Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Hoser Rob
Level 20
Level 20
Posts: 11806
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:57 am

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by Hoser Rob »

igor83 wrote: I will install Dolphin, but if I like it, then it is likely I will go with KDE for my desktop. I think a good scenario would be KDE for desktop, Xfce for htpc, and Xfce for my old laptop.
Actually, it works very well with xfce, especially if you turn on the kde services in the sessions/startup settings menu. That, and the gnome services, is an xfce feature I like a lot. I don't feel the need to bother install the kde shell.
I have not tried Xfce 4.08, but have not really noticed any slowness in 4.10, maybe because my motherboard and cpu are relatively modern.
I've installed both xfce 4.8 and 4.10 on other machines, over ubuntu gnome/unity and xubuntu both. The former worked fine but xubuntu has better desktop integration.

There was no difference in speed in 4.08 and 4.10 with xubuntu for me either, and this is also modern, reasonably powerful hardware (but it's not a gaming machine either). 4.10 in the Mint Xfce Maya edition was slow. Not in xubuntu. That was largely my whole point, and why I'm now using xfce 4.8 over ubuntu based Maya 13 instead of the MATE shell. Happily.

BTW all this stuff about xfce being for older or slower hardware is just nonsense. There's nothing I can do in mate ur unity or gnome fallback that I can't do in xfce.
I would prefer 4.10 of Xfce over 4.08, because reviews said there were a lot of bug fixes.
Whose reviews? They may have fixed some bugs but they introduced others.

For one thing, any devices ... such as your windows partition ... would appear twice on you desktop and/or file manager. This can be worked around but, really. They released it like that?

This bug did not happen in the mint 13 xfce edition using 4.10, but in every other respect it was far inferior to xubuntu 4.10 that I presently run on 2 other computers. Sorry, but it's true.

4.10 is nicer in some ways but it's not that much better. The X architecture has been around for a long time. Longer than MS Windows. Xfce does incremental upgrades.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
sunewbie

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by sunewbie »

Hoser Rob wrote:
igor83 wrote: I will install Dolphin, but if I like it, then it is likely I will go with KDE for my desktop. I think a good scenario would be KDE for desktop, Xfce for htpc, and Xfce for my old laptop.
Actually, it works very well with xfce, especially if you turn on the kde services in the sessions/startup settings menu. That, and the gnome services, is an xfce feature I like a lot. I don't feel the need to bother install the kde shell.
I have not tried Xfce 4.08, but have not really noticed any slowness in 4.10, maybe because my motherboard and cpu are relatively modern.
I've installed both xfce 4.8 and 4.10 on other machines, over ubuntu gnome/unity and xubuntu both. The former worked fine but xubuntu has better desktop integration.

There was no difference in speed in 4.08 and 4.10 with xubuntu for me either, and this is also modern, reasonably powerful hardware (but it's not a gaming machine either). 4.10 in the Mint Xfce Maya edition was slow. Not in xubuntu. That was largely my whole point, and why I'm now using xfce 4.8 over ubuntu based Maya 13 instead of the MATE shell. Happily.

BTW all this stuff about xfce being for older or slower hardware is just nonsense. There's nothing I can do in mate ur unity or gnome fallback that I can't do in xfce.
I would prefer 4.10 of Xfce over 4.08, because reviews said there were a lot of bug fixes.
Whose reviews? They may have fixed some bugs but they introduced others.

For one thing, any devices ... such as your windows partition ... would appear twice on you desktop and/or file manager. This can be worked around but, really. They released it like that?

This bug did not happen in the mint 13 xfce edition using 4.10, but in every other respect it was far inferior to xubuntu 4.10 that I presently run on 2 other computers. Sorry, but it's true.

4.10 is nicer in some ways but it's not that much better. The X architecture has been around for a long time. Longer than MS Windows. Xfce does incremental upgrades.
I agree. I had Maya XFCE, but thunar could not detect my NTFS partition. This is not the case with Xubuntu 12.04. It's rock solid and last too. Though this is not a problem for mint devs, it's thunar, but PcManFM and caja worked fine. I could not install nautilus.

May be others are not having this problem or I was unable to find a solution as I am just an end user.

Mint 13 used 4.10 with Thunar v 1.4.0 while xubuntu 12.04 uses older 4.8 version.

Later I switched to Mint 14 cinnamon and it's working fine.

Recently i have been hibernating after closing all apps. Hibernation is working fine too. I Hibernate for fast booting :)

NTFS config had issues, but that was the case with Ubuntu 12.04 also.
igor83

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by igor83 »

Hoser Rob wrote:There was no difference in speed in 4.08 and 4.10 with xubuntu for me either, and this is also modern, reasonably powerful hardware (but it's not a gaming machine either). 4.10 in the Mint Xfce Maya edition was slow. Not in xubuntu. That was largely my whole point, and why I'm now using xfce 4.8 over ubuntu based Maya 13 instead of the MATE shell. Happily.
I'm glad for you, and undoubtedly you made the right decision for your rig. I don't really put my computers through the paces, understand--just Internet surfing and watching videos once in a while. The only games I play are online chess and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (which has Linux (Debian), Mac, and PC versions and is 100% free). So, I am not the right person to talk about speed, but I will say that every Linux distro I've tried has beaten Windows XP hands-down when it comes to boot speed, and among Linux desktops, Xfce emerges as the fastest booter, for sure.
Hoser Rob wrote:BTW all this stuff about xfce being for older or slower hardware is just nonsense. There's nothing I can do in mate ur unity or gnome fallback that I can't do in xfce.
Quite agree, that's why I installed Xfce on my htpc, which is my faster computer at present, as well as my older laptop. Xfce does well with older hardware, but with newer hardware, one appreciates the extra performance. An htpc is not very demanding OS-wise, considering the only thing the user does is click on shows. So Xfce fits the bill, may even be overkill to some extent...but I like having its power and flexibility, because there's always that first time when something unexpected arises, you want a good powerful desktop to save time.
I would prefer 4.10 of Xfce over 4.08, because reviews said there were a lot of bug fixes.
Hoser Rob wrote:Whose reviews? They may have fixed some bugs but they introduced others.

