The desktop

Xfce is a lightweight desktop that has a very small memory footprint and CPU usage compared to some of the other desktops such as KDE and GNOME. On my system the programs that make up the Xfce desktop take a tiny amount of memory for such a powerful desktop. Very low CPU usage is also a hallmark of the Xfce desktop. With such a small memory footprint, I am not especially surprised that Xfce is also very sparing of CPU cycles.

The Xfce desktop, as seen in Figure 6-1, is simple and uncluttered with fluff. The basic desktop has two panels and a vertical line of icons on the left side. Panel 0 is at the bottom and consists of some basic application launchers, as well as the “Applications” icon which provides access to all of the applications on the system. The panels can be modified with additional items such as new launchers or altering their height and width.

Panel 1 is at the top and has an Applications launcher as well as a “Workspace Switcher” that allows the user to switch between multiple workspaces. A workspace is an organizational entity like a desktop, and having multiple workspaces is like having multiple desktops on which to work with different projects on each.

The icons down the left side of the desktop consist of home directory and Trash icons. It can also display icons for the complete filesystem directory tree and any connected pluggable USB storage devices. These icons can be used to mount and unmount the device, as well as to open the default file manager. They can also be hidden, if you prefer, with the filesystem, Trash, and home directory icons being separately controllable. The removable drives can be hidden or displayed as a group.

The file manager

Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce. It is simple, easy to use and configure, and very easy to learn. While not as full featured as file managers like Konqueror or Dolphin, it is quite capable and very fast. Thunar does not have the ability to create multiple panes in its window, but it does provide tabs so that multiple directories can be open at the same time. Thunar also has a very nice sidebar that, like the desktop, shows the same icons for the complete filesystem directory tree and any connected USB storage devices. Devices can be mounted or unmounted, and removable media such as CDs can be ejected. Thunar can also use helper applications such as ark to open archive files when they are clicked on. Archives such as zip, tar, and rpm files can be viewed, and individual files can be copied out of them.

Having used a number of different file managers, I must say that I like Thunar for its simplicity and ease of use. It is easy to navigate the filesystem using the sidebar.

Stability

The Xfce desktop is very stable. New releases seem to be on a three-year cycle although updates are provided as necessary. The current version is 4.12 which was released in February of 2015. The rock solid nature of the Xfce desktop is very reassuring after having issues with KDE. The Xfce desktop has never crashed for me, and it has never spawned daemons that gobbled up system resources. It just sits there and works which is what I want.

Xfce is simply elegant. Simplicity is one of the hallmarks of elegance. Clearly the programmers who write and maintain Xfce and its component applications are great fans of simplicity. This simplicity is very likely the reason that Xfce is so stable, but it also results in a clean look, a responsive interface, an easily navigable structure that feels natural, and an overall elegance that makes it a pleasure to use.

xfce4-terminal emulator

The xfce4-terminal emulator is a powerful emulator that uses tabs to allow multiple terminals in a single window, like many other terminal emulators. This terminal emulator is simple compared to other emulators like Tilix, Terminator, and Konsole, but it does get the job done. The tab names can be changed, and the tabs can be rearranged by drag and drop, by using the arrow icons on the toolbar, or the options on the menu bar. One thing I especially like about the tabs on the Xfce terminal emulator is that they display the name of the host to which they are connected regardless of how many other hosts are connected through to make that connection, that is, host1 → host2 → host3 → host4 properly shows host4 in the tab. Other emulators show host2 at best.

Many aspects of its function and appearance can be easily configured to suit your needs. Like other Xfce components, this terminal emulator uses very little in the way of system resources.

Configurability

Within its limits, Xfce is very configurable. While not offering as much configurability as a desktop like KDE, it is far more configurable and more easily so than GNOME, for example. I found that the Settings Manager is the doorway to everything that is needed to configure Xfce. The individual configuration apps are separately available, but the Settings Manager collects them all into one window for ease of access. All of the important aspects of the desktop can be configured to meet my own personal needs and preferences.

Settings Manager

Let’s look at how we can access the various desktop settings to Xfce. There are two ways to do so, and one is to use the Applications button on Panel 1, select Settings, and then select the specific setting item you want to view of change. The other option is to open the Settings Manager at the top of the Settings menu. The Settings Manager has all of the other settings in one window for easy access. Figure 6-7 shows both options. On the left, you can see the Applications menu selection, and on the right is the Settings Manager.

Adding launchers to Panel 2

I prefer to use the Settings Manager. I also like to make it easier for myself to access the Settings Manager itself. Not that three clicks to go through the menu tree every time I want to access a settings tool, but one click is always better than three. This is part of being the lazy SysAdmin, less typing and fewer mouse clicks are always more efficient. So let’s take a side trip to add the Settings Manager icon to Panel 2, the bottom panel, as a launcher.

Note that only one click is required to launch applications from the panel. I add all of my most used applications to Panel 2 which prevents me from having to search for them in the menus every time I want to use one of them. As we work our way through this course, you can add more launchers to the panel to enhance your own efficiency.

Preferred applications

We can now return to setting our preferred applications. Default applications are choices like which terminal emulator or web browser that you want all other applications to launch when one of those is needed. For example, you might want your word processor to launch Chrome when you click a URL embedded in the text. Xfce calls these preferred applications.

