MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Sat Oct 14, 2017 9:37 pm**

Comments of interest on Xfce4's near future.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/interview-xfce.html

Posted: **Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:25 pm**

"Olivier Fourdan, creator of the Xfce desktop and maintainer of the Xfwm window manager works for Red Hat"

That's bad. Very bad.

Posted: **Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:19 pm**

Ever wonder why Linux distros are adopting systemd?
Answer: money
Motive: control and monopoly, hint: red-hat = next red-mond

Redhat

Revenue US$2.4 billion (2016)[3]
Operating income US$288.05 million (2016)[3]
Net income US$199.37 million (2016)[3]
Total assets US$4.155 billion (2016)[3]
Total equity US$1.334 billion (2016)[3]

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:05 am**

Who's your nemesis? Not on a personal level, more sort of dev style?

S: I don't have one in particular, but anybody using tabs instead of (4) spaces is eligible to be on the list.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:48 am**

Good stuff -- thanks for the link! I wonder if that Xfce developer has tried MX.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:53 am**

"Olivier Fourdan, creator of the Xfce desktop and maintainer of the Xfwm window manager works for Red Hat"

That's bad. Very bad.

Have you ever looked at the list of kernel maintainers? I remember seeing a couple of years ago that something like 3/4 of the kernel development comes from commercial realm, the most work being contributed by Red Hat.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:38 am**

Not impressed with source in general.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:56 am**

Jerry3904 wrote:Have you ever looked at the list of kernel maintainers? I remember seeing a couple of years ago that something like 3/4 of the kernel development comes from commercial realm, the most work being contributed by Red Hat.

Doesn't seem to bother Linus.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:00 am**

What I meant

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:23 am**

Xfce…., etc = Gnome, now with the appearance of Librem 5, all the Unix derivatives which are based on C language will be finally unified.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:19 pm**

Good interview. The developer seems like a nice guy. The problem with GTK 3 is that eventually it may result in MATE = Gnome 3 with MATE panel, XFCE = Gnome 3 with XFCE panel etc. We have seen how Gnome/Red Hat has "unified" the desktop space: Pulseaudio, Plymouth, PolicyKit, GTK 3, DBus, Systemd, libinput, Wayland etc. It becomes harder and harder to maintain an independent Linux DE.

I see GTK 3 as a great danger. The XFCE taskmanager (GTK 3) seems dumbed down. It's not easy to see total RAM usage in MBs. Also GTK 2 desktops have good incremental support for HiDPI for all toolkits (GTK 2/3, QT 4/5). GTK 3 desktops only support 2x scaling and don't support scaling of GTK 2 apps.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:29 pm**

polaca57 wrote:Ever wonder why Linux distros are adopting systemd?
Answer: money
Motive: control and monopoly, hint: red-hat = next red-mond

Redhat

Revenue US$2.4 billion (2016)[3]
Operating income US$288.05 million (2016)[3]
Net income US$199.37 million (2016)[3]
Total assets US$4.155 billion (2016)[3]
Total equity US$1.334 billion (2016)[3]

As long as there's the GPL, the Linux Foundation (the keepers of the kernel), and the purists at Debian, I'm not concerned. In fact, Red Hat's commercial success should be celebrated as far as I'm concerned.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:47 pm**

uncle mark wrote:
polaca57 wrote:Ever wonder why Linux distros are adopting systemd?
Answer: money
Motive: control and monopoly, hint: red-hat = next red-mond

Redhat

Revenue US$2.4 billion (2016)[3]
Operating income US$288.05 million (2016)[3]
Net income US$199.37 million (2016)[3]
Total assets US$4.155 billion (2016)[3]
Total equity US$1.334 billion (2016)[3]
As long as there's the GPL, the Linux Foundation (the keepers of the kernel), and the purists at Debian, I'm not concerned. In fact, Red Hat's commercial success should be celebrated as far as I'm concerned.

Purists at Debian?
Red Hat is a large US Defense Contractor, closely aligned with the objectives of NSA. Why do you think every distro "had to" adopt Systemd? Red Hat is better than Microsoft because it's FOSS. At least there's that.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:13 pm**

If you had followed the debate on whether Debian should adopt systemd you would recall that the argument that carried the day was that systemd was being actively developed and maintained while there was trouble getting anybody to maintain sysvinit, much less improve it.
I'm no fan of systemd, but it wasn't all about money or control. In the FOSS universe people mostly work on what they *want* to work on, and if nobody wants to work on a particular project then other projects will take its place.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:45 pm**

dreamer wrote:Purists at Debian?
Red Hat is a large US Defense Contractor, closely aligned with the objectives of NSA. Why do you think every distro "had to" adopt Systemd? Red Hat is better than Microsoft because it's FOSS. At least there's that.

