at long last, split view in thunar!

I don't know why it took so long, but: "Xfce’s Thunar File Manager Gets Split View, File Creation Times, and More"

That should take care of the main annoyance I've had with Thunar - the lack of a split view window. I think I'll be able to test it out soon in Arch. Looking forward to it!

ulyssa

For years, Linux Mint (site: https://linuxmint.com/) has been one of the best options for folks new to the Linux world. Released on January 8, Linux Mint 20.1 "Ulyssa" ships in Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce flavors. I downloaded linuxmint-20.1-xfce-64bit.iso and took a look at the Xfce version in a live session.

 

 

"Ulyssa" booted up quickly and easily from a flash drive on the three laptops I tried it on. The Xfce desktop's setup has a pleasant and comfy feel to it. They've loaded the release with a nice selection of tools, making it a breeze for the user to jump right in and get things done. I felt that I was working with one of the best live sessions I've seen.

Linux Mint 20.1 Xfce release notes: https://linuxmint.com/rel_ulyssa_xfce.php

from france

Fascinating distro. I downloaded the latest release of Emmabuntüs -- the download was about 3.3 GB -- and I've been running it in live sessions, from a flash drive. The Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 3 1.02 release announcement includes the following bit of information:

This distribution was originally designed to facilitate the reconditioning of computers donated to humanitarian organizations, starting with the Emmaüs communities (which is where the distribution's name obviously comes from), to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of computer hardware, thereby reducing the waste induced by the over-consumption of raw materials.

That sounds good to me. For more info, check out https://emmabuntus.org/.

The live session defaulted to an Xfce desktop, with an option to switch to LXQt. Here's a shot of the LXQt desktop, with the Welcome window:

Emmabuntüs ships loaded with applications, as noted in this Distrowatch review. I like that it's based on Debian Stable. I'll certainly be keeping it around for live sessions, although I don't think I'll be doing an installation. I think I'm better off with a system built from a Debian netinstall. Still, I'm impressed and intrigued by this distro, and I may end up changing my mind about installing it on one of my notebooks.

Here's Emmabuntüs DE3-1.02 with Xfce:

an easier way

I recently did an installation using the Anarchy Linux Arch Installer (see: https://www.anarchylinux.org/). I downloaded anarchy-1.0.8-x86_64.iso, wrote it to a flash drive, and booted into the text-based installer. I chose the "Anarchy-xfce4" desktop installation. The installer gave me the option to install other packages, but I chose only Audacious, Firefox, and Geany to start out with.

The installation steps weren't difficult to navigate, and there weren't many steps; just had to wait for stuff to get downloaded and installed. I couldn't find much documentation for Anarchy, but the idea is to refer to the Arch Linux documentation, so I did that.

Anarchy gave me a nice Xfce setup, usable right out of the box for getting to work.

I removed some of the stuff that Anarchy installed, running sudo pacman -Rns vlc libreoffice-fresh chromium gnome-packagekit. I added a few more packages, made some other changes under the hood, and totally re-did the desktop. I added libreoffice-still to replace libreoffice-fresh.

I actually needed a few tries to get the hang of the Anarchy installer, but the end result is a very nice Arch Linux installation. It looks like a nice way for a user to get a first taste of Arch, but folks who are already familiar with the Arch installation process might appreciate Anarchy as well. I think that experienced Arch users would be better able to take advantage of it than those who've never been through a "real" Arch installation.

another nice mx release

I'm taking a look at the recently released MX-19 "patito feo" (odd codename choice -- translates into "ugly duckling"), which is based on Debian Buster and antiX-19:

MX-19 ships with the Xfce desktop environment and a nice selection of apps and tools, including Firefox, Galculator, FeatherPad, Thunar, Geany, GIMP, nomacs, inxi, the LibreOffice suite, VLC media player, qpdfview, GParted, Synaptic, and the excellent collection of MX Tools.

