SIGs/Xfce/XfceLive

Fedora Xfce Spin

This is an area to brainstorm progress of the Xfce spin of Fedora based on contributions from Xfce package maintainers, translators in Fedora and end users.

Kickstart

• http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=summary

Fedora 8 Release Announcement

• https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00005.html

TO DO

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433150 - Include buttons for suspend, hibernate and switch user
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433838 - Fedora icon in desktop menu (needs changes in fedora-logos package)
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=427814 - s-c-d dep on metacity
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=427812 - desktop backgrounds split
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=427834 - NM-gnome dep bloat
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433163 - Firefox language pack separation
• Should we disable Xfce tips on live cd or post installation?
  • I think perhaps it would be better to make some more usefull tips and still include it. Its easy to disable - KevinFenzi
  • For tips and tricks, how about re-vamping them to include things that are usefull? We could put: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f7/en_US/sn-PackageNotes.html#id3181196 and possible some fedora related things like how to get help, or pointers to the docs, etc? I agree the current tips are not very usefull. - RahulSundaram
  • +1, ether disable the tips or display something useful - ChristophWickert
• Enable Xfwm compositing by default?
  • -1, still to buggy for me. E.g. sometimes you it cannot be turned of and still is active on the next logon - ChristophWickert
  • -1, yeah, I agree... I don't use it here on any machines. - KevinFenzi

Proposed package changes

Multi lib policy has changed for rawhide. We don't install x86 packages on a x86_64 system anymore. This means that Xfce live spin can include more packages while still producing a CD sized image on both arch's.

Evaluate from http://wiki.xfce.org/recommendedapps:

• GIMP
• system-config-* and setroubleshoot
• PackageKit (and PackageKit-gnome) instead of Pirut/Pup
  • Thats a pretty big change. How stable are they? - KevinFenzi
• Inkscape
• Transmission
  • +1 - ChristophWickert
• Seahorse
• Bluez-gnome
• http://menumaker.sourceforge.net/ - Looks very useful
• Squeeze instead of Xarchiver. Whats the difference? Review request is at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433174
  • Unfortunately, squeeze causes machines to lockup. Will try and debug with upstream - KevinFenzi
• Ristretto instead of mirage.
• Slim instead of GDM
  • Does Slim support ConsoleKit? I didn't think it did... - KevinFenzi
• E-PDF view (http://www.emma-soft.com/projects/epdfview/) instead of Evince. Available recently. Review at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432791
  • evince can also view postscript and we have all deps installed anyway. Nevertheless epdf will save a lot of space - ChristophWickert
• PulseAudio ALSA plugin
  • Aren't we already including this? - KevinFenzi
    • IIRC not in the Fedora 8 version. It is just something to check - RahulSundaram
• Orca screenreader
• Screensaver - Either xscreensaver or GNOME screensaver
• GNOME keyring
• GNOME Games
• GNOME power manager
  • +1. Works fine for me here and many others. Not sure what the dependency footprint is though - KevinFenzi
  • +1. The only question is how to start it. I suggest a desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart, so users can configure it with xfce4-autostart-editor - ChristophWickert
• Vinagre
• GNOME utils
• CUPS PDF
• Deskbar
  • you mean deskbar-applet, right? Only works with the gnome panel, this means we would need to include xfce4-xfapplet-plugin --Cwickert 20:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Dropping language groups where translations are incomplete (below 80%) for Xfce to save space
• Dropping xchat-gnome. Non-technical users probably don't IRC much. We already include pidgin and irssi anyway.
• Make sure NTFS-3g is installed by default.
• Extra Thunar plugins - http://thunar.xfce.org/plugins.html
  • thunar-apr, thunar-sbr and thunar-uca are already included in Thunar, thunar-archive-plugin and thunar-media-tags-plugin are already on the livecd. This leaves only thunar-thumbnailers, not sure if it really is needed. It pull in a _lot_ of dependencies, at least dcraw, tetex and grace, with all dependencies this pulls in more than 20 MB only for thumbnails of filetypes that are not very common. So I'd say no for the livecd, nevertheless I'm preparing a review requrest for it - ChristophWickert
• Distribution specific extras - Wolvix Control Panel, VASMCC in Vector, Zenpanel in Zenwalk.

Solved issues

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=351531 - Review Request: ristretto - Image-viewer for the Xfce desktop environment (closed)
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433152 - Default look and feel (fixed in Rawhide)
• Default Xfce theme and background should be consistent with Fedora branding. Fixed in Rawhide.
• Drop Xfce Icon theme and use Fedora default. Thunar and xfce4-panel are affected. Fixed in Rawhide.
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433573 - Mixer and trash applets in the default panel (closed)
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=443310 - Review Request: xfwm4-theme-nodoka (closed)
• Disable tracker while running as live cd and enable it post installation. The setting EnableIndexing must be set to false in /home/fedora/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg.

Rejected Ideas

• Xfce Notification daemon - http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/notification-daemon-xfce. We could say "Welcome to Fedora".
  • -1. This project is nearly dead upstream, see http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2007-May/023096.html. Also it explicitly conflicts with gnomes notification-daemon. ATM we cant better use that, all the gnome stuff is pulled in anyway ;( If we really want to show a welcome message, we could do this with xfce4-tips - ChristophWickert

Fedora's Xfce SIG

The Xfce SIG (Special Interest Group) is a group of Fedora Xfce package maintainers , translators, artists and many others who contribute towards improve Xfce in Fedora.

Credit

The kickstart file is based on the one from Christoph Wickert and input from Xfce maintainer, Kevin Fenzi and several other Xfce contributors and users.

Comments

• http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/02/19/12/07/29-choosing-an-xfce-based-distro-up
• http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/02/14/09/54/28-xfce-and-usability-fedora-vs-xub

A few comments:

Would changing thunderbird for claws-mail reduce sizes any? claws-mail seems less heavyweight to me over thunderbird.

Instead of eog for image viewing how about something like 'feh'. Smaller, and should pull in less gnome bits.

Is firefox pulled in for web browser?

Thanks again for working on this!

Comment Set #2 (by JohnBabich)

I agree there's a real need for an Xfce Live CD spin. I, for one, use Xfce on one of my laptops with good results. Not everyone has 2GBs of RAM on their machines.

Also, thanks for taking the initiative, Rahul.

User switching

Should we include fast user switching? ATM the only possibility is to use fast-user-switcher-applet inside of xfce4-xfapplet-plugin, but this will pull in gnome-panel (I removed the dependency on gnome-applets in Rawhide recently). Another approach is to hack xfce4-session as Xubuntu does (as see at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433150). - ChristophWickert

References

• http://svn.xfce.org/svn/xfce/xfdesktop/branches/xfce_4_4/README

For any comparisons:

• http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Development/Ideas/Xfce/Xfce_packages_list
• http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/xubuntu.hardy/changes