For one thing, any devices ... such as your windows partition ... would appear twice on you desktop and/or file manager. This can be worked around but, really. They released it like that?

This bug did not happen in the mint 13 xfce edition using 4.10, but in every other respect it was far inferior to xubuntu 4.10 that I presently run on 2 other computers. Sorry, but it's true.

4.10 is nicer in some ways but it's not that much better. The X architecture has been around for a long time. Longer than MS Windows. Xfce does incremental upgrades.
That's a bit confusing whwen you talk about xubuntu 4.10. I assume you mean Xubuntu 12.10, running Xfce 4.10. I imagine it depends on your use and your hardware, but I'm quite happy with Linux Mint Nadia Xfce on my laptop and Linux Mint Maya Xfce on my desktop. I did find one bug in Maya, but it's not really a show-stopper. I think the 64-bit version, not the 32-bit version, has a problem with permanently removing files in Thunar (a custom action inserted by the LM developers). I coded a patch and fixed it though. I don't remember whether the bug is present in Nadia or not.

As for Xfce developers releasing 4.10 with some bugs, you should read their blog, it's a hoot. If you want them to fix a problem with Xfce, then you can hire their team, they charge reasonable rates. So, if you're of a mind to pay, what is the going rate these days, $150 an hour per egghead? Then I guess you will receive immediate care. They are developing for themselves, their mates and glory. Although that's probably true of a lot of developers today. It looks great on a resume, you know. I think they work as linux consultants in the real world, and developing Xfce is what they do in their spare time between gigs. Perhaps we observe the last "glory days" of the desktop? The developers making the big money are programming those infernal mobile gadget apps. I see gigs for that sort of thing all the time on Elance. So a bright young ambitious geek wouldn't bother with desktop, would he?
Hoser Rob
Level 20
Level 20
Posts: 11806
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:57 am

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by Hoser Rob »

igor83 wrote:I will install Dolphin, but if I like it, then it is likely I will go with KDE for my desktop. I think a good scenario would be KDE for desktop, Xfce for htpc, and Xfce for my old laptop.
Dolphin works just fine with xfce ... especially since you can turn on KDE and gnome services at startup, a nice feature. I'm not really tempted at this point to switch to kde.
I have not tried Xfce 4.08, but have not really noticed any slowness in 4.10, maybe because my motherboard and cpu are relatively modern.
I've used both xfce 4.8 and 4.10 over ubuntu and xubuntu. There was no difference in speed until I installed the mint Maya xfce edition. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

It's a myth that xfce is just for old/slow hardware. There's nothing I was doing in windows or unity or gnome-fallback I can't do now. But it does liven up even modern hardware. I guess I'm old school, but I don't see why I should need a gaming machine so as not to compromise video performance and have all those silly wobbly things too. The compositor is staying off.

My standard half assed benchmark is a very well encoded but very large (16Gb) x.264 video. The bit rate is over 1Mb/s. On my i3 laptop running xfce and with an external monitor plugged in, extended desktop mode, it plays extremely well at about 22% cpu load.

In unity or gnome fallback it was about 65% cpu and the quality is definitely worse.
I would prefer 4.10 of Xfce over 4.08, because reviews said there were a lot of bug fixes.
Yes, it is nicer in some ways, but whose reviews? They may have fixed some bugs but they introduced others. Like the really dumb one where any usb device folder (or other boot partition) would appear twice on your desktop.

It could easily be worked around, and wasn't in the mint 4.10 version I tried ... they must have fixed it by now ... but really? They put it out like that? And note that most reviews I read never bothered mentioning that.

I'm using both 4.8 and 4.10 now and I honestly don't see a huge difference between the two. Xfce doesn't do huge bleeding edge upgrades like a lot of others do. I like that. That's also something I like about mint in general.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
Brian.Small

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by Brian.Small »

Well I've been through a half dozen various distros of debian derivatives, and 14 xfce is the first one that recognized my hardware and ran perfectly "out of the box" .. I was frankly surprised at the trouble I had with ubuntu 12.10, no sound, and flash was broken, but it all works great with mint xfce 14.

Acer Aspire 5251.

I only wish this distro had a main menu editor.
jjaythomas

Re: Mint 14 xfce the worst ever release

Post by jjaythomas »

My Opinion...

The problem on Mint-Xfce13 was using 4.10 from the ppa. Everything in repo you might add on to Xfce (plugins, intergration for apps ect.) became a crap-shoot (unless careful and liked to compile) if it would work corectly (and hope didn't bork sys).

Xubuntu/Ubuntu 12.04 (not using PPA for Xfce) were not bad, and the LTS 1st release made better.

Xubuntu/Ubuntu 12.10 is very buggy (working out in updates) and Mint 14 inherited (although better because updated base due to time).

(X)ubuntu 13.x onward should be less buggy (barring new features introduced), hence Mint15+

Always best to stay on LTS without majorly using any PPA's (1 shot apps ect. usually not problem). Only thing would still use 4.8 not 4.10. (remeber 10.04LTS had 4.6 till next (12.04) LTS.

J.Jay
Locked

Return to “Xfce”