14 DAY TRIAL // It has been awhile since we've heard anything from the developers of Xfce, a popular open-source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, and it looks like some information about the next major release has been brought to light recently.
Yes, we're talking about Xfce 4.14, the successor of the current stable version, Xfce 4.12, which is used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems by default, such as Xubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, and many others. Xfce 4.12 was released more than a year ago, on February 28, 2015.
But from the looks of it, every new, major Xfce version takes about 2-3 years to be baked and packaged, so it shouldn't worry any hardcore Xfce user. So, today we want to share with you some of the juicy details and upcoming features of the Xfce 4.14 desktop environment.
"The long road to Xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce! As usual, the Xfce development is slow, has some organization problems, and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best," reads today's announcement. "The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x."
All of Xfce's components will be ported to GTK+3
There will most probably be numerous small improvements to its core components and apps, but the biggest new feature of Xfce 4.14 is the fact that the entire desktop environment will finally be ported to the next-generation GTK+ 3 GUI (Graphical User Interface) toolkit, providing users with a modern interface.
Besides that, the dbus-glib library will be replaced with GDbus, symbolic icons will be used for most of the Xfce applications and the plugins of the Xfce Panel, deprecated widgets will be replaced, and the icon names of all of Xfce's components will receive a consistent naming that follows the fd.o specifications.
Some of the core Xfce apps have already been ported to GTK+3, such as Xfce Power Manager about which we wrote last year in May, but many other like Xfce4-panel, Xfce4-session, libxfce4ui, Xfce4-notifyd, and Xfce4-Appfinder are still in the works. Many of Xfce's plugins have received GTK+3 ports too.
It also looks like xfwm4’ compositor is coming along nicely with many new features, such as libepoxy, DRI3/Present, and GLX support, as well as OpenGL-powered vsync implementation. At the moment of writing this article there's no release date set for the launch of Xfce 4.14, but rest assured that you'll be the first to know.