I guess I'm going to have to get some more tinfoil.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:38 pm**

timkb4cq wrote:If you had followed the debate on whether Debian should adopt systemd you would recall that the argument that carried the day was that systemd was being actively developed and maintained while there was trouble getting anybody to maintain sysvinit, much less improve it.
I'm no fan of systemd, but it wasn't all about money or control. In the FOSS universe people mostly work on what they *want* to work on, and if nobody wants to work on a particular project then other projects will take its place.

Do we know what really happened to Ian Murdock? We don't.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:00 pm**

Tell Red Hat to start sending some of that sweet, sweet dirty money this way, then.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:09 pm**

Stevo wrote:Tell Red Hat to start sending some of that sweet, sweet dirty money this way, then.

The price you will have to pay is adopt systemd and be assimilated. And I am not joking.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:12 pm**

Come on, we need to take it easy here.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:45 pm**

Let's wait to see if xfce 4.14 comes with any systemd dependencies by default. No point getting all worked up right now.

Posted: **Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:49 pm**

Jerry3904 wrote:Come on, we need to take it easy here.

What do you mean by that?
Touchy subject? Something it's not desirable to talk about? Taboo topic?

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:14 am**

.
so today I watched a troll barge into a roomfulla xfce fanbois and...

polaca57 wrote:The price you will have to pay is adopt systemd and be assimilated. And I am not joking.
[. . .]
Do we know what really happened to Ian Murdock? We don't.
[. . .]
Touchy subject? Something it's not desirable to talk about? Taboo topic?

(another topic)
Keeping status quo for 30 years is retarded. "it's Arch, it's not for newbies" is their mantra.
[. . .]
No installer? xxxxx is wrong with you? 30 years! no change. Retards!

...and because I happen to share polaca57's worries(?), I'll put some substantive "meat on them thar bones".

What can the Linux community do together to make Linux, well, better?
S: Stop reinventing the wheel for the sake of being different. Review and accept patches, or offer
suggestions to improve the patches. Check out new releases of different desktop environments, or even Windows and Mac
OS to see if there's new innovations you haven't considered before. Finally, improved upstream and downstream cooperation
would lead to a better experience for developers, maintainers, and users.

That statement is both hypocritical and specious.

specious https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/specious

1) obsolete. (syn) showy: "making an attractive show")
2) having deceptive attraction or allure
3) having a false look of truth or genuineness (sophistic reasoning: plausible but fallacious)

Package: xfce4-panel (4.12.1-2)
panel for Xfce4 desktop environment
"This is the panel provided by the Xfce4 desktop project. If you want a multi-functional panel that can even handle plugins and the like, xfce4-panel might be worth a try."
^---depends on exo-utils + LOTS of other deps ----v
Package: libexo-1-0 (0.10.7-1)
"libexo is a library for Xfce that contains a bunch of additional widgets and a framework for editable toolbars (an improved version of the framework present in GNOME), light-weight session management support, functions to automatically synchronize object properties (based on GObject Binding Properties) and several miscellaneous utility and helper functions for application developers.
While Xfce ships with quite a few libraries that are primarily targeted at desktop development, libexo is targeted at application development, with a focus on applications for Xfce."
admittedly (in their own words) reinventing the wheel, rather than contributing back upstream
(Ah, but not just for the sake of being "different", right? And, finding changes merged with upstream RedTeamBlue has proven impossible, right?)

Package xfce4-dict ( Dictionary plugin for Xfce4 panel )
reinventing the wheel (and, in a non-portable way). Full stop.

Package: xfce4-notifyd (0.3.4-1)
simple, visually-appealing notification daemon for Xfce
"Xfce4-notifyd is a simple, visually-appealing notification daemon for Xfce that implements the Freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification."
Features:
* Themable using the GTK+ theming mechanism
* Visually appealing: rounded corners, shaped windows
* Supports transparency and fade effects
------------- REINVENTS THE WHEEL _AND_ DRAGS IN DEPENDENCIES: WAYLAND CLIENT, GTK3...
("sour grapes" with me b/c of its hard dependency on wayland-client, hence non-portability)

Package: xfce4-power-manager (1.4.4-4) https://packages.debian.org/stretch/xfce4-power-manager
^---v dependency
libdbus-1-3
^---v dependency
libsystemd0 (>= 209)
reinvents the wheel, and does so in a RedTeamBlue non-portable way

