And in this article I am going to show you how to enable and use tiling feature in KDE 4.5. After that, it’s up to you to decide if this feature helps to make your work more or less efficient.

What is tiling?

The tiling effect will always make sure your windows do not overlap. This allows you to make the absolute most out of your screen real estate. This also allows you to move windows around and always have them take up remaining free space on a desktop. Tiling can take some time to get used to, but once you do, you will come to depend upon it to make your PC use as efficient as possible. Figure 1 shows a sample of how tiling works on the desktop.

Installation

There is no installation involved for the tiling feature. So long as you have KDE updated to 4.5 you are ready to go. NOTE: You can not have Emerald or Compiz enabled for this to work. If you want effects and tiling you will have to use KDE’s built-in effects.

Enabling

Figure 2

To enable tiling click Start > Computer > System Settings > Window Behavior. In this new window click on the Window Behavior section and then click the Advanced tab. In this section (see Figure 2) make sure the Enable Tiling check box is checked and then click Apply.

You will notice a drop down for the tiling layout. You have three possible options:

Columns: This will always layout your windows in columns. If there is no room on your desktop, the windows horizontal size will be resized to allow the addition of another column on the desktop.

Spiral: This will add new windows in a spiral fashion. This is one of the easier methods to use, however, the more windows you have open the smaller the new windows will become.

Floating: This is more free form and will probably suit a larger portion of people. This does not hold true to any hard and fast rules – it just places windows in the free space you have available.

Floating windows

Figure 2

You might be thinking that tiling can really be a problem when you need a window to be specific size all of the time. When you move windows around on a tiled desktop they are constantly changing sizes. To get around that, KDE has Floating Windows. A floating window is just that – not locked to any given position or size. To float a window right-click its title bar and select Float Window. You can now move that window anywhere you like (and it will retain its size). A floated window will overlap other windows (see Figure 2).

Final thoughts

Window tiling is something to get used to. It can be a bit frustrating at first, but once you get used to it, it will keep your desktop from getting out of control.

But there are certain advanced configurations that I want to illustrate that might not be as obvious to the new-to-Xfce user. This time around we’re talking about the Window Manager Tweaks tool.

First off – what is a Window Manager

That question is simple to explain, but must be explained so you know what exactly this tool works with. A window manager is the piece of the desktop puzzle in charge of drawing, decorating, and manipulating the windows you see. So that pretty boarder around Firefox you see – that is handled by the Window Manager. In the case of Xfce the window manager is xfwm.

The Window Manager Tweaks tool does just what you would expect – tweaks the Xfce window manager. In what way does it tweak it? The broader picture looks like this:

• Cycling: How you want to cycle through your open windows.
• Focus: How you want window focus to be handled.
• Accessibility: How you access your windows.
• Workspaces: How you access your workspaces.
• Placement: Smart placement.
• Compositor: If you want to use compositing and how you want it used.

Now, let’s take a look at each of these more closely.

Cycling

With this feature you can configure four settings. Of these only one will not be set by default: Cycle through windows on all workspaces. This option can be useful if you deal with a lot of workspaces. If you enable this option all open windows will be included in the cycling process. If you do not include it, only those windows on the current working workspace will be included. I prefer to enable this option.

Focus

This is not the same as the standard window manager settings where you can enable such features as “focus follows mouse”. In fact the features in this tab either do not really work all that well or have no practical use. Even though Focus stealing prevention is a good idea, only applications that follow the _NET_WM_USER_TIME standard will adhere to this feature.

Accessibility

The best feature in this tab is the Key used to grab and move windows. When you press the configured key you can click anywhere on a window and drag that window around. Another nice feature in this tab is the Hide frame of windows when maximized. Although the space gained isn’t much, by losing the window frame you have a much closer to “full screen” effect without losing your titlebar.

Workspaces

From this tab I like to set Use the mouse wheel on the desktop to switch workspaces. This means I do not have to drag my mouse all the way down to the pager to switch workspaces. There is also two wrapping features you might want to set:

Wrap works spaces depending on the actual desktop layout: Wrapping workspaces means you can take a window and drag it to the left or right to move it to the next adjacent workspace.

Wrap workspaces when the first or last workspace is reached: If you have four workspaces and you drag a window to workspace four, in order to get that window back to workspace 1 all you need to do is continue dragging to the right. So the left edge of workspace 1 is adjacent to the right edge of workspace four (or your first and last if you have more than four).

Placement

There is a really nice feature in this tab called Smart Placement. You can set it so that windows open either always in the center of your screen or centered on your cursor. Add this to the mouse menu (right click anywhere on the desktop) where you can start an application without having to go to the start button and you can dictate where all of your windows are to open.

