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Changes/Xfce-4.13

Summary

Xfce desktop environment has utilized GTK-2 up until version 4.12.x which is currently available in Fedora. Significant work has been completed to migrate the DE to GTK-3 completely. The obvious benefit to this migration is the use of a modern and actively maintained toolkit.

Xfce 4.13 is a development release leading up to the eventual 4.14 stable release, however, 4.13 components have proven to be very stable, provide features users want and the 4.14 release is unscheduled currently. This change proposal is submitted to sync fedora packages with the latest upstream releases.

Owners

  • Release notes owner:

Current status

Detailed Description

This change migrates Xfce desktop environment (DE) to the latest version provided by upstream developers. This is a near complete GTK-3 migration of the DE.

Benefit to Fedora

Other GTK-based DEs such as cinnamon and MATE have already migrated to using GTK-3 libraries. This change proposes to migrate the popular Xfce DE to the latest GTK-3 based versions upstream developers have released.

This change would result in fewer packages depending on the older GTK-2 libraries and move Xfce to use a modern toolkit.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:
    • Update core xfce packages to 4.13
    • Rebuild plugins once core packages are build
  • Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Release engineering: #7647 (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
    • List of deliverables: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

User Experience

  • A fresh install should have fully functional Xfce DE
  • Upgrade from Fedora 28 or older should show no visible changes to the end users.
    • GTK-3 applications will be better integrated

No special configuration or hardware needed.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Blocks product? product

Documentation

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Release Notes

Fedora 29 ships with Xfce 4.13 components. Xfce-4.13 features near complete GTK-3 migration.