Idea: Xfce as classic DE for Trisquel 7?
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Who's with me?
Xfce can be configured to appear and function nearly identically to the current DE, without much of a feature loss.
Since Xfce is (relatively) lighter than GNOME classic, it would make it easier to justify a termination of the Mini edition. One edition of Trisquel for all.
This would in no way make Trisquel harder to maintain. The upstream (Ubuntu) doesn't use GNOME anymore, anyway. It will make Trisquel easier to maintain because it's one less edition to worry about.
Flame away.
Everyone has his preferences about the DE. I like xfce, too, but it's easy to install and difficult for developers to mantain many trisquel versions.
I think a GNOME and a LXDE official versions are enough, at least with current development posibilities.
This is my Trisquel 6 with xfce, clean, fast and, of course, free as in freedom
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No, you've got me wrong.
I am recommending REPLACING the current DE with Xfce. If my idea were implemented, that would make the current LXDE-based Trisquel Mini edition a moot point (yes I know it's even lighter, but it just ain't worth it). So, that's one LESS edition of Trisquel to maintain, not yet another one.
Your screenshot, BTW, is a pretty good example of what that should look like.
xfce is a very good option for those who like a classic desktop, but I'm afraid that many people here would prefer gnome-shell, unity or KDE.
And being trisquel oriented to a generic final user, I think one of the "great" DE is a better choice as default desktop.
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GNOME 3 Shell requires 3D KMS on your computer to work properly. Not everyone who runs Linux-libre has that, specifically not people with Radeon GPUs.
Ditto with Unity (and it's even heavier).
KDE is a classic desktop, but it's not a good option for more subtle reasons (let's start with the fact that it's so resource-heavy, and doesn't let us reuse any existing Trisquel apps without having two different toolkit libraries running one on top of the other).
MATE could be a good choice, but I've never tried it. I will remain silent. Maybe MATE really is the best choice.
Maybe Consort, once again I've never tried it. Is it even included in Ubuntu's repository yet? Isn't Consort based on fallback mode (unlike MATE, which is a fork of GNOME 2)? If so, do we really want to split it up into two possible user experiences?
Do you see why I keep coming back to Xfce?
The main benefit of Consort (fork of GNOME Fallback) over MATE (fork or GNOME 2) is that it isn't forking everything; it's supposedly going to stay in sync with GNOME 3 while adding in things that were in GNOME 2. Also, MATE still uses GTK 2, Consort will use GTK 3 (as GNOME 3 does).
Personally, I don't think MATE looks like it's going anywhere.
MATE 1.4 is running quite well on my laptop with Trisquel 6.0. I think it would be a good choice. However, default desktop environment isn't a big deal to me since I'm going to install my preference anyway and customize it the way I like.
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Hi,
If your desktop conforms to the Trisquel philosphy and you can turn it into an .iso I would be happy to host it here www.trisquel-users.com and credit it to you.
Regards
John
What's your point? Trisquel doesn't currently use GNOME Shell by default; it uses GNOME Fallback.
I think switching to Xfce would be a great idea, much better than using GNOME Fallback (though Consort might turn out to be another perfectly good choice). It's a clean desktop, works without 3D acceleration, and looks nice.
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By "fork of GNOME Fallback", are you referring to Consort? I haven't
yet tried it. Have a look at http://solusos.com; I think they have an
Alpha ready for testing?
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My point is that a lot of people would prefer to use GNOME Shell if they can. That means some users boot into the classic desktop experience based on Fallback, and others opt into the fairly different GNOME Shell.
Maybe that's a feature and not a problem. I hope that switching to GNOME Shell isn't broken, though.
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No complaints with Xfce and can not live without the shiki-theme.
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Yeah, Shiki looks very nice.
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XFCE and LXDE are good candidates for the next Trisquel de. Maybe
consort will be ready and worth a look, too?
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Is LXDE really mature enough to be the main Trisquel DE, though?
Like it or not, a genuinely lightweight desktop environment is generally a recipe for a second-rate user experience. One uses LXDE because she must.
Xfce is more lightweight-ish, with most of the visual candy, features, and polish that people expect.
Heck, GNOME 3 Shell isn't much heavier than Xfce. The problem is that not everyone can use that without going into cruddy fallback mode.
Le Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:05:05 +0100 (CET),
name at domain a écrit :
> Is LXDE really mature enough to be the main Trisquel DE, though?
>
> Like it or not, a genuinely lightweight desktop environment is
> generally a recipe for a second-rate user experience. One uses LXDE
> because she must.
>
> Xfce is more lightweight-ish, with most of the visual candy,
> features, and polish that people expect.
>
> Heck, GNOME 3 Shell isn't much heavier than Xfce. The problem is that
> not everyone can use that without going into cruddy fallback mode.
I don't use LXDE because I have to. I prefer it over other "big" DE
because it's lighter. That's as simple as this. And I don't need visual
candy. So not everybody expect it. I only want a light and simple DE.
That's all.
XFCE? Eww
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Give me some examples why.
The default Xfce theme can be changed to look _a lot_ like GNOME (if that's the reason for the bad reaction).