Compositor

This feature, of course, is only available to those with the hardware to support compositing. If you’ve read me enough you know I am a big fan of compositing. In this tab you can set the opacity of:

• Window decorations.
• Inactive windows.
• Windows during move.
• Windows during resize.
• Popup windows.

From this tab you can also set shadows for:

• Regular windows.
• Popup windows.
• Dock windows.

Final thoughts

As you can see, Xfce 4 has started to really challenge the big boys in features. Add to that the lighter footprint and lightning fast speed and you have the makings of an outstanding replacement for either KDE or GNOME.

In this piece of the puzzle we are going to take a look at Xfce’s “control panel”, the Xfce 4 Settings Manager. From this tool you can configure nearly all of the preferences for the Xfce 4′s desktop. It’s a very handy tool to have installed and will keep you from having to poke around the menu system to find the various setting tools.

Installation

The Xfce Settings Manager is not installed by default. So you may or may not have it. If you look in Start > Preferences and do not see Xfce 4 Settings Manager resting at the top of your menu, it is not installed. To install this tool you need only follow these simple steps:

1. Open up the Add/Remove Software tool (found in Start > Administration > Add/Remove Software).
2. Search for “xfce4-settings” (no quotes).
3. Mark xfce4-settings for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! You should now see the tool in the Administration sub-menu.

Included tools

Figure 1

When you fire up the Settings Manager you will see everything you need in one window (see Figure 1):

• Accessibility: Configure your keyboard and mouse accessibility such as sticky/slow/bounce keys as well as mouse acceleration and repeat interval.
• Appearance: Customize the look of your desktop (style, icons, fonts, settings).
• Calendar: This controls the Orage settings.
• Desktop: Configure the background wallpaper, menus, and icons.
• Display: Change the resolution of your display.
• File Manager: Configure the behavior of the Thunar file manager.
• Input method: Enable other input devices (like Tablets).
• Keyboard: Configure the behavior of your keyboard (shortcuts, layout, etc).
• Mouse: Configure how the mouse pointer and devices behave.
• Notification: Customize how notifications appear on your desktop.
• Panel: Customize your Xfce panel.
• Preferred applications: Set the preferred web browser, mail reader, and terminal emulator.
• Removable drives and media: Configure the management of removable drives and media (cameras, PDAs, printers, input devices, etc).
• Session and startup: Configure the desktop startup (such as auto-start applications), the splash screen, manage your current session, and configure GNOME or KDE compatibility.
• Window Manager: Configure the style, focus, keyboard shortcuts, window snapping, workspace wrapping, and double-click action.
• Window Manager Tweaks: Configure window manager effects (like compositing, placement, workspaces, window cycling, etc).
• Workspaces: Configure how many workspaces as well as each workspaces name.

That’s quite a lot of available configurations for a desktop environment thought to be too light weight and featureless to be of any use. In fact, after playing around with the Settings Manager you will quickly realize how flexible and powerful Xfce really has become.

You will notice no OK or Save buttons. This is because as you make a change to any of the settings available in the Settings Manager, they are saved immediately. Just click the Close button and you’re good to go.

Final thoughts

I hope you are starting to see that Xfce 4 is not just a desktop people use when they have an old machine. In fact, this desktop is quite power and might be just the ticket for those looking for something a bit different and a bit more “old school” with “new school” capabilities.

I am going to start by showing how to install and start using Xfce 4. I have already introduced this lightweight window manager way back in my article “Get to know Linux: Xfce 4“. That article only skimmed the surface of a window manager that is only barely shy in the feature listing of either GNOME or KDE, and requires much less in the resources category. Let’s take a look at how to get it up and running and how to begin using this desktop.

Installation

The installation of Xfce is actually quite simple. I am going to show you how to install in Fedora 13. The easiest method is to open up Add/Remove Software tool and do a search for “xfce” (no quotes). What you are going to find in the search results is a LOT of possibilities. What you MUST find is a listing for xfce-desktop. Beyond that, here are some of the applications I would recommend you install:

• xfce-utils
• xfce4-taskmanager
• xfce4-settings
• xfce4-session
• xfce4-panel
• xfce4-notifyd
• xfce4-icon-theme
• xfce4-doc
• libxfcegui4
• libxfce4util
• libxfce4menu

You can look through the full listing and see if there’s anything else that strikes your fancy. Mark all of the above for installation (Don’t worry, the installation tool will pick up all dependencies) and click Apply to install. It may take a while for the installation to complete, but once it does log out of the current desktop and then log in again, choosing Xfce as your desktop environment.

The desktop

Figure 1

When you log into the latest Xfce you might be surprised to see that it looks like a standard: Complete with a panel, icons, notification area, and more.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of the Window Manager as the Window Manager (xfwm4) is what you will do much of your interaction with.