The official release announcement can be found here: https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-19-patito-feo-released/

excellent xfce live session

The Debian Stable-based SolydXK 10 was released on September 27, 2019: https://solydxk.com/news/solydxk-10-released-based-on-debian-buster-1

SolydXK offers two isos: SolydX (with Xfce) and SolydK (with KDE Plasma). I took a look at the "SolydX 64-bit" version in live sessions from a flash drive, on a couple of different computers.

The SolydXK website recommends using the dd command to write the iso to media, but I used the cp command as shown here, from the ~/downloads directory:

$ cd downloads
$ sudo cp solydx_10_64_201909.iso /dev/sdb && sync

I had no problems booting either computer with the flash drive. SolydX presents a nice, basic Xfce setup with a customized theme.

SolydX ships with a nice collection of apps, inluding Firefox ESR, LibreOffice, VLC, Ristretto, USB Creator, Mousepad, Thunar, Synaptic, Galculator, GParted, xfce4-terminal, inxi, rsync, mc, and xfce4-terminal.

I like that SolydXK is so closely based on Buster, the current Debian Stable. Here's a look at the SolydXK soures.list file:

solydxk@solydxk:/etc/apt$ cat sources.list
deb https://repository.solydxk.com solydxk-10 main upstream import
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free

I haven't yet taken a look at the SolydK version of SolydXK 10, but the SolydX live session rates up there with the best I've seen.

SolydXK at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solydxk

SolydXK home page: https://solydxk.com/

xfce 4.14

A few shots of my Xfce 4.14 desktop in Arch (recently updated from 4.12):

fresh buster installation

A few shots of my Xfce desktop in Debian Buster (still the current "Testing") (see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting and https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/), which I installed using debian-buster-DI-rc1-amd64-netinst.iso, on my old Compaq Presario CQ57:

Some of the packages I added post-install:

doublecmd-gtk geany nomacs audacious udiskie ntp galculator lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings mc evince geeqie gparted localepurge firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-realtek neofetch inxi orage

I'm using the following lines in my /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free

A Debian "network install" (see: https://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/) gives me a nice starting point for when I want to kinda build my own system from the ground up, and with Xfce I have a lot of options and flexibility for setting up the desktop to suit my tastes. I bring in a handful of apps that I prefer to use instead of some of the Xfce defaults -- Double Commander instead of Thunar, Geany instead of Mousepad, and Nomacs instead of Ristretto, for example.

The end result is a near-perfect setup, in my opinion.

There had been some concern that Synaptic would be left out of Debian Buster. I don't really use Synaptic anymore as I prefer to do my package management from the command line, but I found that Synaptic came in as part of the default installation. Also, Synaptic now shows up in the Buster repos when I search for it at the Debian Packages site. Good news for many users.

The Debian project's home page: https://www.debian.org/

two xfce setups

I took a look at the live session of MX-18 "Continuum" and compared it to my Debian Stretch Xfce installation.

MX-18 comes loaded with apps and tools, many of which I don't have (and don't need) in my Stretch installation, but also many that are nice to have handy. Also, I like that MX's live session (when run from a flash drive) offers options for persistence (root or home).

MX puts the xfce4-panel along the left side, oriented vertically; I do that, too, although my desktop setup is much different than the MX-18 default. Here's a shot from MX-18, with a few application windows open:

This one is from my Stretch Xfce setup; the open windows are xfce4-terminal, Double Commander (instead of Thunar), and Geany (instead of Featherpad):

In MX-18, clicking on the MX icon on the panel brings up the Whisker menu, while right-clicking on the desktop opens a more traditional Xfce menu. Lots of stuff in there!

