14 DAY TRIAL // With the release of the Xfce 4.14 desktop environment out the door, the development team already started work on the next stable update, Xfce 4.16, which should have a shorter release cycle.
More than four years in the works, the Xfce 4.14 desktop environment hit the streets two weeks ago, on August 12th, 2019, bringing lots of new features and improvements, such as HiDPI, VSync, and XInput2 support for the window manager, and better compatibility with Nvidia proprietary graphics drivers.
It also features support for RandR's primary monitor functionality, hybrid sleep support in the session manager, window grouping in the tasklist plugin, a brand-new settings dialog for managing color profiles, as well as support for saving and restoring entire multi-display configurations.
Xfce 4.16 expected to arrive in early 2020
With the Xfce 4.14 release out the door, the Xfce development team now looks to a shorter development cycle for the next updates, starting with Xfce 4.16, which is expected to hit the streets in early 2020. Xfce 4.16 will have a six-months long release cycle, so it should arrive in February 2020.
Work on the Xfce 4.16 desktop environment already kicked off, but users shouldn't expect it to be a major release like Xfce 4.14 was, due to the shorter development cycle, warn the developers. Xfce 4.16 will probably only ship with some minor improvements and lots of bug fixes.
"To some extent the schedule will depend on the outcome of the planning phase, but one thing I’m pretty sure I can announce straight away is that we’re not going for the next technological jump (yet) – so don’t expect Wayland or Gtk4 to play a major part in the coming cycle," explains developer Simon Steinbeiß.
Xfce is known as one of the lightest and most customizable desktop environments for Linux-based operating systems. You can download the latest stable release, Xfce 4.14, from the software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution. The source packages are also available to download from here.