The Xfce Configuration Guide

1.  Introduction

The Xfce desktop environment

Xfce is a fast, lightweight desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems. It is designed for productivity, and is quite configurable while still adhering to the Freedesktop specifications.

Unlike heavier desktop environments, such as Gnome and KDE, Xfce uses far fewer system resources. Additionally, it offers greater modularity and fewer dependencies; it takes up less space on your hard disk and takes less time to install.

This guide will not only show you how to install and configure a minimal Xfce environment, but will also explore options to create a full-featured desktop in keeping with the Xfce philosophy: light, fast, and modular.

2.  Installing Xfce

The basics

First, make sure you've setup Xorg as shown in the X Server Configuration Howto.

Next, double-check your USE flags in /etc/make.conf; you'll probably at least want USE="-gnome -kde -qt3 -qt4 X dbus hal startup-notification xscreensaver".

Now, let's install Xfce.

# emerge -avt xfce4

Next, add your regular user(s) to the plugdev, cdrom, cdrw, and usb groups, so that they can take full advantage of hal and be able to mount and use devices such as cameras, optical drives, and USB sticks.

(Replace username with your actual user)
# for x in plugdev cdrom cdrw usb ; do gpasswd -a username $x ; done

Next, update your environment variables:

# env-update && source /etc/profile

Now start up hald and add it to the default runlevel:

# /etc/init.d/hald start
# rc-update add hald default

3.  Configuring Xfce

Starting Xfce

Now that Xfce is now installed, we'll configure it to be the default desktop environment when we issue the startx command. Exit your root shell and log on as a regular user.

$ echo "exec startxfce4" > ~/.xinitrc

Now start your graphical environment by typing startx:

$ startx

Congratulations, and welcome to your new Xfce desktop environment. Go ahead, explore it a bit. Then continue reading to learn how you can configure Xfce to suit your needs.

Program access

You might notice right-clicking on the desktop shows you the menu of all your applications. It's useful, but your desktop can easily be completely obscured by open windows, making it hard to to launch a new program. So, one of the first things you may wish to do is give yourself a handy application menu on your panel. Right click on this panel, and choose "Add New Item". Scroll through the list of choices and select "Xfce Menu". You can choose where you want it to be displayed on your panel. When clicked, it displays the application/preferences menu, providing a nicely categorized list of your installed programs.

Sessions & startup

If you've installed (or plan to install) popular Gnome or KDE applications such as k3b, nautilus, kmail, evolution, etc. then you should make sure that Xfce launches the appropriate services for these at startup. Navigate to Menu --> Settings --> Sessions & Startup. On the "Advanced" tab, select the appropriate checkbox. This might slightly increase Xfce startup times, but it decreases load times for KDE and Gnome applications.

Xfce has the ability to save your session settings and running programs from the "General" tab in the Sessions & Startup menu. They can be automatically saved when you logout, or Xfce can ask you each time. This feature is particularly useful for undoing configuration mistakes. Accidentally killed a panel? Just select "No" when prompted to save your current session, and the next time you start Xfce, your old desktop is restored. Want to automatically launch your open webbrowser, terminal, and email client the next time you login? Just save your session before logging out.

You've now got a basic working environment installed and configured. But if you're interested in doing more, then continue reading!

4.  Additional Applications

Panel plugins

In this chapter, we'll discuss some useful plugins and applications for everyday use within Xfce.

There are many plugins for the panel available in Portage; see for yourself with emerge --search xfce. Though for the most part their names are self explanatory, a few deserve some attention, as they are quite helpful. To use them, simply emerge them. They'll be added to the list of available items in the "Add New Item" menu shown when you right-click on the panel.

• xfce4-mount gives you a handy method of mounting devices listed in /etc/fstab just by clicking your mouse
• xfce4-battery is perfect for laptop users. It displays battery percentage, time remaining, power source (AC or battery), fan status, warnings, and can even be configured to execute commands at certain power levels. This feature can be used to put the laptop into hibernate mode when the battery is almost exhausted.
• verve is a small command line embedded into the panel. It's quicker than opening up another terminal when you want to run a command.
• xfce4-mixer is a volume control. It works with both ALSA and OSS sound applications.

If you can't find what you're looking for in the plugins specifically made for Xfce, try searching through the list of Gnome panel applets! That's right, by first emerging xfce4-xfapplet, you can install and run any applet made for Gnome.

Useful programs

Xfce bundles a few useful applications, including thunar, terminal, orage, and mousepad. Note that the last three will not be installed if you built xfce4 with the minimal USE flag. However, these are all very small, yet terrific applications, so they're well worth installing.

orage is a simple, handy calendar. mousepad is a barebones text editor that starts up extremely quickly. terminal is far more configurable and useful than xterm, and supports Unicode text, pseudo-transparency and accelerated transparency via Xfce's built-in compositor, all out-of-the-box. Just make sure that the default action on the terminal launcher of your panel runs /usr/bin/Terminal instead of xterm. Right click the launcher and choose "Properties" to change the command.

thunar is Xfce's built-in graphical file manager. It's fast yet quite powerful, can support a few plugins for even more functionality; just install them with emerge. Let's take a look:

• thunar-archive lets you create and extract archive files using the right-click menu. It works even better when paired with the new graphical archiving tool developed for Xfce, xarchiver.
• thunar-media-tags lets you intelligently rename multiple media files at once, and lets you edit their information tags, such as id3 tags.
• thunar-thumbnailers lets you preview certain types of files from within Thunar, such as images and fonts.
• thunar-volman automatically manages removable media and drives.