The preferred terminal emulator is already configured as the xfce4-terminal, which you have had an opportunity to use. We will go into much more detail about the xfce4-terminal in Chapter 7.

The icons at the bottom of the Xfce desktop, in Panel 2, include a couple for which we should choose default applications, the web browser and the file manager. If you were to click the web browser icon, the Earth with a mouse pointer on it, you would be given a choice of which of the installed web browsers you want to use as the default. At the moment, only the Firefox web browser is installed, so there aren’t any real choices available.

There is also a better way, and that is to make all of the preferred application selections at one time.

Experiment 6-3

In this experiment we will set the preferred applications for the student user.

1. 1.

   If the Settings Manager is not already open, open it now.

    
2. 2.

   Locate the Preferred Applications icon in the Settings dialog, and click it once to open it. This dialog opens to its Internet tab which allows selection of the browser and e-mail application. Neither has a preferred application at this time, so we need to set one for the browser.

    
3. 3.

   To set Firefox as the default browser, click the selection bar that says “No application selected” for the web browser. The only option at this time is Firefox so select that.

    
4. 4.

   Switch to the Utilities tab of the Preferred Applications dialog shown in Figure 6-10. Notice that both items here already have selections made. Thunar is the only option available as the file manager, and the Xfce terminal is the only option for the terminal emulator.

    
5. 5.

   The fact that there are no other options available for any of these applications is due to the extremely basic installation that is performed by the desktop installers.

    
6. 6.

   Click the All Settings button shown in Figure 6-10 to return to the main Settings Manager.

    

The Thunar file manager is one of the best ones I have used. There are many and several of them are available for Fedora Linux. The same is true of the Xfce terminal – it is one of the best of many very good ones. In my opinion, even if there were other choices available to be made here, these are excellent ones, and I would not change them. We will cover file managers in more detail in Chapter 2 of Volume 2.

Appearance

We start with the Appearance tools which allows us to select various aspects of the look of the user interface. Although Xfce does not have the vast number of configuration that KDE does, it has more than some other desktops. I like a lot of flexibility in changing the look of my desktop, and I am quite satisfied with the amount of flexibility I get with the Xfce desktop. It is flexible enough for me without being overly complex.

The Appearance tool has four tabs that provide controls to adjust different parts of the Xfce desktop. The Appearance dialog opens to the Style tab. This tab is mostly about color schemes, but it also has some effect on the rendering of buttons and sliders. For example, controls may have a flat or 3D appearance in different styles.

The second tab, Icons, allows selection of an icon theme from among several available ones. Others can be downloaded and installed as well.

The third tab, Fonts, allows the user to select a font theme for the desktop. A default variable width font can be selected as well as a default monospace font.

The fourth tab, Settings, allows selection of whether the icons have text or not and where it is located. It also provides the ability to determine whether some buttons and menu items have images on them. You can also turn sounds for events on or off on this tab.

Experiment 6-4

This experiment will provide you with an opportunity to try making changes to the look and feel of your desktop. Experimenting with these changes can suck up a lot of time, so try not to get too distracted by it. The main idea here is to allow you to familiarize yourself with changing the appearance of the Xfce desktop.

To begin, open the Settings Manager using the icon you added to Panel 2 in Experiment 6-2. Then click the Appearance icon which is in the upper left of the Settings Manager window. Figure 6-11 shows the Style tab. This tab allows you to choose the basic color scheme and some of the visual aspects of the Xfce desktop.

Click some of the different schemes to see how they look in your VM. I have noticed (at the time of this writing) that the Xfce selections look good with respect to the colors, but that the menu bars, on windows that have them, seem to jam the menu items together, so they become difficult to read. For your new style, you should consider one of the others. I like the Adwaita-dark, Arc-Dark-solid, and Crux styles.

Now go to the Icons tab, and select some different icon schemes to see how they look. This is not the mouse pointer icon, but the application icons. I like the Fedora icon set.

Notice that all changes take place almost as soon as you select them.

When you have finished setting the appearance of your desktop, click the All Settings button to return to the main settings dialog. Then click window manager. These settings enable you to change the look of the window decorations – things like the title bar, the icons on the title bar, and the size and look of the window borders. In Figure 6-12 I have chosen the B6 window decorations. Try some of the other themes in this menu.

The Keyboard tab allows you to change some of the keyboard shortcuts, but I seldom make any changes here. The Focus tab gives you the ability to determine when a window gets the focus so that it is the active window. The Advanced tab determines whether windows snap to invisible grid lines when moves and the granularity of the grid. It also allows you to configure how windows dragged to the edge of the screen act.

Leave the Settings Manager open for now.

You should also take a little time to explore the other dialogs found in the Settings Manager.

Don’t forget that you can return to the Settings Manager at any time to change the appearance of your desktop. So if you don’t like tomorrow what you selected today, you can choose another look and feel for your desktop.

Configuring the look and feel of the desktop may seem a bit frivolous, but I find that having a desktop that looks good to me and that has launchers for the applications I use most frequently and that can be easily modified goes a long way to making my work pleasant and easy. Besides, it is fun to play with these settings, and SysAdmins just want to have fun.