Over in Debian, I use only the Applications menu, which I can bring up either by clicking on the Debian icon on the panel or by right-clicking on the empty desktop:

The empty default MX-18 desktop, and my empty Stretch Xfce desktop:

I'm quite happy with my Stretch Xfce installation, which is why I don't have MX installed. But I like having MX around on a flash drive for when I need a nice live session. The MX-18 "Continuum" release provides an excellent and very useful live session, right up there with the best live sessions I've ever seen. Wonderful little distro!

seventeen-point-one

After seeing the review of MX-17.1 mentioned in my previous post, I decided to download the latest snapshot, MX-17.1_August_x64.iso. Following are a few shots from the live session.

At first boot:

The empty desktop:

xfce4-terminal showing the output from a couple of commands (the distro info here doesn't quite match the name of the iso, though):

The Whisker menu is accessed from the panel:

But a traditional Xfce Applications menu can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop:

MX-17 ships with the nomacs image viewer, the featherpad text editor, and (of course) the thunar file manager:

The full package list for MX-17.1 can be found here: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx&pkglist=true&version=17.1#pkglist

"pleasant, easy-to-install"

A fairly detailed review of MX Linux 17.1: "Hands-on with MX Linux: A pleasant, easy-to-install Linux distribution"

devuan "ascii" live -- impresssive

A couple of shots from the live session of Devuan GNU/Linux 2.0 "ascii":

The live session is as nice as any I've ever seen, and I think it's actually better for my purposes than what has been up until now my favorite distro for live sessions: MX Linux. Ships with Xfce, Firefox ESR, the full LibreOffice suite, GParted, Synaptic, GNU Image Manipulation Program, VLC media player, and much more. I found that sudo works by default from the live session when I installed inxi with the sudo apt install inxi command. I even like the black and gray default theme! No problems accessing the partitions on my hard drive from the live session. Very quick and crisp with everything I tried on the desktop.

Looks like a very polished release. I'm impressed.

Devuan's home page: https://devuan.org/
And, a link to the Devuan page at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=devuan

lite

After seeing DistroWatch's review of Linux Lite 4.0, I decided to check it out. I downloaded linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso and used md5sum to check the download:

$ md5sum linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso
f4ff50524b7fb18fe97a6748db1318ec  linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso

I wanted to try booting the iso from the hard drive instead of booting from a flash drive like I normally do when I want to take a look at a live session of a distro release. My "test" computer is currently home to BunsenLabs Deuterium; booting into that system, I created the directory /isoimage, then copied the Linux Lite iso into that. Then I edited the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file so that it now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Linux Lite 4.0 (iso on /dev/sda1)" {
  set isofile="/isoimage/linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso"
  loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
  linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
  initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}

Then I ran sudo update-grub, then rebooted. That gave me a grub menu entry for Linux Lite 4.0. I booted into the live session.

Linux Lite 4.0 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS), and ships with Xfce 4.12.3. Here's what the system looks like at first boot:

The Welcome screen has a "Help Manual" button (there's also an icon for the manual on the desktop), so I clicked on that. The manual, which is stored in the /usr/share/docs/litemanual directory, opens up in Firefox. It can also be found at https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/. I haven't spent much time checking it out, but it seems to cover a good number of topics.

Some of the apps included in the release: firefox, gnome-calculator, gimp, hardinfo, inxi, htop, leafpad, libreoffice, xfce-terminal, qpdf, rsync, gparted, shotwell, synaptic, thunderbird, and vlc. Also included are several tools created specifically for Linux Lite that are supposed to make life easier for users. And, much more; Linux Lite 4.0 appears to be fully loaded and ready to use out-of-the-box.

Of course, I wanted to see the repo setup. The repos enabled by default in /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic partner

Also, I found some files in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxlite.list:

deb http://repo.linuxliteos.com/linuxlite/ diamond main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/otto-kesselgulasch-ubuntu-gimp-xenial.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/otto-kesselgulasch/gimp/ubuntu bionic main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teejee2008-ubuntu-ppa-bionic.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/teejee2008/ppa/ubuntu bionic main

So, a few PPA things going on, and some stuff from Linux Lite's own repos, and the rest from Bionic (Ubuntu 18.04).