Next, let's see about adding some useful but lightweight desktop applications, in keeping with Xfce's philosophy.

Though mousepad is nice enough as a quick text editor, if you need a full-featured word processor but don't want the bloat of OpenOffice, try emerging abiword. AbiWord is lighter, faster, and is completely interoperable with industry-standard document types. It can also be further extended with abiword-plugins.

Need a nice email client/newsreader that isn't as demanding as mozilla-thunderbird or evolution? Try emerging claws-mail.

For your internet chat needs, irssi is an excellent, tiny, incredibly configurable IRC client that runs in your terminal. If you prefer a compact all-in-one client that handles nearly all chat protocols, you may want to emerge pidgin.

If you need movie and music players, look no further than mplayer and audacious. They can play most every media format available quite nicely, and have a wealth of additional plugins available for additional functionality.

Finally, you'll need a webbrowser. Nearly all graphical webbrowsers require more resources than most of your other desktop applications. Still, mozilla-firefox (or mozilla-firefox-bin) is always a good choice. Alternatively, you may find opera to be quite fast. However, opera is not available on as many processor architectures as mozilla-firefox, and it has more dependencies unless you override them with a USE flag.

(Installing Mozilla Firefox)
# emerge mozilla-firefox
(Installing Opera)
# echo "www-client/opera qt-static" >> /etc/portage/package.use
# emerge opera

Now that we've explored some good suggestions for rounding out your desktop applications, let's see what else we can do to enhance your Xfce experience.

Graphical login

Remember when we added startxfce4 to our ~/.xinitrc? All you have to do to get into your desktop is type startx after logging in. This is fine if you prefer a completely text-based boot and login, but let's use a display manager that will automatically start Xfce after booting (so that you can login graphically).

First, let's make sure Xfce loads at boot:

# rc-update add xdm default

We aren't quite finished yet. We have to pick a display manager and set the appropriate variable. Though there are a few choices available in Portage, for this guide, we'll stick with SLiM, the Simple Login Manager.

slim is speedy and lightweight, with minimal dependencies. Perfect for Xfce!

# emerge -avt slim

Then edit the DISPLAYMANAGER variable in /etc/conf.d/xdm:

DISPLAYMANAGER="slim"

SLiM can automatically start your Xfce session if you add XSESSION="Xfce4" to /etc/rc.conf.

Beautifying your desktop

A little customization of your desktop's appearance can go a long way. Xfce has all the options you'd expect from a modern desktop environment, font antialiasing settings, color schemes, dozens of window decorations, themes, and more. If these aren't enough, it's easy to install third-party themes, icon sets, mouse cursor themes, and wallpapers.

A selection of nice Gentoo wallpapers in a variety of resolutions are hosted on the Gentoo website. If you're looking for icon sets and complete Xfce themes, Xfce-Look has a huge collection. The important thing to remember about any third-party eyecandy you download is that it will usually first need to be unpacked and then installed to the proper directory. Icon sets go in /usr/share/icons/, and themes go to /usr/share/themes/; use these directories when you want all users to be able to access themes and icon sets. Individual users can install themes and icon sets to ~/.themes/ and ~/.icons/.

If you installed SLiM as your display manager, there are lots of themes in the slim-themes package available in Portage. Also, be sure to check the SLiM themes page for more themes. Creating your own SLiM theme is fairly easy; just read the Themes HowTo.

Finally, Xfce has its own built-in compositor to manage window transparency. This option can be found in Menu --> Settings --> Window Manager. For best performance, you will need to be running a graphics card with drivers that support hardware-accelerated rendering. Make sure you emerged xfwm4 with the xcomposite USE flag. Next, you will need to enable compositing in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by adding the following section:

Section "Extensions"
    Option  "Composite"  "Enable"
EndSection

This is the bare minimum configuration required for Xfce and Xorg-X11. However, setting up hardware-accelerated rendering depends on your individual graphics card, and is beyond the scope of this guide. Please see the other guides in the Desktop Documentation Resources list to learn about configuring hardware-accelerated rendering for your graphics card.

5.  Summary

Congratulations on making it this far! You've installed and configured a speedy desktop environment with a solid suite of applications for your computing needs.

Resources

Need additional help on configuring and using Xfce? Need more lightweight application suggestions? Try checking out:

• The Gentoo forums
• #xfce on irc.freenode.net
• The installed help files and other documentation provided by Xfce: /usr/share/xfce4/doc/C/index.html. Just point your browser at it and start reading. There are even a lot of "hidden" configuration options detailed in the help files.
• Xfce's home page

The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.