Xubuntu Development Update July 2018

Table of Contents

Our work over June has brought a few new updates for July, including many Xfce 4.13 updates, bug fixes, and a few migrations, which round out a nice month of development. This is your Xubuntu development update for July 2018.

Xfce 4.13, A Preview of What’s To Come

Xfce has a fairly standard versioning scheme. Even version numbers (4.10, 4.12, 4.14) represent stable, supported releases. Odd version numbers (4.11, 4.13) represent development versions. Xfce 4.14 (the GTK 3 release) has been in development for a few years now, and several components have had 4.13 releases as their ports are completed and bugs are fixed.

With the Xubuntu LTS release behind us and Xfce 4.14 likely to be released sometime in the next year, we’re ready to start rolling out more of these development releases for our users. There are not a lot of new features, but with the upgraded toolkit, there’s better support for newer technologies, theming capabilities, and … an increased likelihood of bugs (we’ll fix them, we promise).

As of this morning (July 1), we have many more Xfce 4.13 available in Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish.” This is thanks to the hard work of Unit 193 — our Debian liaison, package maintainer, council member, and all-around awesome person. The following components are now available.

This Xubuntu development update features updated applications using GTK 3. — These components are using GTK 3… can you tell?

Thunar 1.8 (and plugins)
Xfce Desktop 4.13
Xfce Panel 4.13 (and plugins)
Xfce Screenshooter 1.9
Xfce Settings 4.13
Updated libraries (libxfce4panel, libxfce4util, xfconf)

New Releases

July was a nice month for Xfce development. 11 projects were updated, and most of these updates have already landed in Xubuntu. The other updates should land in the coming days.

Upcoming Releases

Catfish 1.4.6

We’re in the middle of migrating Catfish to be an official part of the Xfce family. After migrating bugs from Launchpad to Xfce, it was only rational to fix a few. So with those bug fixes, we’re right around the corner from another release. I’ll have more information on the Xfce transition with the 1.4.6 release announcement later this month.

Xubuntu 18.04.1

The first point release for 18.04 is expected this month, on July 26th. After 18.04.1 is released, 16.04 LTS users will begin to receive upgrade notifications. Before we get there, we have a few fixes and updates we want to deliver.

LP: #1762595 (gvfs), Thunar incorrectly thinks USB storage device hasn’t finished ejecting
Exo 0.12.2, which includes some performance improvements and a few fixes
Xfce Settings 4.12.4, which includes a few bug fixes and improved monitor manufacturer detection

What to Expect in July?

Xubuntu 18.04.1 Testing

With each point release, we need some testing to ensure everything works as expected. With 18.04.1, we’ll likely be looking for more release upgrade tests. Look forward to some calls for testing this month to test the upcoming milestone, or join us on #xubuntu-devel to learn how you can start testing now.

Xfce Migrations

We’ve already started moving Catfish to Xfce, but more work remains to be done. We’ll also be moving Xfce Panel Switch this month to join the rest of its friends and family.