Note: Xface wiki doesn’t explicitly mention version 4.20 comes with Wayland support.
YES!!! Pretty much anyone interested knew that unofficially, we would be getting initial Wayland support by XFCE 4.20 later this year, but seeing it confirmed makes me very happy! 2024 is shaping up to be the year of Wayland, part 1, and 2025 to be the Year of Wayland, part 2.
Pretty much anyone interested knew that unofficially, we would be getting initial Wayland support by XFCE 4.20 later this year, but seeing it confirmed makes me very happy!
Maybe I’m overlooking something but where in https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.20/roadmap did you see a 2024 confirmation?
I remember it being mentioned somewhere (not sure where anymore, it was quite a while ago) that they are aiming for a release of 4.20 around the end of 2024. It’s possible I misunderstood a prediction, or am misremembering information, or both, but that’s what I remember
I remember it being mentioned somewhere (not sure where anymore, it was quite a while ago)
So your “seeing it confirmed” statement was not about seeing it confirmed in the submission you made a comment about?
Yeah, it was from another source that I can no longer recall.
Edit: There is this article here, but they don’t seem to cite a source for the release date: https://9to5linux.com/xfce-4-20-desktop-environment-will-finally-bring-wayland-support
So your initial comment is at best misleading, at worst misinformation.
WFCE
The X in XFCE doesn’t stand for X11.
The name Xfce originally stood for “XForms Common Environment”, but since then Xfce has been rewritten twice and doesn’t use the XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but it is no longer capitalized as “XFCE” and is no longer an abbreviation for anything (wiki)
I agree that the Xf in Xfce ( originally XFCE ) stands for XForms ( or did originally ). You do not think that the X in XForms stands for X11 though?
XForms is a port of the Forms library ( originally a GL based SGI toolkit ) to X11. I do not know for sure but it seems pretty obvious that the X in XForms stands for X11.
Once we all move to Wayland, the Xfce name will carry quite a bit of history in its name. I kind of like that.
On https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap it says:
xfce4-panel and xfdesktop have been ported to Wayland assuming our compositor will be based on wlroots.
xfce4-panel + xfdesktop + labwc is all the ‘xfce’ I think I’d ever need; so the wayland port is more or less ‘done’, AFAIC.
(Thunar has been wayland native since the gtk3 port completed a long time ago.)
For me, xfwm is the defining feature. I have my own custom super-minimal window theme (old screenshot showing mpv looking like PiP, I made a newer version with the idea of rolling up windows such as when playing music). Also the tweaks for hiding the titlebar when maximized.
Though I’m also on nvidia (1050Ti) so I don’t really even think about Wayland.
For me, xfwm is the defining feature. I have my own custom super-minimal window theme
Xfce announced years ago to move to client side decorations.
I know. They added some at one point and I installed an anti-CSD package, I’m also pretty sure they pulled back some of their plans because of backlash too.
If they go full CSD I would probably need to find something else and probably just concede+just use the slimmest window theme there is rather than something frameless even (from what I’ve seen, other window theme systems are not as modular as xfwm which allows simply deleting the sides/bottom files etc).
Someone could probably make this concept (frameless, minimal title bar, no title on maximized, no raise-on-focus, rolled-up windows, floating window buttons that are only on focused windows) into a simple window manager, probably not me any time soon though. And I’m not sure how easy that is on Wayland (I know options exist to make it easer–such as wlroots I think–though I don’t know how it’d compare to making something for X).
Me too. I could use another Wayland compositor and be pretty happy. On my iMac, I have been running Metacity as a WM because xf4wm had some kind of memory leak. Most of the “apps”, including Thunar, already run on Wayland as well I believe.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The updated Xfce Wayland roadmap page now reads: "For Xfce 4.20, the plan is, to add preliminary support to Wayland to core components without losing X11 support.
This doesn’t mean that by the next major release an Xfce session on Wayland will offer all existing features, but we hope it will be minimally usable.
The long-term goals for Xfce on Wayland include not depending upon XWayland, using the wlroots Wayland compositor library over libmutter, and maintaining X11 compatibility for the foreseeable future.
Wayland developers are leveraging wlroots for doing much of their heavy lifting.
More details on the Xfce Wayland plans can be found via the Xfce.org Wiki.
The Xfce 4.20 schedule remains “TODO” at this point.
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