[plug] File browser

Adam Davin byteme-its at westnet.com.au
Sun Jun 11 13:45:09 WST 2006


On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:28:35 +0800
"Daniel Foote" <freefoote at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Currently I am using xffm the XFCE4 (XFCE4 is my WM) file manager.
<snip>
> Sounds like you're running an old version of XFCE then.
> 
> Debian Unstable over the last few weeks has been packaging a SVN
> version of XFCE4 currently marked as "4.3.90.1 (Xfce 4.4 BETA1)".
> 
> XFCE4 was always good... as was XFCE3 before it... but the newer one
> is great. Same lightweight WM that we're used to, but on steroids (I
> run it on everything here from a PII 400MHz/64MB RAM through my
> AMD64/1024MB RAM box (4 machines total). Feels almost identical in
> terms of speed across these machines).

I agree, I was running it on about a 600mhz processor with 512mb ram, I
think I now have it on a PIV 2g with 1g ram but it was very usable
before, as it is now.. 

> It now has unlimited panels and you can do what you like with them
> (ie: full monitor width, span all monitors, etc). It also comes with
> "Thunar", the replacement filemanager for XFFM. It's a lot like
> Nautilus - but lighter. (Still a bit more work to go, but quite usable
> right now - I also wasn't really a fan of XFFM. The command line still
> does 99% of stuff for me, though).

I moved from Enlightenment a while ago to XFCE4, I still miss the
different wallpapers for different virtual desktops, this allowed me to
remember "where" I was in the list of desktops without referring to the
pager (which is on autohide). The Pagers for "E" which gave live
desktop snapshots were great too. E had a couple of issues when I moved
to a Xinerama desktop though and started hiding windows that popped up
or shrinking them to as small as they can go etc.. 

> Other features of note in the new version:
> - Built in multimonitor wallpaper spanning (not too many window
> managers or proprietary OSs with that out of the box).
> - XFCE can for the first time have icons on the desktop - either
> minimized programs, nothing, or file icons (from ~/Desktop/). I've got
> rather used to not having desktop icons, so that doesn't make much
> difference for me.
> - Complete, smooth, simple session management - instead of manually
> running various XFCE processes from my ~/.xsession, now I just run
> "startxfce4" (from ~/.xsession) - and that handles starting everything
> else - including starting Xscreensaver. I'm not used to running with
> session management, which gave me a surprise this morning when I
> logged back into my desktop PC after yesterdays update.

My session stuff broke a while ago, I am not sure what happened, it
still remembers my sessions, but I seem to have multiple sessions
running or something as I have to quit, and then quit again to get XFCE
to shut down. I know its something to do with my config directory
because if I delete it and start again, it all works fine. I just don't
want to go through my preferences again at the moment so I am putting
up with it. 


> If you're running Debian Unstable, I would highly recommend upgrading
> XFCE4. At the moment the dependancies are still a bit funny, and it
> will delete some older xfce4 packages that depend on the old xfce4
> libraries, but the only difference in the end is that there isn't
> currently a Date/Time plugin that was in earlier versions.

Doing apt-get update && apt-get install xfce4 now :)

Regards, 

-- 

Adam Davin
Byteme IT Services
Mob: 0422 893 898
Fax: 08 9493 4462
Email: byteme-its at westnet.com.au



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