Xfce in Debian Lenny (and everywhere else)
I've come to the conclusion that GNOME is not quite ready in Debian Lenny. A lot of strange things have been happening on my screen. There's the ghosting in the upper menu bar, as well as various hard-to-describe funky things happening in other windows opened by various applications on the screen.
I've had Fluxbox installed in Lenny for awhile, and I have used it from time to time, but today I decided to see how Xfce is progressing in Lenny.
It was easy to install in a root terminal with Aptitude:
# aptitude update
# aptitude install xfce4
# aptitude install xfce4-goodies
And so far Xfce looks pretty darn good. I had used Xfce quite a bit in Debian Etch, and it also works great in Wolvix. So using it in Lenny is a bit of a no-brainer.
All display weirdness is gone, and Xfce remains incredibly fast.
And if GNOME didn't run so damn well in Ubuntu 8.04, I'd probably try Xfce there, too. I just might do it anyway.
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I echo this appreciation - using Slackware:
http://syntaktisk.dk/grphcs/desktop090508.png
There is an interesting aspect to Xfce: Generic plugins for the user to set up. The genmon (generic monitor) panel plugin will display the output of a command or script; it is what I use (see screenshot) to display the output of my battery script:
http://syntaktisk.dk/files/batt.sh
Also, the custom actions setup:
http://syntaktisk.dk/grphcs/xfce-customactions.png
With this tool, you can have pretty much the functionality you want in the context menu.
One thing to remember is that while in Xfce, you can't suspend the computer from the shutdown/logout menu.
You have to log out and then use the Debian login screen (GDM, I believe) to suspend or hibernate. Since suspend doesn't work for me in Debian anyway, this is pretty much a nonissue (but I wish it were ...).
I've written about the Xfce installation of Debian before, and if you have the space on your hard drive, I recommend doing a standard Debian desktop installation and adding Xfce after that. It's nice to have all those GNOME goodies to help with configuration and a number of other tasks.
For instance, I had to add xpdf the other day because the Xfce install doesn't include any PDF reader by default. Kind of a pain in the ass.
I'd also like to see a GUI network-configuration utility in the Xfce installation. Come on, Debian, don't make me work so hard for it!
Steven Rosenberg again (I'm doing a few tests of the system, which doesn't like Internet Explorer, in case you were wondering).
It's Debian policy that all the "desktop" installs come with OpenOffice. Many lighter systems substitute Abiword and Gnumeric instead, but not Debian.
Curiously, I've been able to run OpenOffice Writer even in 64 MB of RAM. I wouldn't recommend it, but it can be done.
There's something to be said for the inclusion of OO, even in Debian's KDE desktop implementation, mostly because I had a few small but crucial issues with the current version of KWord -- issues that, if they had been present in OO Writer (and they were not) would've been corrected immediately instead of ... never.
Hi,
Maybe this will help. Sure, no menu, but still a click away ;)
http://www.debiantutorials.org/content/view/233/144/
Occassionally I install gnome-power-manager, as well. Works fine in my Xfce4 desktop and runs in the systray. Again, suspend is a click away.
Apologies if you've already been down these roads.