Xfce 4.2.0 Release Announcements (Draft 3)


I. Short announcement (for posting on news sites)

Xfce 4.2.0 released

The Xfce Team is pleased to announce the availability of Xfce 4.2.0, the next major version of the Xfce Desktop Environment and Development Framework for Unix and Unix-like platforms. Xfce 4.2.0 can be downloaded here.

Xfce 4.2.0 includes new applications like a session manager and an application finder, a new and beautiful icon theme, support for bleeding-edge features (like the X.org Composite extension), usability and performance improvements, better support for multihead desktops, new and updated translations, additional themes, and various other improvements over the previous stable releases. See this page (link to changelog) for a complete list of changes between Xfce 4.0 and Xfce 4.2.

Furthermore, Xfce 4.2 is the first desktop environment to ship with an easy-to-use and platform-independent graphical installation wizard, which takes care of compiling and installing Xfce on your system. Visit the os-cillation installers website for download links and instructions.

If you want to try Xfce 4.2.0 first, without installing anything on your system, you might want to try the Xfce Live Demo 0.2, provided by os-cillation, to discover the power and efficiency of Xfce.


II. Website announcement

Xfce 4.2.0 released

Today the Xfce project has released version 4.2.0 of its Desktop Environment and Development Framework for Unix and Unix-like platforms, based on the GTK+ toolkit and designed to comply with the relevant Freedesktop specifications. It can be downloaded here.

Xfce 4.2 is the first desktop environment to ship with an easy-to-use and platform-independent graphical installation wizard, which takes care of compiling and installing both Xfce and any contributed packages on your computer. Visit the os-cillation installer website for download links and instructions.

The new Xfce desktop, while still being lightweight and easy to install, offers several new and awaited features in comparison with its previous 4.0 stable release like a brand new session manager, keyboard shortcuts, a graphical desktop menu editor, multihead support (Xinerama and Multi-Screen mode), Kiosk Mode support (to lock down Xfce in cooporative environments), optional support for icons in the desktop menu, a desktop menu plugin for the panel, CUPS and BSD-LPR printing support, a new icon theme, and various other small enhancements. Moreover, Xfce 4.2 provides bleeding-edge features, like a compositing manager for xfwm4 (a manager for the new X.org Composite extension, which brings true transparency to the Xfce Desktop) and support for the XDG base directory specification (see this page for an explanation of the new file locations). A complete list of changes between Xfce 4.0 and 4.2 is available here (link to change log).

It includes, among others, the following applications:

In addition, Xfce 4.2 has its own GTK+ theme engine and window manager themes that allow homogeneity in applications for both business and personal desktops.

If you want to try Xfce 4.2.0 first, without installing anything on your system or if you are looking for a nice Xfce 4.2 based Linux-Live CD, you might want to try the Xfce Live Demo 0.2, provided by os-cillation. Xfld is a Live CD based on Knoppix, that features Xfce 4.2 as its primary desktop.

Enormous Improvements have been made in the area of internationalization, and Xfce 4.2.0 is now available in about 41 different languages, thanks to the impressive work of our translators.

A short trailer that introduces Xfce 4.2.0 is available in high- and low-bandwidth versions here (INSERT LINK).

About the Xfce Project: The Xfce Project is a collaboration of international developers working together to develop a desktop environment that is both lightweight and full-featured. Keeping with the Unix philosophy of small, modular programs that are very good at doing one thing, the Xfce Project has created a desktop environment which consists of lightweight components which can be strung together in virtually any configuration to create a desktop solution that fits any user just right.


III. Press Announcement

Xfce 4.2.0 released

The next major version of the popular, multi-platform desktop environment brings new applications and numerous improvements to the existing applications.

Siegen, Germany -- January 16, 2005 -- Today the Xfce Team announced the release of version 4.2.0 of the Xfce Desktop Environment and Development Framework for Unix and Unix-like platforms. Xfce 4.2 adds several new applications, support for bleeding edge features, greater usability, performance and better internationalization to the desktop environment.

Xfce 4.2 consists of a number of components that together provide the full functionality of the desktop environment. They are packaged separately and users can pick and choose from the available packages to create the best personal working environment. Xfce 4.2 includes some new applications, like a session manager, an application finder and a menu editor, and comes with a new and beautiful icon theme, which complies with the freedesktop.org icon theme standard. The existing applications have been improved in the areas of functionality, usability and interoperability with other applications and desktop environments. In addition to that, Xfce 4.2 supports bleeding edge features like the new X.org Composite extension and related extensions, which enables you to use real transparency for the windows on your desktop. To obtain the best possible user experience, Xfce 4.2 includes several new themes for a perfect, unified working environment.

With the ever increasing popularity of the Xfce desktop environment, people have started to write third-party applications that enhance the basic desktop functionality provided by Xfce. Besides the various additional panel plugins available from the Xfce Goodies project, there are currently two applications available, that were developed with focus on Xfce. These applications are Xfmedia, which is a lightweight media player with a nice and intuitive user interface, and Terminal, which is a lightweight and easy-to-use terminal emulator for Xfce.

Xfce is Free Software. The separate components are released under either the BSD license, the GNU Lesser General Public License or the GNU General Public License. The source code is freely available and while Xfce is highly portable to all Unix flavors, there is already native support and packages for many popular Linux distributions, SPARC and x86 Solaris 8/9, FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x, NetBSD 1.x and 2.x, OpenBSD 3.x, while more Unix and other X11-based plattforms are expected to be supported out-of-the-box soon.

About Xfce

Xfce is a free software project that provides a lightweight desktop environment for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while remaining visually appealing and easy to install and use. Originally built as a free alternative to industry's standard desktop environment, CDE, it has evolved into a completely new, innovative and widely deployed desktop environment with exceedingly growing popularity. Currently, more than 60 developers, translators, artists and helpers from every corner of the globe contribute their and effort to the project.

About the Xfce Team

The Xfce Team is comprised of many volunteer developers, translators, artists and others who are committed to the advancement of the Xfce desktop environment. The group helps determining Xfce's vision and roadmap. Xfce is a free software project which develops a lightweight desktop environment for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The project offers a responsive, stable, efficient, intuitive and innovative user interface with minimum migration path as it is among the very few fully compliant, with the freedesktop.org standards, desktop environments.

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


IV. List of changes between 4.0 and 4.2 (for the website)

Most important changes between Xfce 4.0 and 4.2

General

Window Manager (xfwm4)

Settings Manager (xfce-mcs-manager)

New Session Manager (xfce4-session)

Desktop Manager (xfdesktop)

File Manager (xffm)

Panel (xfce4-panel)

Utilities (xfce-utils)

Volume Control (xfce4-mixer)

New Application Finder (xfce4-appfinder)

Icon Box (xfce4-iconbox)

Printing Helper (xfprint)

Calendar and Appointments (xfcalendar)

Icon Theme (xfce4-icon-theme)

Toys (xfce4-toys)

GTK+ Theme Engine