Hi Benjamin and All,
I've been using XFCE for about two months now and have just upgraded to
the latest version. Excellent bit of kit - fast, small, stable and
pretty. I think it is definitely worth a try.
Regards,
Stephen
On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Benjamin Sher wrote:
> Dear friends:
>
> We all know about KDE and Gnome. Some have even heard of Window Maker,
> Sawfish, Enlightenment, Icewm and Blackbox, all of which are listed on
> Mandrake's graphical login menu and all of which are installed by
> default.
>
> Realizing that the days of my AMD k6-2 400 mhrtz with 128 megs of RAM
> are numbered, I have been exploring the past week other desktops and
> window managers that can give me the full range of Linux, including all
> of KDE and Gnome, X and console. I tried all of the above and was not
> quite satisfied. And then I discovered, hidden deep in Linux-Mandrake
> 7.2's own CD's under Graphical Desktops (Other), a wonderful desktop
> environment called XFCE. It is a beautifully designed desktop, bold and
> original, featuring a toolbar concept (instead of a panel/taskbar) with
> pop-up menus for icons and with desktop menus for all of KDE and Gnome
> applications. It is very intuitive and allows full configuration and
> customization right down to the color of your menu background and menu
> text and a full theme manager. And you can get tech support from its
> mailing lists. Yet, the whole program is under 20 MB instead of the 127
> megs of KDE or Gnome. It launches very fast from the console.
>
> A picture is worth a thousand words. Go to XFCE's home page at
> http://www.xfce.org and look at the following snapshots of actual xfce
> desktop themes:
>
> 1) Five user-contributed snapshots at http://www.xfce.org
>
> 2) Ten more user-contributed snapshots at:
> http://www.xfce.org/usersnaps.html
>
> 3) Twelve more user-contributed snapshots at
> http://www.xfce.org/usersnaps2.html
>
> I think you will be very impressed by what you see.
>
>
> TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS:
>
> If you are interested in trying out XFCE, please do NOT use the by now
> old version in LM7.2. Instead, download the latest RH
> xfce-3.7.2-1.i386.rpm. That's what I am using.
>
> After installing xfce by rpm or by tar or whatever, be sure to run the
> xfce_setup program as USER:
>
> $xfce_setup
>
> It only takes 3 seconds. You can also run the xfce_default script. But I
> would recommend not doing so until you are quite certain that you want
> xfce as your default desktop, If, for any reason you do end up with xfce
> as default and you want to switch, just type, again, as USER,
>
> $xfce_remove
>
> And then you can still keep your xfce settings but are free to use any
> other desktop or window manager of your choice.
>
> WARNING for Linux-Mandrake users (perhaps for other distros as well):
>
> Since XFCE is not listed on the graphical login menu, you will need to
> access it from the console. When you do, please remember to type the
> SINGLE word:
>
> $startxfce
>
> That is, NOT "startx xfce". There is an apparent and very mysterious bug
> in Mandrake which causes "startx xfce" to launch the ICEWM window
> manager INSTEAD of xfce. So, please remember the one word command as
> user:
>
> $startxfce
>
> Well, that's it. Hope you give XFCE a try. It's well worth it. And it's
> a damn shame that Linux Mandrake does not install it by default. If you
> like it, you might wish to let them know how you feel about it.
>
> Benjamin
>
>
>
>
--
Q===================================Q
| Stephen Horton :-) |
| E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| Website: http://www.wem.clara.net |
Q===================================Q
