bug #4746).
• Show translated names of desktop files (bug #7393).
• Fix sorting of filenames with large numbers (bug #5356). Patch by Eric Koegel.
• Respect ThunarIconFactory::show-thumbnails. Fixes a regression.
• Fix crash when removing an ancestor of the current folder (bug #8168).
• Fix handling %U when launching multiple files with an app (bug #7456).
• Improve sorting of file names that include numbers (bug #5359, bug #8022, #4269, #5286).
• Add a "Skip All" button to the file overwrite dialog (bug #4263).
• Compress icons and images.
• Remove the manual.
• Use 32 instead of 36 pixels for small icons.
• Show Thunar settings in category.
• Don't update UI more then fourth per second in deep count job.
• Fix sorting of applications in chooser dialog.
• Depend on Gtk 2.20 and Glib 2.24 and drop some workarounds.
• Fix removing custom application launchers again.
• Prevent looping in some renamers.
• Fix segfault when plugin returns a NULL suffix.
• Remove spec file, rpm build and update libtool.
• Lowercase the thunar executable and install a Thunar symlink.
• Make the clipboard persistence (bug #7060).
• Use glib functions for get/set cwd (bug #7522).
• Don't interpret file display names as format strings
• Paste files in correct order (bug #6504).
• Fix truncated strings when loading and storing emblems (bug #7171).
• Only erase top-level items from trash (bug #7147).
• Don't interpret file display names as format strings (bug #7128).
• Ship stock_folder-copy.png and stock_folder-move.png icons with Thunar itself (bug #6851).
• Fix segfault when calling strcasecmp with NULL parameters (bug #7206).
• Only change the Name field when renaming desktop files (bug #7155).
• Force desktop file reload after changing the Name field.
• Fix memory leak caused by not destroying the rename job.
• Allow installation of helper scripts in a custom location using the --with-helper-path-prefix=PATH configure option.
• Improve thumbnailing by avoid sending thumbnail requests while theuser is scrolling in a directory.
• Cancel thumbnail requests when leaving a directory.
• Avoid regenerating thumbnails when files are copied, moved, linked or trashed.
• Update the thumbnail cache when files are deleted permanently.

Application Finder (xfce4-appfinder):

• Add Help button to preferences dialog.
• Make sure the header icon does not shrink (bug #8489).
• Set single line label for icon sizes is small (bug #8490).
• Add option to disable the background service.
• Block maximize and fullscreen in collapsed mode (bug #8491).
• Chain-up unmap.
• Start in collapsed mode if xfrun4 symlink is used.
• Select entry when Ctrl+L is pressed.
• Quit the mainloop when receiving an exit signal.
• Avoid xfconf error when closing windows on quit.
• Add icon view mode and add preferences to set icon sizes.
• Only show categories with items.
• Add keybinds to switch modes (Ctrl-1 and Ctrl-2).
• Improve reloading of items and directories.
• Add popup menu to edit, hide and revert desktop files.
• Add refcount debugging.
• Remove xfrun from the utility menu.
• Fix some segfaults.
• Add option to save custom command matches.
• Insert and reload history command in model.
• Change treeview filter prio to avoid window resize.
• Add left/right navigation to the treeviews.
• Add a custom completion match function.
• Use long option, looks better in code completion.
• Drop usage of new Gdk keycode api (bug #8044).
• Fix launching in collapsed mode.
• Don't ignore arguments of the desktop file command.
• Always allow up/down unless the completion menu is shown.
• Fix segfault when loading default actions.
• Rewrite of the the application finder to merge the functionality of the appfinder as we know it in 4.8 and xfrun4 (start with --collapsed).

Panel (xfce4-panel):

