The StartX Files: X Is For Xim--Just Kidding, It's For Xfce

By: Brian Proffitt
Tuesday, February 20, 2001 12:52:11 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/3022/1/

More fish in the sea

Quite a few people asked me if I was going to comment on the whole Ximian/KDE/ad war brouhaha this week. Of course, I would be lying if I said I did not have some choice comments on the situation. But I think I will keep them to myself for now.

This is not out of some fear of getting flamed--goodness knows I have little fear for that. Frankly, if I set my mail filters for keeping out letters with the words "idiot" or "stark raving mad" in them, the only mail I would get would be spam selling Viagra.

No, the reason for my forbearance is quite simple: this is the last article in my alphabetical examination of the different window managers, and I see no sense in delaying it for a diatribe on the pros and cons of just two environments. When I first kicked off this series in September last year, I made mention of this very point.

"GNOME and KDE are not the only fish in the sea, of course. There are other X environments and window managers to be found," I had written in the metaphor of the day, which apparently was written after watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

And the First Shall Be Last

It was probably an accident that I had mentioned this week's GUI environment in that very first column. But Xfce was the desktop environment that had really gotten the ball rolling:

"Of particular interest is one that a reader pointed out to me last week called Xfce. This is a GTK+-based window manager that is made to resemble the CDE environment for UNIX, and having played around on that platform once upon a time, I can tell you that this is certainly a valid claim," I wrote, "After it was recommended to me, I checked it out and found it to be a nice little environment that kept everything smoothly organized and accessible."

Because I had gotten the not-so-clever idea of moving through these managers and environments in alphabetical order, Xfce was immediately relegated to the back of the line, much to the chagrin of Xfce lead developer Olivier Fourdan.

Maybe its one of those circle of life things. Maybe I need to stop watching Disney movies so much with my kids.

Xfce, and its attendant window manager Xfwm, are both well put-together additions to the family of X environments. What will draw the eye of the beginning user is the main panel, which unobtrusively sits at the bottom of the desktops.

I know what you're thinking: a panel is just a panel, and you would be right. But one of the things that makes panel use appealing is not the stuff that's on the panel by default, but rather how easy can the panel be customized to a user's particular needs.

To me, the sign of a good intuitive interface tool like a panel is how fast I can learn to customize it. For Xfce, I was able to change the buttons on the panel and the adjoining popup menus in less than a minute after playing with it.

An easy-to-use panel is not the only think Xfce brings to the GUI table, of course. The virtual desktops are simple to navigate and shove windows into. Drag and drop functionality is also present in this desktop environment, which worked pretty well for me.

Because Xfce is a desktop environment, it does include some of its own native apps, including XFTree, a pretty capable file manager; XFPager, which can manage up to 12 desktops; and XFbd, a simple little background manager. There are more features, of course, including debugger and difference tools for developers. I missed the presence of a good PIM, but the GNOME compliancy gave me several options to use besides a native Xfce PIM.

All of this is pretty much standard fare, of course, for some of the "heavyweight" desktop environments, so you may be wondering what the big deal here is.

What has impressed me so much with Xfce is the way everything fits together. Apps and configuration applets can be accessed from the panel, pop-up menus, or the desktop menu. Finding files and applications is ridiculously easy, too. I had no trouble adjusting to Xfce for daily use, which I cannot say about other environments.

The other impressive factor going for Xfce is its size: Xfce manages to pull all of this off with far less of a memory footprint than the big two. According to Fourdan, if you run KDE or GNOME with just the same tools found in Xfce, it comes out to double Xfce's memory usage.

"If you're talking about window managers alone, Xfwm uses a little bit more memory than Icewm or Fvwm," Fourdan added, "but only two-thirds of the memory used by Sawfish or Enlightenment, and half of Kwm."

Xfce is fast, too. It loads in just seconds, and windows snap into place very quickly.

Xfce is just about four years old, and actually predates the window manager, according to Fourdan.

"I started Xfce in early 1997," he explained. "At first, only the Xfce panel was available and it could be used as a Fvwm module to take advantage of the virtual desktops. Xfwm came about a year later."

Fourdan, who works as a member on a research and development team by day, was for quite a while the only developer working on the Xfce environment. But that is no longer the case.

"I'm very glad now that three to four other people are submitting new applications such as the search tool (XFglob), the diff front-end (XFdiff), the loading of KDE and GNOME menus inside Xfwm (XFmenu), etc.," Fourdan stated. "I've recently moved the development part of Xfce to Sourceforge and seven developers are registered on the project."

For the immediate future, Fourdan plans to add layers to Xfce. "Xfce 3.7.3 will include support for layers, since Nautilus is using it to display its root window."

Fourdan's long-range plans include some far more ambitious goals.

"I'd like to add something really exciting in Xfce : voice control. I'll be using IBM Via Voice SDK to create a new module for Xfwm that will allow people to drive the window manager with a microphone. There will commands like "next" or "previous" to navigate between windows, and "raise" or "lower" to restack the windows," Fourdan said.

If you are looking for a decent, fast desktop environment, clearly you should give Xfce a spin. Best of all, it appears to be 100% politics-free!

Coming to the end of the alphabet

This is, of course, not all of the window managers and desktop environments that are out there for X. I'm sure some were unintentionally missed, and I trust that users will be quick to notify me of omitted window managers.

While this was hopefully to be a comprehensive look at X window managers, there was a larger not-so-subtle purpose to this series. One of the big things that needs to get across to users new or experienced is that if you use X, you have choices.

This point especially needs to get driven home to newer users, who look at the desktop flame wars and dread the thought of wading into that mess to figure out which desktop is truly "better."

KDE and GNOME are just two choices among many that you can use for your desktop. If they work for your needs, then great, you're all set. But if something else will fit the bill, then use it!

The very fact that there are so many window managers and desktop environments for X is one of X's greatest strengths, and by association, one of Linux's strengths as well. Competitors will decry this diversity of weakness, but the fact of the matter is that rigid interfaces such as Windows and MacOS will always alienate some users for some reason. The choices in X give it the ability to satisfy the needs of all users who want a graphical interface.

X, critics contend, still has a long way to go in terms of speed and stability. I would argue the extremes at which these people portray X, especially when their motives are usually suspect.

But I think no one could argue there isn't room for improvement in X, no matter how big of an X advocate they are.

To improve X, we must look at the collective offerings of every environment X has to offer, not just KDE and GNOME. We can then choose from the good and toss out the bad, creating stronger environments all around.

With the pending battles Linux is about to face with Microsoft and other OSes, we must stop paying mere lip service to one of the truisms of Linux: that strength does come from diversity.