Linux turns 29: The biggest events in its history so far
A year by year summary of the most significant events in Linux's history to date.
Cinnamon, Xfce, LXDM and more comments on anaconda: the fun never stops!
In addition to the well-known Gnome and KDE distributions, Fedora also has a popular Xfce distribution. The Fedora 18 release uses Xfce4 version 4.10. Xfce has gained considerable popularity recently because it's seen as a good alternative for users who don't want Gnome 3, but still want a more or less traditional 'Gnome-style' desktop. This probably doesn't do it justice, though, because it's a very good and very capable desktop in its own right. For a quick overview of features, take the Xfce 4.10 Tour.
The difference between this Xfce 'spin' and one of the alternative Gnome desktops that I mentioned previously (Cinnamon and MATE) is that those are alternative interfaces built on top of the Fedora Gnome distribution. They thus will have all the same utilities and applications, but will provide you with a different (and hopefully more comfortable) way of working with them. The Xfce spin is a completely different distribution, with a very different set of utilities and applications. Most of the utilities are developed specifically for Xfce (or even by the same development team), and thus are designed to fit well with the Xfce desktop, and follow the 'fast and light' philosophy.
The applications are also chosen with more emphasis on "fast and light", and this philosophy will extend not only to the applications which are included, but also to the choice not to include certain types of applications.
The screenshot above shows the Xfce desktop as I typically modify it for use on my netbooks. Rather than top and bottom panels, I have moved one panel to the side, with only icons and symbols (no text) on it, and I have the other panel at the bottom. Both panels are set to auto-hide, so I get the maximum usable screen space on the netbook.
Fedora 18 still uses Network Manager, rather than wicd which is frequently chosen for Xfce distributions. To me the advantage of this is that I don't have to learn another network manager, and I already know that it works not only with all of the various wired and wireless network adapters on my systems, but it also works with my Huawei 3G wireless broadband USB stick.
Caption by: J.A. Watson
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