• Panel: Don't destroy window when focussed and Alt+F4 is pressed (bug #7378).
• Panel: Use new help function to redirect to docs.xfce.org.
• Docs: Remove mallard documentation.
• Docs: Don't install the gtkrc README.
• Clock: Don't use sigval_t (bug #8297).
• Panel: Add support for pluggable dialogs.
• Panel: Save changed plugin ids if a plugin failed to load.
• Directorymenu: Fix prefered app not working without snotify (bug #8298).
• Launcher: Small=FALSE in deskbar mode with label visible.
• Actions: Limit size of action buttons to row size.
• Panel: Removed item size checks.
• Clock: Fixing clock orientation in vertical/deskbar mode.
• Pager: Fixing infinite loopin in the WNCK pager aspect ratio workaround.
• Pager: Fixing plugin->size updates.
• Pager: Fixed workspace ordering in the vertical mode.
• Pager: Workaround for aspect ratio error in WNCK pager in deskbar mode.
• Pager: Changing orientation depending on the panel mode.
• Clock: Changing default value of rotate-vertically to TRUE.
• Pager: Fixed preprocessor macro.
• Pager: Removing broken workaround for aspect ratio in deskbar mode.
• Pager: Making use of a fixed libwnck version (>=2.31.0).
• Revert "Use realtime POSIX timers for the clock."
• Revert "Clock: Don't use sigval_t (bug #8297)."
• Launcher: Show the desktop file in the tooltip (bug #8536).
• Panel: Make string in about translatable (bug #8545).
• Panel: Don't ask for panel when inserting items (bug #8544).
• Panel: Reply to the caller for plugin events (bug #7365).
• Applicationsmenu: Fall-back to xfdesktop for xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu (bug #7365).
• Applicationsmenu: Recurse application menu selection-done gignal (bug #8541).
• Panel: Add (un)lock option to panel menu (bug #6980).
• Panel: Add confirmation before creating launchers from dnd (bug #6926).
• Applicationsmenu: Allow non-squared icons in applications button (bug #7381).
• Panel: Save plugin-ids when removing and moving items in ed.
• Tasklist: Bringing back 4.8 max-button-size property.
• Tasklist: Capping buttons height when button labels are visible.
• Tasklist: Reverting "ceil" to "floor" (as in 4.8).
• Actions: Query visibility and save as strings.
• Panel: Add option in preferences dialog to disable struts (bug #7202).
• Showdesktop: Allow middle-click to shade windows (bug #7177).
• Panel: Add style property to control size of autohide window.
• Panel: Make compositing settings insensitive (bug #7862).
• Tasklist: Add option to disable mouse scrolling (bug #6996).
• Tasklist: Make the plugin shrink instead of expand (bug #7389, #7129).
• Drop AC_PROG_LIBTOOL and AC_DISABLE_STATIC for LT_PREREQ and LT_INIT.
• Clock: Use realtime POSIX timers for the clock.
• Actions: Merge functionality of xfce4-session plugin.
• Applicationmenu: Show menu on button-press-event (bug #8047).
• Migrate: Add version based config migration.
• Clock: Fix typo in tooltip (bug #8137).
• General: Add deskbar mode and nrows property to plugins.
• General: Add small property for plugins.
• Separator: Remove new line option.
• General: Make plugins work with deskbar mode and small property.
• Panel: Change drop highlighting to a red line.
• Applicationmenu: Reload menu on directory changes.
• Panel: Make sure the panel has a position on startup (bug #8287).
• Panel: Work with a unique id for each panel.
• Panel: Remove autosaving on exit and with timeout.
• Panel: Only save what is required and when needed.
• Docs: Update to latest version.

Session Manager (xfce4-session):

• Add accelerators to logout dialog buttons (bug #6982).
• Add support for starting assistive technologies.
• Remove optional dependency for gconf.
• Remove Xfce4-tips.
• Remove early xfsettingsd autostart and add it to the session.
• Fix crash if save timeout for a client is triggered (bug #7320).
• Add a way to delete sessions (Bug #5730).
• Drop usage of G_CONST_RETURN macro.
• Add Xft.xrdb, startxfce4, xinit, xfce.desktop and xflock4 files from xfce-utils.
• Explicitly link to libm where needed (bug #7953).
• Remove the xfce4-panel logout menu plugin.
• Don't try to remove the $HOME directory (bug #8154).
• Remove manual and link to docs.xfce.org.
• Show dialog in settings category.
• Link to gmodule (bug #8340).
• Improve fadeout code with compositing enabled.
• Start screensaver with autostart.
• Support the TryExec key for autostart in the settings dialog.
• Rework the logout dialog code.
• Cleanup the power management code.
• Let xfce4-session handle the dbus-launch checking.
• Add support for launching xfce4-session in consolekit.
• Add --with-ck-launch support to startxfce4.
• Add option to lock the screen on suspend/hibernate.
• Remove unused icons.
• Show all applications in autostart (bug #8014).
• Drop gpg-agent and ssh-agent handling.

Settings Manager (xfce4-settings):

• Xfsettingsd: Don't set large dpi in xrdb (bug #8415).
• Include xscreensaver in the manager dialog.
• Complete theme installation script.
• Settings editor: Set sensitivity of save button on init.
• Xfsettingsd: Properly round display refresh rate to find match.
• Add mime icons in the mime-editor treeview.
• Store window and column sizes in xfconf.
• Add cateogry based settings manager.
• Re-add support for pluggable dialogs and enable them always.
• Rework settings editor.
• Clear out keyboard shortcuts before resetting to defaults (bug #8138).
• Use daemon() for xfsettingsd if available.
• Hide the xfconfd-already running message completely.
• Excluded items with NoDisplay=true in the settings dialog.
• Remove duplicated accelerators (bug #7734).
• Add theme dnd-installation by dropping in a treeview.
• Drop AC_LIBTOOL in favor of LT_PREREQ and LT_INIT.
• Wait for the window manager before setting workspace names.
• Add option to disable numlock restoring (bug #8302).
• Add Help button and make existing buttons work with wiki.
• Add new MIME Type editor.
• Depend on Gtk+ 2.20 and Glib 2.24.
• Merge xfce4-settings-helper into xfsettingsd.
• Add support to xfsettingsd for pointing device properties.
• Rework the mouse dialog and add support for basic synaptics and wacom settings.
• Add option to enable assistive technologies during login.
• Add fontconfig monitoring (bug #5011).
• Improved debugging with XFSETTINGSD_DEBUG=1.