The Window Manager

You will be surprised to know that Xfce is not a Window Manager. Xfce is a Desktop Environment. The Window Manager that controls the drawing function of windows is xfwm4 and is a very stable, very lightweight WM. If you look at the upper right corner of each window in Xfce you will notice four icons. From the left to the right they are:

• ^ Roll up.
• - Minimize
• + Full screen
• X Close

Very simple. The Window Manager is configured in two places. The first place is Start > Preferences > Window Manager where you can configure the style, keyboard, focus, and advanced features. I, for one, always like to change the default focus model to “focus follows mouse” as well as set the autoraise. These are always the first things I change when using a new desktop.

The second location for configuring xfwm is Start > Preferences > Window Manager Tweaks. This configuration tool allows you to “tweak”:

• Window cycling (using <Alt>Tab).
• Focus
• Accessibility
• Workspaces
• Placement
• Compositor

That’s correct! Xfce 4 has compositing built in. And in our next article, we’ll take a look at that and other “tweaks” you can have fun with in the Window Manager Tweaks tool.

Final thoughts

You will be surprised how well Xfce 4 works. It’s amazingly fast, user-friendly, and has some bells and whistles you would think only came with bigger Desktop Environments. I hope you enjoy our little exploration of Xfce 4. And who knows, maybe it will wind up your desktop of choice?

Today’s upgrade may have changed my mind all together about this particular desktop. KDE now enjoys a very similar feel it had with 3.5. It’s solid, reliable, beautiful, and user-friendly. But is it enough to make you want to use it? Let’s first install it and then poke around a bit.

Installation

I am running KDE on a Ubuntu 9.10 install. The upgrade for KDE 4.3.5 is very simple if you follow these steps:

Open up a terminal window.

1. Issue the command sudo /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. Enter your password.
3. Uncomment out the line deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-backports main restricted universe multiverse.
4. Issue the command sudo apt-get update.
5. Open up your update manager.
6. Check for updates.
7. Install the updates.
8. Close all running applications.
9. Log out of your desktop.
10. Log back into, making sure you choose KDE as your desktop.

Figure 1

You should now be running KDE 4.3.5. You can check by opening up the Dolphin file manager and click the Help > About KDE. You should see KDE 4.3.5 as shown in Figure 1.

Once you have verified that the update was successful, play around for a bit. What is the first thing you notice? For me it was that everything seemed to really feel stable and much, much speedier. Prior to this update KDE still seemed a bit unsure of what it was going to do next and it felt sluggish, even on a fairly modern, dual-core machine.  That seems to be a thing of the past.

What is new

What should surprise you the most is how few updates KDE 4.3.5 brought to the table. If you read the full changelog you will find 25 bugs were squashed. That’s not many. So either KDE has obfuscated the rest of the bug listings or the bugs they resolved were fairly serious in nature.

It also seems the Compiz support is getting better and better with each release. Although Compiz is not nearly as fully realized in KDE as it is in GNOME, it is getting to the point where KDE and Compiz play well together.

Should you use it?

Figure 2

Without a doubt, if you are a KDE user,  this is a must-have update. If you are running any version of KDE 4 earlier than 4.3.5 you owe it to yourself to upgrade. And if you’re not currently a KDE users, now is a good time to give this desktop a try. Why? With the latest release of KDE comes a desktop that might well win you over from GNOME or any other desktop.

And if you’re unsure, give Figure 2 a look and see what you are missing. What you see here is the coverflow-like application switcher default in KDE 4.3.5.

What does the future hold?

The most exciting prospect of KDE 4.4 is the social desktop and the netbook Plasma. The social desktop will bring your social network to widgets on your Plasma desktop. And the netbook Plasma will offer a much more modern desktop to those adorable little mini-laptops.

Xfce 4 is a fine example of how a full-blown Desktop Environment can be both feature rich as well as light weight. Xfce 4 is based on the GTK+ toolkit which immediately puts in in the same category as GNOME. Xfce started in 1996 and stands for XForms Common Environment (because of the original toolkit it used.)  Most users will find Xfce surprisingly on par with most modern PC desktops. Let’s take a look.

Features

Xfce 4 comes with all of the features you have grown used to on a PC desktop, including:

• Panel: By default there are two. These panels are very similar to the setup in GNOME.
• Icons: Clickable icons to luanch applications from the desktop.
• Notification Area: Portion of the panel that allows small applets to give information or allow quick interaction.
• Themeable: Add new themes to customize your desktop look.
• Menus: Both a mouse menu and a traditional start menu.
• Centralized settings manager

The desktop

Figure 1

As you can see, in Figure 1, the Xfce desktop looks very familar. At the top is Panel 1. This panel contains the Show Desktop button, the Window List, the Notification Area, and the Trashcan. Along the left side are clickable icons. To the right is the mouse menu which appears with a right mouse click. At the bottom is Panel 2 which contains the Start Menu, application launchers, Log out button, and the clock.