To me, the live session of Linux Lite 4.0 looked about as good as anything else I've seen that ships with Xfce. I haven't quite decided whether I like it better than MX-17, which I keep on a flash drive for the occasional live session; might come down to a coin flip. Excellent job, from where I sit.

impressive, polished release

Dedoimedo's very positive review of the excellent MX-17 ("Horizon") release:

"MX Linux MX-17 Horizon - Shaping up beautifully"

mx menu entries

Open up the MX-17 menu and click on "All" and you'll get a sense of how much stuff they've packed into this release. Far too many entries to view without scrolling down, even with the menu view completely expanded:

I typed up a list of the entries that I found when I clicked on "All" in the menu (from the live session). Descriptions that the devs provided are in parentheses (I left some descriptions out where I thought the menu entry name was self-explanatory, or if I thought info about the app could be easily found online; notes added by me are in brackets, colorized:

About Me (Configure your profile image and contact details); Accessibility (Improve keyboard and mouse accessibility); Adobe Flash Player (Preferences for Adobe Flash Player); ADSL/PPPOE configuration; AisleRiot Solitaire (Play many different solitaire games); Alsamixer; Alternatives Configurator (Configure the system default alternatives); Appearance (Customize the look of your desktop); Application Finder (Find and launch applications installed on your system); Archive Manager; Asunder CD Ripper; Bluetooth Adapters (Set Bluetooth Adapter Properties); Bluetooth Manager (Blueman Bluetooth Manager); Bulk Rename (Rename Multiple Files); Catfish File Search; Chromium B.S.U. (Scrolling space shooter); Clementine (Plays music and last.fm streams); ClipIt (Clipboard Manager); Command line apt-based package manager (Search for and install Debian-based packages); Conky Manager (Conky Theme Manager); Conky Toggle (Toggle conky on/off); dd-Live usb (Create a live-usb using dd); Desktop (Set desktop background and menu and icon behavior); Dictionary (A client program to query different dictionaries); Disk Manager (Manage filesystem configuration); Disk Usage Analyzer (Check folder sizes and available disk space); Display (Configure screen settings and layout); E-book reader (FBReader E-book reader); FeatherPad (Lightweight Qt5 text editor); File Manager [Thunar]; File Manager (Configure the Thunar file manager); Firefox; Firewall Configuration; Galculator; GDebi Package Installer; gMTP (A simple MTP Client for MP3 Players); GNOME PPP (GNOME Dialup Tool); GNU Image Manipulation Program; GParted; Grub Customizer; gscan2pdf; GSmartControl (Monitor and control SMART data on hard disks); GtkHash (Compute message digests and checksums); guvcview (A video viewer and capturer for the linux uvc driver); Hearts (Play the popular Hearts card game); HexChat (Chat with other people online); Htop; Keyboard (Edit keyboard settings and application shortcuts); LBreakout2 [game]; LibreOffice [the entire suite: Base, Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, Writer]; LightDM GTK+ Greeter settings; Live-usb kernel updater (Update the kernel on a live-usb system); Live-usb Maker (Create a full-featured live-usb); Log Out (Log out of the Xfce Desktop); luckyBackup (Backup & sync your data with the power of rsync); luckyBackup (super user); Mahjongg [game]; Mail Reader (Read your email); Midnight Commander; Midnight Commander editor (Edit text files); MIME Type Editor; Mouse and Touchpad (Configure pointer device behavior and appearance); MX Boot Repair; MX Check Apt GPG; MX-Clocky Desktop Clock; MX Codecs Installer; MX Conky (Change details of desktop system monitor); MX-iDevice-Mounter (A GUI for mounting & unmounting IPhones & IPads); MX Menu Editor; MX Network Assistant; MX Package Installer; MX RemasterCC (Live persistence and remastering tools); MX Repo Manager (Choose the default APT repo); MX Select Sound (Easily select a default sound card); MX Snapshot (Create a live iso snapshot of your running system); MX Switch User (Change users without logging out); MX System Sounds; MX Time Settings; MX Tools; MX Tweak (Assorted useful tweaks); MX Updater (Re-enable MX Updater icon if even if no updates available); MX USB Unmounter; MX User Manager; MX User Manual; MX Welcome (Display welcome message); Network Connections (Manage and change your network connection settings); Nomacs (An image viewer); Notes (Ideal for your quick notes); Notifications (Customize how notifications appear on your screen); Nvidia driver installer; OpenJDK Java 8 Policy Tool; Orage Calendar; Orage Globaltime (Shows clocks from different countries); Orage preferences; Panel (Customize the panel); Passwords and Keys (Manage your passwords and encryption keys); PDF-Shuffler (PDF Merging, Rearranging, Splitting, Rotating and Cropping); Peg-E [game]; Power Manager (Settings for the Xfce Power Manager); Preferred Applications; Printers (CUPS); Print Settings; PulseAudio Volume Control; qpdfview; Quick System Info (inxi -F); Removable Drives and Media; Root Terminal; Run Program...; Samba; Screensaver; Screenshot [xfce4-screenshooter]; Sensor Viewer; Session and Startup (Customize desktop startup and splash screen); Settings Editor (Graphical settings editor for Xfconf); Settings Manager (Graphical Settings Manager for Xfce 4); SMTube (Browse and search videos from YouTube); Swell Foop [game]; Synaptic Package Manager; System Profiler and Benchmark; Task Manager; Terminal Emulator [xfce4-terminal]; Thunar File Manager; Thunderbird Mail; Transmission (Download and share files over BitTorrent); VLC media player; Web Browser [Firefox]; Window Manager (Configure window behavior and shortcuts); Window Manager Tweaks (Fine-tune window behavior and effects); Windows Wireless Drivers (Ndiswrapper driver installation tool); Workspaces (Configure layout, names and margins); Xfburn (CD and DVD burning application); Xfce Terminal

