XFCE 4.14 officially released packed with new features, like a Do Not Disturb mode

XFCE4.14

As we already said when we published the article on the pre3 of this version, Xfce used to be a light graphical environment, until there came a time when it became heavy, perhaps because of the new features that they were adding without focusing on polishing things. But the strangest thing is that Xfce has not received important news since its version 4.12, released in 2015. Or well, it had not received them, because Xfce 4.14 is officially released today, an update of the graphical environment that has introduced many changes.

As mentioned in their official statement, today's launch has occurred after 4 years and 5 months of work. The main objective of this version has been to port all the main components to GTK3 (from GTK2) and GDBus (from D-Bus GLib). Most components have also received support from introspection GObject. On the other hand, have polished the user experience, introducing new features and improvements while fixing many bugs.

XFCE 4.14 fixes many bugs and is more polished

Xfce 4.14 has received many important improvements, of which we can highlight:

  • The window manager has received a lot of updates and features, including support for VSync, support for HiDPI, improved GLX support with NVIDIA's proprietary drivers, or support for XInput2.
  • The dashboard has received support for the RandR primary monitor feature and window grouping in the task list plugin has been improved.
  • The desktop also supports RandR's primary monitor feature, an orientation option for icon array, orOption of the contextual menu «Next background» to advance the wallpaper and now synchronizes the selection of the user's wallpaper with Service Accounts.
  • They have added an option to enable GTK window scaling in the appearance dialog and also a monospatial font option. However, they have dropped theme previews as they were not producing consistent results with GTK3.
  • While they decided to remove the session manager splash screens, they added a lot of features and fixes instead. These include hybrid sleep support, enhancements to the default login that prevents race conditions, a feature to add and edit autostart entries, a user switch button in the logout dialog. improved session and session selectors and configuration dialogs (the latter with a new tab showing saved sessions). In addition, not only "autostart style" commands can now be executed at login time, but also when the computer is suspended, logged out, and so on. Finally, GTK applications are now managed per session via DBus and screen savers also communicate with (eg inhibited) over DBus.
  • Thunar has received many features and fixes. Visible changes include the completely revised path bar, support for larger thumbnails, and support for a "folder.jpg" file that alters the folder icon (for example, for music album covers). Advanced users will also notice the improved keyboard navigation (zoom, tabbed browsing). Thunar's volume manager has obtained Bluray support.
  • The app finder can now optionally be opened as a single window and can now be more easily navigated with just the keyboard.
  • The power manager received many bug fixes and some smaller features, including support for the XF86Battery button and the new xfce4 screen saver. The dashboard plugin also saw several improvements: it can now optionally display remaining time and / or percentage and now relies on standard UPower icon names to work with more out-of-the-box icon themes. With LXDE moving to a QT base, the LXDE panel plugin was removed.

What's new in applications

  • The notification service has received support for persistence, in other words: notification log, and a "Do not disturb" mode, which suppresses all notifications. A new dashboard plugin has been created that displays missed notifications (especially useful during 'Do not disturb' mode) and provides quick access to 'Do not disturb' toggle mode. Finally, support was added for displaying notifications on the primary RandR monitor.
  • Parole has received improved support for network broadcasts and podcasts, as well as a new "mini mode" and automatic choice of the best available video backend. Additionally, it now also inhibits screen savers and power managers during video playback, ensuring that users do not have to periodically move the mouse while enjoying a movie.
  • Ristretto has seen several improvements to the user interface and support for setting the desktop background. It has also recently seen its first GTK3-based development release.
  • The screenshot now allows users to move the selection rectangle and at the same time shows its width and height. The imgur upload dialog has been updated and the command line allows for more flexibility.
  • The clipboard manager has now improved keyboard shortcut support (via a port for GtkApplication), an improved and more consistent icon size, as well as a new application icon.
  • The pulseaudio panel plugin received support for MPRIS2 to be able to remotely control media players and full desktop media key support, essentially making xfce4-volumed-pulse a superfluous add-on daemon.

The Xubuntu 19.10 Daily Builds are already using the trial versions of Xfce 4.14, so they will soon start using the official version released today. Xfce 4.14 will also be the graphical environment of choice when Xubuntu 19.10 is officially released. Do you want to try it?

You have these and the rest of the news in its official statement (link above).


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