The Ubuntu Unity interface has caused a stir in technology circles with the Mac OS X styled interface that works quite differently to Gnome 2. At least they got rid of the April fools circular windows. The Gnome 3 interface may be bad, but the Windows 8 Metro interface is even worse. But we will have to either adapt or use Lxde instead, which is very fast and works just like a UNIX/Linux desktop should. The Gnome 3 desktop is bloated and clunky compared to the Linux desktops we were using in 2009. They were fast and usable even on a old Celeron laptop and it was perfectly fine, but Unity would not work very well on older hardware and then you would need the fallback mode or Unity 2D to even try and get Ubuntu working. Surely the Linux desktop should not be this bloated when there are many talented programmers out there working on Gnome and this is the best they can come up with? The fork() of Gnome 2 that is being worked on is a promising project and the project GIT repository here has the code if you wish to download it and try it out. I hope the project continues and there is a repo made available for Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04/12.10 that allows the installation of the Gnome 2 desktop on Ubuntu & Fedora.
If you could install this desktop environment alongside the Gnome 3/Unity desktop then you could compare the performance of Unity versus Gnome 2 which is not in Unity’s favour at all. You can not even customise the top panel and add shortcut icons to it like you could in Gnome 2. Older desktops like Afterstep where a little more usable and even FVWM with the infinitely customisable layout that could look like Afterstep, Blackbox or Windows 95. Now we are just adding on more and more memory hungry code and dumbing the desktop down so that anyone can use it and they do not need to think about anything, they can just use Facebook, Instant Messaging and there are no pesky desktop icons and pesky panel applets to get in the way. The future of the Linux desktop looks to be a totally simplified desktop with no panel applets and no shortcuts on the panel like Gnome 2 could carry out. Surely the Microsoft Shills are deliberately sabotaging this desktop to destroy the reputation of desktop Linux and driving potential users to Windows. But the Windows 8 operating system with IE 10 has the Metro interface and I have not seen the Windows classic interface yet. But Internet Explorer 10 running fullscreen to display the Metro interface?
Seriously?
http://www.qc4blog.com/?p=1157.
I have copied all the packages from my Fedora DVD into a folder in my home directory and this is me installing Xfce4.
[root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfce4-* xfconf-4.8.0-2.fc15.i686.rpm libxfce* garcon-0.1.7-1.fc15.i686.rpm fortune-mod-1.99.1-14.fc15.i686.rpm exo-0.6.0-6.fc15.i686.rpm recode-3.6-30.fc15.i686.rpm Preparing... ########################################### [100%] 1:xfce4-doc ########################################### [ 6%] 2:xfce4-icon-theme ########################################### [ 11%] 3:libxfce4util ########################################### [ 17%] 4:xfconf ########################################### [ 22%] 5:libxfce4ui ########################################### [ 28%] 6:exo ########################################### [ 33%] 7:garcon ########################################### [ 39%] 8:xfce4-panel ########################################### [ 44%] 9:recode ########################################### [ 50%] 10:fortune-mod ########################################### [ 56%] 11:xfce4-session ########################################### [ 61%] 12:xfce4-session-engines ########################################### [ 67%] 13:xfce4-mixer ########################################### [ 72%] 14:xfce4-power-manager ########################################### [ 78%] 15:xfce4-appfinder ########################################### [ 83%] 16:xfce4-settings ########################################### [ 89%] 17:xfce4-notifyd ########################################### [ 94%] 18:libxfcegui4 ########################################### [100%] [root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfwm4- xfwm4-4.8.1-2.fc15.i686.rpm xfwm4-theme-nodoka-0.2-2.fc15.noarch.rpm [root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfwm4-* error: Failed dependencies: nodoka-filesystem is needed by xfwm4-theme-nodoka-0.2-2.fc15.noarch [root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfwm4-* no nodoka-filesystem-0.3.90-5.fc15.noarch.rpm notification-daemon-0.7.1-1.fc15.i686.rpm notify-python-0.1.1-18.fc15.i686.rpm [root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfwm4-* nodoka-filesystem-0.3.90-5.fc15.noarch.rpm Preparing... ########################################### [100%] 1:nodoka-filesystem ########################################### [ 33%] 2:xfwm4 ########################################### [ 67%] 3:xfwm4-theme-nodoka ########################################### [100%] [root@matrix Packages]# rpm -ivh xfce-utils-4.8.1-2.fc15.i686.rpm xfdesktop-4.8.2-1.fc15.i686.rpm thunar-volman-0.6.0-2.fc15.i686.rpm thunar-archive-plugin-0.3.0-2.fc15.i686.rpm Thunar-1.2.1-5.fc15.i686.rpm |
Once this was completed and I had also installed Thunar and the xfdesktop package I was all set with a Gnome 2 styled Xfce4 desktop. How to install Xfce4 on Ubuntu. http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xfce.