"horizon"

Ten years ago, back around December of 2007, distros I was running included Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper"), PCLinuxOS 2007, Linux Mint 4.0 ("Daryna"), Debian 4.0 ("Etch"), and Mepis 7.0. Of those distros, Debian's the only one still installed here today -- we're now at Debian "Stretch" (currently version 9.3).

This morning, I downloaded the latest release of the Mepis descendent MX Linux, MX-17 ("Horizon"). I used dd to copy the image onto a flash drive, and took the live session for a spin.

MX-17 is based on Debian 9, the current Debian Stable, which was released back in June. The download comes in at only about 1.2 GB, but MX-17 ships loaded with apps and tools, including Firefox 57.0.2. Users have access to thousands more apps and packages via the Debian repositories, of course.

Here's how MX-17 welcomes the user at first boot:

The default MX-17 desktop, empty:

The repository setup consists of a few files in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory; the repos enabled by default:

deb http://repo.antixlinux.com/stretch stretch main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free


MX Linux uses SysVinit instead of systemd, as explained in the MX User Manual:

Because the use of systemd as a system and service manager has been controversial, we want to be clear about its function in MX Linux. Systemd is included by default but not enabled. You can scan your MX system and discover files bearing systemd* names, but those simply provide a compatibility hook/entrypoint when needed.

MX Linux uses systemd-shim, which emulates the systemd functions that are required to run the helpers without actually using the init service. This means that SvsVinit remains the default init yet MX Linux can use Debian packages that have systemd dependencies such as CUPS. This approach also allows the user to retain the ability to choose his/her preferred init.

For more info about MX-17, check out the MX Community web site at https://mxlinux.org/, where they describe the distro as "a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, using the best tools and talents from each distro. It is a midweight OS designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint."

The MX-17 package list at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx&pkglist=true&version=17#pkglist

Also see the Current Release Features page at the MX site, and the release announcement and the MX Linux page at DistroWatch.