Everyone seems to keep going on about xfce - especially version 4. What's the big deal? Why would I want to change from my lovely fluxbox desktop?

I've seen a few screenshots and it does look very nice. Does it have an equivalent to the fluxbox slot?

keep in mind xfce is a DE, not a WM like fluxbox. if you like fluxbox, i wouldn't change to xfce-it's not the same thing.

no, there isn't any slit. i used fluxbox a while back (i used to love it with a passion) but when i went gentoo i (for whatever reason) started using gnome, and really like it. then i saw xfce and thought, hey it uses GTK2 which i like, and i sorta like the bar at the bottom and the way the icons are setup...(the icons on the bottom bar, if you click the arrow beside them, expand out to show more programs. each icon is one program in the group-you can set it to whatever you use most-and then it expands to more programs.).

i'm not going to try to convince you that you should use it, or any other desktop, but i will say try it. see if you like it. find some gtk2 themes you like (art.gnome.org) and just play around with it.

I'm thinking of trying xfwm for a bit of a mid way path. I do prefer using a wm to a de, I think.

I could really do with a slit or something like it - where will all my lovely, useful dockapps go?

Edit: anyone know of a console based menu for choosing between WM/DEs? I used to use Xtart when I was on mandrake - but I can't find an equivalent for gentoo and I can only see Xtart as a mandrake RPM when I search on google

If flux is lovely, and xfce4 doesn't look very nice to you then, more power to ya, whatever floats your boat :wink: Xfce is gui, flux is...well, colors :roll: (that's as good as I can explain it). I used flux for a long time, blackbox for a short while, and waimea for a while (waimea was much nicer looking), but they just...well they're just bare. That's why we use them though and that's what they're suppose to be. :wink: Why?....resources?.....slower? Forget both of those with xfce4. Why? It's not quite a DE yet because it has no session mgr, so there's not a lot running or started when it does, in fact, I'd say it's more a wm. You can run your own startup stuff, but you can't start something, exit, and have it start next time xfce4 starts, and you can't save a session for the same purpose. It's almost as light and everybit as fast as flux. An app is an app is an app that's an app, that uses libs of a de, so either way you're almost starting the same stuff whether de or wm, it just takes a little longer to get there with a wm. Now you can go completely indepentent and not run gnome and kde apps and just run gtk apps. But you become very limited in the apps arena, well anything good that is. :wink:

I'm using xfce4 in Debian, and just like flux, my swap isn't touched unless I'm really pushin' it.

I looove flux. It's easy on my machine and I actually saw a huge speed difference between Fluxbox and GNOME. I like it being simple. And I can't wait til 1.0. IT can also very easily look brilliant.
See http://au.geocities.com/rcxau/themeindex.html

I also tried Waimea and the older XFCE once. I couldn't stand them. As for WM vs DE, i like WM, the other WM i've used a lot is Enlightenment. That was great too!!

I don't have a single KDE/Qt app on my system except for Mplayer (no gui) For some reason It demands the QT libs :shock: I use GTK and GNOME only.

James

Hmmm... I've installed it and had a quick look last night. I will give it a try - but, to be honest, I'm really not sure I can live without the slit for my lovely dockapps.

Maybe if I could get rid of the panel (possible I think) and get some sort of dock (not really possible as far as I'm aware) then it would be worth sticking with - but otherwise...

I hated xfce, but xfce4 is a lot diff. Xfce4 is like a light gnome, if you will, and settings/config are like E. That's why I say it is not a DE....it's is just like E in that regard.

In the end - I have decided that fluxbox suits me much better than xfce4 - although I love the way xfce4 looks, I prefer working with flux.

A window manager with the look and feel (window decorations at least) of xfce4 and the everything else of fluxbox would be ideal

A little OT, but check http://fluxbox.org/ and on the right side a lot of apps have been created to give you more options in flux! 8)

All I want to do is use different window decorations and a different look and feel - none of those apps look like they can do that :(