Configuration Manager (xfconf):

• Use sh as interpreter in tests.
• Add hook to skip the xfconf tests.
• Make the abicheck work on Solaris and PPC64 (bug #7416).
• Fix licenses and use new FSF address.
• Fix compiler warnings on Solaris.
• Avoid GCC 4.6 compiler warning.
• Add toggle option to xfconf-query.
• Remove unusable import and export options from xfconf-query.
• Translate all error strings in xfconf-query.
• Cleanup Makefile.am files a bit.
• Improve --version output in xfconf-query.
• Cleanup #includes.
• Drop usage of the G_CONST_RETURN macro.

Desktop Manager (xfdesktop):

• Fix menu without desktop icons.
• Enable pseudo-transparent backgrounds again.
• Prevent multiple instances of xfdesktop from running (bug #8488).
• Change xfdesktop's menu icon to "applications-other" (bug #8500).
• Keep the image width to something sensible for xfdesktop-settings (bug #7086).
• Use the preferred file manager when opening folders (bug #6537).
• Drop AC_PROG_LIBTOOL for LT_PREREQ and LT_INIT.
• Remove docs and link to wiki.
• Thumbnail desktop icon previews using tumblerd.
• Added a check for GDK_GRAB_INVALID_TIME in xfdesktop_popup_grab_available to mitigate slow menu popups on a right mouse click (bug #7172).
• Add the code required to perform a paste on the on the desktop (bug #3804).
• Display correct trash icon on menu and desktop.
• Fix for shift + drag selections/
• Icon positions are saved/restored per resolution.
• Backdrop image cycling on a timer.
• Modified xfdesktop_icon_view_drag_drop to allow all selected files to drag and drop (bug #5025).
• Fix for moving files instead of copy when src isn't writable.
• Fix typos in the README file.
• Unmounted volumes are semi-transparent.
• Stretch background across all monitors setting (bug #5690).
• Arrange icons on the desktop menu item (bug #2833).
• Single click option to open items on desktop (bug #1797).
• Require libexo and update min requirements in readme.
• Comments in .desktop files are displayed in the tooltip (bug #8509).

Window Manager (xfwm4):

• Add tiling feature (bug #6648).
• Navigate with arrows in task switcher (bug #4752).
• Show dialogs in settings category.
• Do not cancel pending focus transition and use actual meaningful timestamp to avoid setting focus on wrong window in focus follow mouse (Bug #8323).
• Remove docbook documentation.
• Remove older themes from main package (moved to xfwm4-themes now).
• Add patch for themeable tab-window (bug #8238).
• Use themeable icons for the settings manager and the menu, rework the default icons for the settings manager and the window menu and add SVG version.
• Reintroduce the double-click timeout.
• Drop AC_PROG_LIBTOOL in favor of LT_PREREQ and LT_INIT.
• Simply double click detection logic.
• Add special icons for the button layout in settings.
• Remove some XFlush() calls.
• Upon restart, restore the previous selected workspace.
• Improve horizontal/vertical maximization toggle so that de-maximizing in either direction while fully maximized gives the expected maximization result.
• Change the default theme to differentiate from 4.8.
• Update mouse cursor theme and size dynamically (bug #6854).
• Optimize transients for group evaluation while withdrawing windows.
• Increase timeout for other WM to exit with "--replace",
• Rework focus and fullscreen windows to make xfwm4 simpler and more predictable.
• Get rid of old GNOME 1.x protocol.
• Get rid of legacy fullscreen emulation.

Theme Engine (gtk-xfce-engine):

• Improved menu theming
• Theme gtk-tooltip (bug #8494).
• Scale radio and check boxes (bug #8456).
• Draw inset border around default button (bug #8454).
• Changed rendering of GtkSpinButton.
• Pixel align checkboxes in the Gtk+-3.0 engine.
• Link against libm (bug #6253).
• Added Gtk+-3.0 theming engine.
• Changed drawing routines to use cairo.

Info Sources: 

http://phinxdesktop.slyip.net/phinxdesktop/?p=247

http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1333238400

http://www.xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.10pre1/

Phinx Desktop finally on Distrowatch

After being added on the waitinglist back in October last year, the Phinx Desktop project has now been officially added and got it's own page on Distrowatch.

Phinx Desktop Page on Distrowatch

Also stay tuned for more exciting news to come in the near future. Things are going to change.