The new Xfce version also introduces many new features and improvements to the Thunar file manager, as well as to the panel and plugins.
Two years after the release of
Xfce 4.18, Xfce 4.20 is here as another major update to this light and fast desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions.
Xfce 4.20 is packed with lots of new features and improvements like
experimental support for Wayland with support for the Labwc and Wayfire compositors, improved support for HiDPI displays, and libxfce4windowing as a new abstraction library to present windowing concepts in a windowing-system-independent manner.
Wayland sessions of Xfce can be started with the startxfce4 --wayland command. However, you should keep in mind that several Xfce components don’t run at all on Wayland, including the Xfwm4 window manager, Xfdashboard, Xfce4-screensaver, Xfce4-windowck-plugin, and Xfce4-xkb-plugin.
“So far Xfce does not feature a compositor which supports Wayland. If you want to run Xfce in Wayland, Labwc and Wayfire will give you the best results,” said the Xfce development team. “Plans are underway to add Wayland support to Xfwm4 while preserving its existing X11 functionality. However, such a restructurization will be a major effort and we cannot tell yet when/if it will be done, so please don’t hold your breath waiting for it.”
Desktop-specific changes in Xfce 4.20 include support for SVG wallpapers on large screens, support for setting custom colors for icon labels and icon backgrounds, a new option to sort folders before files, the ability to place dropped and new files near the current cursor location, enhanced context menus, and support for configuring all Xfdesktop shortcuts.
9to5linux.com