Package: xfce4-appfinder (4.12.0-2) https://packages.debian.org/stretch/xfce4-appfinder]
Application finder for the Xfce4 Desktop Environment
"This is an application finder for the Xfce4 Desktop Environment. It will search for installed applications on your system."
^-----v REINVENTS (A NON-PORTABLE IMPLEMENTATION OF) THE WHEEL
libgarcon + libxfce4util7 + libxfce4ui-1-0 + libxfconf-0-2
reinvents the wheel (and does so in a non-portable way)
Although appfinder predates WhiskerMenu, the non-hypocritical path would have been (by now) to deprecate appfinder, in favor of WhiskerMenu.

Package: xfce4-clipman (2:1.4.1-1) https://packages.debian.org/stretch/xfce4-clipman
clipboard history utility
"Clipman enables you to store and recall X selections, as well as GTK+ clipboard content. You can also define actions to be triggered by selecting some text pattern.
This package uses Xfce libraries but can be used without the Xfce panel and only requires a system tray (notification area)."
reinvents the wheel, and does so in a non-portable RedTeamBlue -ish way
^---v
libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.19.12) + libxfce4ui-2-0 + libxfce4util7 + libxfconf-0-2
could (should) be deprecated in favor of {parcelite, clipit, CopyQ} feature-superior alternatives

Package: xfce4-goodies https://packages.debian.org/stretch/xfce4-goodies
enhancements for the Xfce4 Desktop Environment
The "Goodies for Xfce" project includes additional software and artwork that are related to the Xfce desktop, but not part of the official release.
This package will install the following Xfce4 related plugins:

* Extra artwork (xfce4-artwork)
* Battery levels monitor (xfce4-battery-plugin)
* Clipboard history (xfce4-clipman-plugin)
* CPU frequency management plugin (xfce4-cpufreq-plugin)
* CPU utilisation graphs (xfce4-cpugraph-plugin)
* Date and time plugin (xfce4-datetime-plugin)
* Disk performance display (xfce4-diskperf-plugin)
* Filesystem monitor (xfce4-fsguard-plugin)
* Generic monitor, for displaying any command result (xfce4-genmon-plugin)
* Mail watcher (xfce4-mailwatch-plugin)
* Mount plugin (xfce4-mount-plugin)
* Network load monitor (xfce4-netload-plugin)
* Notes plugin (xfce4-notes-plugin)
* Quick access to bookmarked folders, recent documents and removable
media (xfce4-places-plugin)
* Sensors plugin, frontend to lm-sensors (xfce4-sensors-plugin)
* Smartbookmarks plugin (xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin)
* System load monitor (xfce4-systemload-plugin)
* Timer plugin (xfce4-timer-plugin)
* Command line with history (xfce4-verve-plugin)
* Wireless lan monitor (xfce4-wavelan-plugin)
* Weather monitor (xfce4-weather-plugin)
* Keyboard configuration (xfce4-xkb-plugin)
* Archive management for Thunar (thunar-archive-plugin)
* Media tags editor for Thunar (thunar-media-tags-plugin)
* Alternate menu plugin (xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin)

It'll install some standalone applications too:

* Tiny text editor (mousepad)
* Images viewer (ristretto)
* CD/DVD burner (xfburn)
* Frontend to dictionnaries (xfce4-dict)
* Notification daemon (xfce4-notifyd) ==================== not really "standalone", considering the deps
* Tool to take screenshots (xfce4-screenshooter) ========= yes, standalone
* Task manager (xfce4-taskmanager)
* Terminal emulator (xfce4-terminal) ========= yes, dependencies are minimal enough to call it a "standalone"

Some packages are only suggested because they bring too much dependencies, but you may find them interesting:

* Cellular modem plugin (xfce4-cellmodem-plugin)
* Search plugin, frontend to locate (xfce4-linelight-plugin)
* DBus messaging plugin (xfce4-messenger-plugin)
* Another commandline plugin (xfce4-minicmd-plugin)
* Frontends to MPD (xfce4-mpc-plugin, xfmpc)
* Radio plugin (xfce4-radio-plugin))
* Fast-user switching plugin (xfswitch-plugin)
* ThinkPads HDAPS plugin (xfce4-hdaps)
* GIO/GVfs frontend to manage connections to remote filesystems (gigolo)
* Media player (parole)
* Power Manager (xfce4-power-manager)

This is a metapackage to ease upgrades, installations, and provide a consistent upgrade path from previous versions. It can safely be removed with no ill effects.

