Xfce is a free desktop environment for Unix-like systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris and derivatives.
After two years of development, announced the release of the Xfce 4.18 desktop environment, whose goal is to provide a classic desktop that requires minimal system resources to run.
Xfce consists of several interrelated components which can be used in other projects if desired. These components include the xfwm4 window manager, the application launcher, the display manager, user session management and power management, the Thunar file manager, the Midori web browser, the Parole media player, the mousepad text and environment setting system.
Xfce 4.18 Main New Features
In this new version libxfce4ui frontend library offers a new XfceFilenameInput widget to enter a file name, which reports errors in case of using invalid names, for example, containing extra spaces or special characters.
Besides it added a new widget to customize keyboard shortcuts, which provides a graphical interface for reassigning specific hotkeys for various components of the user environment (of the components, only Thunar, Xfce4-terminal, and Mousepad are currently supported).
Has optimized the performance of the thumbnail creation service (pixbuf-thumbnailer), as well as provided ability to change options of desktop thumbnails, such as the ability to use large (x-large) and extra large (xx-large) icons that are useful on high-resolution displays. Tumbler thumbnail engine and Thunar file manager have the ability to use thumbnail repositories shared by different users (thumbnails can be pre-stored in a subdirectory next to the original images).
The panel (xfce4-panel) offers a new plugin for displaying time, which combines the previously separate plugins for digital and analog clocks (DateTime and Clock). In addition, a binary clock mode and a sleep time tracking feature have been added to the plugin. To display the time, several clock designs are offered: analog, binary, digital, text, and LCD.
The desktop manager (xfdesktop) provides the ability to hide the "Delete" button in the context menu and show a separate confirmation of the rearrangement of icons on the desktop, as well as in the configurator (xfce4-settings), the settings search interface has been simplified– The search bar is now always visible and not hidden behind the slider.
The display configuration interface provides the ability to define actions to be performed when new displays are attached. In the appearance settings, when a new theme is selected, an option to automatically set the appropriate theme for the xfwm4 window manager has been implemented.
Added support for 'PrefersNonDefaultGPU' property in the app finder interface (xfce4-appfinder) to use a secondary GPU on hybrid graphics systems. Added a setting to hide window decorations.
The window manager xfwm4 adds support for adaptive vertical sync (vsync) when using GLX. Virtual desktop settings are aligned with other window managers.
Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:
- Improved UI scaling on high pixel density displays, and among other things, resolved issues with icons blurring when scaling was enabled.
- The window manager renders all window and dialog titles by default, but for some dialogs there is an option to decorate the client-side (CSD) title using the GtkHeaderBar widget.
- In the Thunar file manager, the list view mode was improved: for directories in the size field, the number of files contained in the directory is displayed, added the ability to display a column with the time they were created the files.
- Added an item to the context menu to display a dialog for configuring the displayed fields.
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