There is another mouse menu that will appear when you click the middle mouse button (or the right and left button simultaneously). This mounse menu relates to the workspaces. You can switch workspaces and add/remove workspaces. With this mouse menu you can safely remove the Pager from Panel 1 to remove a little clutter from the top of your desktop. Once the Pager is removed you click your middle mouse button and select the workspace you want to work in from that list.

Configuring Xfce

Xfce has a nice Control Panel-esque application, the Xfce Settings Manager. As you can see, in Figure 2 below, the Settings Manager can configure most aspects of the desktop. You will notice the Window Manager button. When you click this button a new window will open that allows you to configure the following aspects of the window manager:

Figure 2

• Style: This is the theme.
• Keyboard: Keyboard shortcuts.
• Focus: How windows get focus.
• Advanced: Window snapping, Wrap workspace, opaque moving, and title bar double click action.

One very interesting configuration option is the Sessions and Startup button. When you select this you can tell Xfce to launch either GNOME or KDE services at startup. Because Xfce is aware of both KDE and GNOME, it can incorporate their services. Take a look back at Figure 1. In the top right you will see the Wireless applet icon. This is the Network Manager applet that is used by GNOME.

Launchers

Figure 3

We all know what launchers do: They launch applcations. Upon first inspection it is difficult to figure out how to create an application launcher. If you right click one of the launchers already on the desktop you will notice a menu entry “Desktop”. Within this submenu you can select:

• Create Launcher
• Create URL Link
• Create Folder

As you can see, in Figure 3, creating a launcher is straight-forward. Just fill in the information and click Create. You will notice two entries that might not be familiar:

• Use startup notification: This will create a clock-like icon that will inform you that something is starting up.
• Run in terminal: This is for applications that require a terminal for execution. You could create a launcher for the top application which must be run in a termina.

Final Thoughts

Xfce is one fine Linux desktop. It is versatile, stable, light weight, and easy to use. You will find Xfce offers you the best of both worlds: It has the feeling of a light weight window manager with the added bonus of a full-featured desktop.

With that in mind let us begin by illustrating the differences between a desktop environment and a window manager. We’ll begin by showing how the Linux graphical desktop is layered.

As you can see, in the image below, there are basically three layers that can be included in the Linux desktop:

• X Windows – This is the foundation that allows for graphic elements to be drawn on the display. X Windows builds the primitive framework that allows moving of windows, interactions with keyboard and mouse, and draws windows. This is required for any graphical desktop.
• Window Manager: The Window Manager is the piece of the puzzle that controls the placement and appearance of windows. Window Managers include: Enlightenment, Afterstep, FVWM, Fluxbox, IceWM, etc. Requires X Windows but not a desktop environment.
• Desktop Environment: This is where it begins to get a little fuzzy for some. A Desktop Environment includes a Window Manager but builds upon it. The Desktop Environment typically is a far more fully integrated system than a Window Manager. Requires both X Windows and a Window Manager.

A Desktop Environment generally includes a suite of applications that are tightly integrated so that all applications are aware of one another. A Desktop Manager will also include some form of panel that includes a system tray where small widgets can be placed for quick action or information.

Linux Desktop Layering

Much of the confusion starts to peek out when you examine such Window Managers as E17 (Enlightenment 17).

The most recent iteratio of Enlightenment includes many of the elements usually found only Desktop Environments even though Enlightenment is still considered a Window Manager. To this point I generally refer to such desktops as Desktop Managers.

There are two main Desktop Environments: GNOME and KDE. If you are curious as to which is right for you, here is some advice. The latest default GNOME will make users of OS X feel right at home, KDE 3.x will make Windows XP users feel at home, and KDE 4.x will make Windows Vista users feel at home.

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As to which Window Manager is best suited for which user? Since there are so many Window Managers I will highlight my favorites.

• Enlightenment: You want plenty of eye candy but not something as resource-intensive as KDE or GNOME.
• Fluxbox: You want minimal and fast.
• Afterstep: You want something old-school to give you hours of tinkering fun.
• Xfce: You want a Windows-like interface without the bloatware of GNOME or KDE.
• Compiz-Fusion: This is a full-blown 3 dimensional window manager rife with plugs that do just about everything. If you want something to seriously impress your friends, this is where you want to look.

One of the most wonderful things about the Linux desktop is that it is only limited to your imagination. You can make the Linux desktop look and feel exactly how you want it. You can go from complete minimalism to the full-blown 3D goodness of Compiz-Fusion. I will give you one warning: Playing with the Linux desktop might be as much of a time-suck as World of Warcraft.