Summary points:
1) Other than xfce4-screenshooter and xfce4-terminal, the xfce project is not developing with an eye to, consideration toward, the overall community.

2) By continuing to pander feature-limited "pet" (in-house, umbrella) projects like midori, mousepad, the xfce project is disservicing end users.

3) Within several of its components, the xfce project (or debian-packaging) has already embraced hard dependencies on RedTeamBlue's systemd and wayland.
It's reasonable to expect that this trend will continue.

4) as of v4.8, XFCE was my favorite "desktop environment". XFCE v4.10 felt like "meh, break/fix, chasing GTK3"... and v4.12 now just stands as "lesser of the evils, at the moment".

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:12 am**

skidoo, I'm not technical enough to comment on the xfce4/Red Hat/systemd portions of your post, but I'm puzzled why you brought in the artix thread and mentioned "xfce fanbois".

1. artix comes pre-installed with i3 or lxqt. No XFCE.
2. artix is runs openrc as init manager and they broke away from Arch specifically because of systemd, so should in fact have been an admirable distro in the eyes of polaca57.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:06 am**

What puzzles me about this discussion is simply this: if people don't like Xfce, they shouldn't use it--end of story. No need to go on and on about it, just pick something else.

It's not that hard to grasp.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:07 am**

I'm perfectly ok with xfce 4.12 but to be fair to all the posters, only time will tell just how tightly bound to systemd xfce 4.14 is.

I can understand to some extent skidoo and polaca's concerns, since there are Red Hat people involved with XFCE.

However, my understanding is that xfce is pretty modular so as long as it remains that way, then even if certain items were indeed systemd-linked, it is possible they could be replaced easily or just not used.

MX does not use every package in xfce-goodies, for instance mousepad or ristretto, so it is still up to a distro to pick and choose components from XFCE it will use. Hopefully it remains that way.

That's why I said let's wait and see.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:21 am**

All I can say is I like xfce and the panel addons and goodies. They work and give me information I need. Their genesis and whether they re-invent they wheel is immaterial to me as long as they are functional and do what I need. Simplistic and naive, perhaps. But presented with an environment that works and works well stops me from looking for ulterior motives.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:38 am**

uncle mark wrote: I guess I'm going to have to get some more tinfoil.

Everyone knows tin is too thin to protect you with the technology they have now. You gotta step up to the cast iron pot.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:00 am**

My view is that the mere fact that they are taking their own sweet time to finish version 4.14, is reason to be optimistic.

If it was going to be wholesale gnomification and systemd all the way, surely it would have been out sooner?

At least, that's my opinion.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 12:58 pm**

skidoo wrote:.
so today I watched a troll barge into a roomfulla xfce fanbois and...

You are wrong on both "observations"

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:47 pm**

Forget about arguing logically with a conspiracy theorist. Any logical argument against the conspiracy is only further evidence for it.

Posted: **Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:50 pm**

Stevo wrote:Forget about arguing logically with a conspiracy theorist. Any logical argument against the conspiracy is only further evidence for it.

That's what they want you to think.

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2017 8:06 pm**

It doesn't matter if there is a conspiracy or not. With software it's easy to see. Are there dependencies on Systemd which prevent another init? Are GTK 3 desktops/applications inferior to their GTK 2 counterparts? One can always ask why, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. What matters is how one deals with it. This is what led me to MX Linux.

If people create things that suck (Systemd, GTK 3 etc.) then there may be a conspiracy, but there is also the very real possibility that these people like sucky things. Never underestimate the influence of bad taste. :)

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2017 8:15 pm**

Green's corollary to Clarke's third law: Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2017 8:52 pm**

...When searching for a reason behind such failures, why blame a conspiracy when incompetence will do.

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:33 pm**

Paul.. wrote:...When searching for a reason behind such failures, why blame a conspiracy when incompetence will do.

So based on that, Red Hat are supporting an incompetent programmer and they don't realize how incompetent he is. They think he is a genius. What a dumb multi billion dollar corporation!

Posted: **Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:54 pm**

Seems like I am reading the wrong forum. Thought this one was about Antix, MX , and to a lesser extent Mepis.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2018 2:51 pm**

As a long-time XFCE user (~10 years) i find both the interview and this discussion interesting, even if including the metatroll/paranoid diatribes.

And special thanks to skidoo who has wakened my curiosity - i've never thought about XFCE that way. GJ.

MX Linux Forum

Xfce4 developer on Xfce4.14: Dedoimedo interview

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