A lot of Xfce themes are GTK+2-only, so they make GNOME 3 apps look ugly. But there's a theme called Clearlooks-Phenix that Xfce users can use, and it includes styles for both GTK+2 and GTK+3.
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?action=content&content=145210
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Whatever we do, I think it'd be better to keep the long-standing Trisquel look (which is largely borrowed from Elementary), or at least a facsimile of it.
Clearlooks-Phenix looks WAY too vanilla.
Of course! :-) I only mentioned Clealooks-Phenix as an example of how Xfce can be made to look like a GNOME theme.
Personally i prefer Gnome shell. Its becoming an strong DE, easy, powerfull and pretty. I think we have to move forward and continue evolving.
Andrew why not everyone can use that without going into cruddy fallback mode? because 3D hardware acceleration is needed to run?
Any ways this is only my opinion..lets see what think another people..
Regards.
Xlash.
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"Personally i prefer Gnome shell. Its becoming an strong DE, easy, powerfull and pretty. I think we have to move forward and continue evolving."
I share your view. I use GNOME 3 Shell since v3.0 and like it more than anything else. It's becoming quite mature now. It is the way forward. We need to ignore that minority voice of die-hard stalwarts who take a dump on anything that isn't infinitely customizable ... it's time to put accessibility and democratization first. People like them probably cried foul back in the days when computers were switching from text consoles to graphical desktop environments.
"Andrew why not everyone can use that without going into cruddy fallback mode? because 3D hardware acceleration is needed to run?"
Yes, that's exactly the reason why.
About customization.. in my opinion is secondary, people should see that is better an stable and, as you said, mature DE. Any ways Gnome Developers they receive lot of coments about that and i think they do something after deliver a very nice DE.
If im not wrong exist a package named livpipe or something like that to fix 3D acceleation problem with no compatible machines..enabling software acceleracion instead hardware..
Sorry for my english if i made some mistake or if i cant explain better xD.
Regards :)
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I agree, customization is secondary to a good out-of-the-box user experience for the largest number of users. Not all of us are named Linus Torvalds (he currently uses Xfce, btw). I use GNOME 3 with a fairy small number of extensions ... I have little need to customize it, because it is already so well configured. It just takes a couple of days of getting with the flow of it.
I was not aware of any package called livpipe. A web search returned nothing that seemed relevant. But if there is such a package, it should be good enough to deliver better than second-rate results. Software acceleration is MUCH slower than hardware; probably enough to be unusable.
Hahaha sorry Andrew, the package name is llvmpipe that is a driver.. executes open gl instructions in the cpu.
Yes.. its slower but is better than nothing..i dont know how works but is a progress..
All Intel chipsets and most nVidia cards handle 3D acceleration. Reasonably modern CPUs hardware can run GNOME Shell (the recent versions of it) with software rendering (thanks to llvmpipe) thanks to the work started more than one year ago for Fedora 17... and that has already reached the latest Ubuntu 12.10. The next Trisquel will be based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. By then, GNOME Shell will be a viable choice for anybody but users with an AMD video card and an antique CPU. Those are so few people that I do not think GNOME Shell is to be disregarded in this regard.
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By Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, AMD might even jump on the bandwagon and offer fully libre 3D accelaration for their GPUs, too. That would seal the deal for us.
Nice then! So there is no excuse to include Gnome Shell as default DE in the next Trisquel.
And..a curious question..is posible to include Gnome Shell 3.8, when released, on Trisquel 6? maybe is stupid question XD.
Regards guys :)
Xlash.
Matthias Clasen, from GNOME's release team, wants the support for Wayland to quickly come. The proposed roadmap is:
- by GNOME 3.10 (this fall), GNOME shell can operate as a Wayland compositor;
- by GNOME 3.12 (spring 2014), GNOME is completely ported to Wayland.
Matthias Clasen apparently believes that Mir would do more bad than good if it does not turn into a complete failure:
The recent Mir announcement makes it a bit more urgent that we put our weight behind Wayland and help it reach its full potential.
Until now, only free video drivers work with Wayland. :-)
Uhhh didnt know that that ppa works in Trisquel 6/ Ubuntu 12.04..i must to test!XD
"Until now, only free video drivers work with Wayland. :-)"
I dont Know why but but is awesome new :D
Thank you for info banana ;)
Regards.
Xlash.
Yesterday I wrote that Xfce didn't have desktop documentation, but it turns out I was wrong. Xfce /does/ have offline documentation.
I'm not going to say "yeah, let's switch to Xfce" straight away because maybe there's features in GNOME that maybe other people use that Xfce doesn't have, and I haven't though of yet... But Xfce seems to be more stable than gnome-panel at the moment and as far as I can see might be a good replacement.
The only thing I don't like about Xfce as much is the lack of a good panel calendar. Orage pops up as its own window which is slightly annoying. But that's only a minor complaint.
Xfce also seems to focus on usability. The holding of ALT (or Super+ALT) for gnome-panel is not good usability IMHO. Xfce allows right-click by default, and warns users if they are going to remove something, which is better.
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Yeah, having a good calendar functionality is important.
