XFCE for Debian JR
I've used XFCE on my daughter's Mandrake system and got .debs from the XFCE site
to install it on my system. I haven't used it much, due to the extensive
configuration that is required to make it very usable It does not have a menu
system, per say. There are pop-up menus that have a few apps set-up, but it can
not access the regular Menu system that all the other W/M use.
Having said that, the configuration seems the be quite easy, and once set-up
should be very workable. I've had a bit of experience with CDE on HP systems,
which XFCE is based on. Again, the up-side is, this is a completely different
idea of what a DeskTop should be than what M$ would like us to think a DeskTop
should be. The down side is, this is a completely different idea of what a
DeskTop should be than what M$ would like us to think a DeskTop should be. The
little work I have done with XFCE has shown it to be extremely fast and
efficient, even on low-memory hardware. It flies on my daughters P133 with 16M
of memory. Also, having a completely different menu system, that is not based on
the standard Debian menus, it might be easier to set-up different menu
structures for different users. E.I. a menu for Parents, a menu for Teachers, a
menu for children, different menus for different classes in a school. I believe
the configuration is based on a config file in the home directory, so the set-up
is based on who logs in.
I initially saw this on a Mandrake system and got the .deb's so I could work
with it, but haven't spent much time. As I said, I have worked with CDE on a HP
system, so I know the basics of the idea. I could try to put some effort into
setting up a usable XFCE DeskTop on my system and get a better idea of how it
works and how usable it really is. The times I have tried it, it never crashed
or hung anything. Using it with a fully populated menu and trying all the
drag-and-drop features might turn up some limitations, but with my small
network, I can always telnet or rlogin from somewhere else and kill any
offending processes. Netscape has given me plenty of practice with that!
I just mention XFCE because it seems to be another DeskTop that everyone has
overlooked with the KDE-vs-Gnome flamewars raging away.
Cheers,
John Gay
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