here is a slackware package:

http://www.slacky.it/index.php?optio...&filecatid=532

I think I'll try it, I like Xfce but I prefer the power of Kde.

XFCE is becoming more and more gnome with every release.

I said it a few years ago, i knew it would happen. This release looks so much like gnome it's not even funny. It's not even that much lighter than gnome anymore. I'm wouldn't be suprised if XFCE 5 featured HAL and Dbus support, automounting, and a Places menu...

The XFCE 4.4 beta installer is 18 Mb, which is actually just a bit smaller than in 4.0. I guess we could talk about the increase in size from 3.0 to 4.0, but we're about two years too late for it to be interesting.

The Thunar file manager is 1.5Mb. The Gnome screensaver code is bigger than that. I don't really think that XFCE looks Gnomish, but if you can't tell the difference just click your mouse. If something happens right away, you're using XFCE.

I haven't played with it yet, but Thunar already has optional support for HAL

It has always "looked" somewhat like gnome in terms of style to me, and this makes sense in that they both make so much use of gtk. However, the idea that Xfce is even close to the footprint of Gnome is absurd. Just look at the relative size of installation between the two and the answer is obvious.

Not really though.

As of XFCE 4.4, i can no longer run XFCE on my old pentium2 without slowdown. It's no faster than gnome on that machine. I'd say now XFCE requires a MINIMUM of 128mb of ram to work at full speed, whereas i'd say gnome requires a MINIMUM of 196MB of ram. It's not a huge difference.

The bigger issue is CPU usage, and XFCE requires a LOT of cpu now, pretty much just as much as gnome does. I'd say 300mhz is about as low as you can get before XFCE starts to stumble around.

I'd say if you want a low size, go with Windowmaker, which runs perfectly(well X could be faster in general) on my 133mhz machine. XFCE has no chance of working on it.

Chances are very large that if you have a machine powerful enough to run XFCE at full speed, you can probably also run gnome at full speed, and gnome is pretty much better at everything than xfce is.(localization, accessibility, configurability, integration, stability, appearance, etc.) And the apps for gnome tend to be much more polished and feature rich than their generic GTK counterparts.(totem, rhythmbox, epiphany, EOG, anjuta(ESPECIALLY))

But eh. My ideal desktop is usually either GNOME or windowmaker with gnome apps. XFCE doesn't really have a place for me. It isnt' light enough to be put on a really slow machine, and it's not feature rich enough to be put on a powerful machine. At least in my opinion.

Something to keep in mind is that _many_ people who run xfce also use alot of gnome-based applications in that envrionment. I have no doubt but that a default xfce desktop runs with much less resources than a comparable gnome installation. At least, this has been my experience with each xfce verison (including the latest beta). But when I start up in xfce an assortment of proggys that I would also use in gnome the difference becomes negligible.

Hmm, I have Amd 64 (on 32 bit mode), but I can't tell the difference between 4.2 and 4.4 (indeed, 4.4 seems faster because my 4.2 was slowed down by some svg-related problems at certain points). I can tell the difference between Gnome and Xfce however. I'm using the CVS from last week. Maybe your beta version has some bugs. Also, XFCE will try to use compositor whenever it can, unless you disable it at startup or at compile time. You can try similar tweaks when compiling to make sure that unnecessary stuff is left out. Finally, using the latest Gtk 2.8 series should improve performance (10.2 came with 2.6).

My old PC is running 10.0(gtk 2.4) which i had to manually upgrade to 2.6(which works fine, and it was a lot of trouble, so i don't so much want to deal with gtk 2.8).

I am using beta 4.4 fine on my old 10.0 machine, but it doesn't run as fast as older versions did, particularly the new file manager, but i just replaced it with rox and now it is running OK enough.

I use XFCE 4.4 now because my pc is old. After many years, xfce is now far from being usable. No need to use rox-filer for a decent file manager or to get desktop icons. XFCE is looking more like a desktop now instead of a window manager.

Can I simply install this package overtop of my existing XFCE on Slackware 10.2 that I did "full" install when I loaded the pc. It has the standard XFCE that slackware put in, plus any updates that Slackware issued. Or do I need to go into package tool and remove everything XFCE that I see? I like XFCE but use it very little as there were no icons, I really like that it has desktop icons now and would like to try it out. Thank you.

Just upgrade your XFCE with upgradepkg with the package from www.slacky.it (elp gave a link above).

Ok i put xfce beta on fresh install. Most of the linx / icons there dont work. No biggie really. Yeah it's slower. Also the file manager, altho nice....OMG how do I browse the local network???!?!? Any ideas?

I downloaded the graphical install of xfce 4.4 and I don't think it upgraded it, do I have to uninstall the previous version first? I now have whatever comes with slackware 10.2.

The Xfce installer actually compiles and installs xfce outside of the Slackware package utilities using the generic ./configure & make & make install. I would suggest either grabbing the .tgz slack package from: http://www.slacky.it/index.php?optio...&filecatid=532

or building/installing your own package from source using checkinstall and the tarballs from the Xfce website.