Recently, Xfce has switched to mainly online documentation, in a wiki format. I would argue that this is the way of the future: collaborative online documentation. Should we be assuming the possibility that the user doesn't have an internet connection and thus requires the offline docs? That's increasingly a remote possibility in this day in age, when wi-fi is everywhere.
Off the top of my head I know at least a few people who don't stay connected to the internet 24/7. And wi-fi firmware support in Trisquel isn't great either.
I did some more searching around on their lists and found these:
http://blog.xfce.org/2012/01/documentation-wiki/
http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/2012-January/029774.html
Nick Schermer indicated the possibility of an xfce4-docs package for future versions, based on a snapshot of the wiki. I don't believe this was released for 4.10 though.
I know it was broken in 5.5, but can Unity be installed in 6 and does it show up in the login screen?
Le 2013-03-14 21:57, name at domain a écrit :
> I know it was broken in 5.5, but can Unity be installed in 6 and does
> it show up in the login screen?
What do you mean by "it was broken in 5.5"? I had Brigantia w/ Unity
running fine on my netbook, with lightdm as the login screen, before I
replaced it with Trisquel Mini 6.0.
It wasn't "broken" in 5.5; I was able to run it just fine, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get the window menus on the panel (something I don't care about, though, because I don't like Unity).
Le Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:27:10 +0100 (CET),
name at domain a écrit :
> Who's with me?
>
> Xfce can be configured to appear and function nearly identically to
> the current DE, without much of a feature loss.
>
> Since Xfce is (relatively) lighter than GNOME classic, it would make
> it easier to justify a termination of the Mini edition. One edition
> of Trisquel for all.
>
> This would in no way make Trisquel harder to maintain. The upstream
> (Ubuntu) doesn't use GNOME anymore, anyway. It will make Trisquel
> easier to maintain because it's one less edition to worry about.
>
> Flame away.
I still prefer LXDE over Xfce for it being lighter to allow my CPU
doing more calculations for science with BOINC. So, I would be
disappointed if the Mini edition would disappear.
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You're certainly free to install LXDE and boot into that. But keeping the Mini edition to the same standard of stability as the main edition has always been a tall order for this project. It's always been riddled with bugs and oversights, in the versions I've tested.
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Xfce is a good choice if one is looking for a stable and basic desktop environment which can also provide eye candy via compiz (but it isn't integrated with Xfce's settings). If one also wants optional eye candy and a lightweight desktop environment, perhaps enlightenment/e17 would fit (although it probably isn't the most "newbie" friendly as some tasks such as connecting an external monitor require using the terminal).
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Enlightenment is a window manager, not a full DE, and it's a counter-intuitive one at that. Avoid.
E16 was a window manager. E17 is a half DE. I mean half as it is the first release to have the intention of being a DE, although they lack a lot of common apps (but the underlying software (libs etc) is ready already).
I think that E18 by the end of this year will be suited for desktop use as much as other DE's.
Here are some neat things you can do with E17 right now:
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I'm going to be open-minded and watch the videos. Enlightenment is the one I probably know the least about ... I've been avoiding it.
EDIT: After a few minutes of viewing, I must say I'm quite impressed. I've only viewed Enlightnment before through still pics, which didn't do it justice.
While I affirm that Enlightenment is clearly very pretty and flexible, I'm still have doubts Enlightenment-based Trisquel. The project is a little bit self-indulgent (if you catch my drift), and presents so much choice as to be daunting.
The only definition I can think of is 'incomplete'. The only native application, besides the environment itself, is their file manager. They need more and I'm counting on it for E18.
It is not very easy to modify it in the sense you won't screw it up by accident like you could delete the gnome panel in gnome2 by accident. Many people won't bother to modify it if you give them a pleasant default config.
EFL is a mix of Qt and GTK. It does have the binding independence of GTK (many other languages could be ported to it) and the animations plus Wayland support of Qt despite having less than a dozen developers. And the speed of LXDE.
Besides that they have smooth faded login, support animated wallpapers by default and it is not a video file (although I didn't inspect the file inside), and different configuration for each workspace as you can see at the end of the first video.
All in all, it has potential.
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The only definition I can think of is 'incomplete'. The only native application, besides the environment itself, is their file manager.
e17 also has its own connection manager which uses connman (called econnman).
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Here is a video of the latest version of e17 (which I'm using on all my computers including on the Neo Freerunner which runs the mobile version of this on Debian) which looks much better in my opinion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHJuMuMXjlE
e17 would also work well if Trisquel wants to port itself to tablets in the future as e17 also has a "mobile" preset when setting it up (as I did on the Freerunner). The fact that it works reasonably fast on the Freerunner, which has a very weak processor without any hardware accelerated graphics, shows that it can work on very old computers with very poor graphics cards as well.
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Another possible benefit of a well-configured Enlightenment desktop in Trisquel is that Trisquel could say "we run Enlightnment." There are very few distros that use it, and only Bodhi and Elive are (semi) well known.
XFCE would get my vote, Using Gnome Classic just makes things feel old.
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Example of Trisquel with XFCE can be found here http://trisquel-users.com/trisquel-downloads/