Xfce ML FAQ

[sofar at foo-projects.org]

Hi!

Welcome to the Xfce users mailing list FAQ. This e-mail will provide you
with some valuable clues and hints on getting your questions about Xfce
answered, either by hints on where to find the documentation or support
or direct answers to the most common questions. This FAQ message is sent
periodically to the Xfce users mailinglist and to new users.

You will also find some more general tips and pointers about this
mailinglist and the Xfce project, such as related projects and groups.
Feel free to suggest additional content to this FAQ, by sending it to
the maintainer of this FAQ (listed at the bottom).


Index:

o General mailinglist information
o Which lists are there? (and what are they for?)
o Which Xfce user/project groups exist?
o So what if I need help?
o I've read the websites and I still need help!
o No disclaimers please
o Quoting style?
o What about you guys?
o Most commonly asked questions
o Xfce ML FAQ - maintainer



o General mailinglist information

The Xfce users mailinglist is hosted at our joint project servers
(foo-projects.org) and uses "mailman" to interface users, subscriptions
and stuff like that. You will need to be subscribed to post to the
mailinglists. Here are some useful links to interface with the mailinglists:

View all lists:         http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo
Subscribe/Unsubscribe:  http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce
Online Archive:         http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce


o Which lists are there? (and what are they for?)

There are "developer" and "user" lists. The general (this) user mailing
list for Xfce is "xfce at xfce.org". This is the typical list to discuss
problems that might not be bugs, questions for help, exchanging tips and
tricks and general news that might interest any Xfce user.

If you wish to discuss development issues and bugs, please refer to the
development mailing list "xfce4-dev at xfce.org". There is an obsolete list
called "xfce-dev" as well but since all of the development is done on
xfce version 4 this list is not used.

Specific lists also exist for translations (xfce-i18n at xfce.org),
announcements from the Xfce team (xfce-announce at xfce.org), commits and
autogenerated messages (xfce4-commits at xfce.org, xfce-bugs at xfce.org).

Other related projects also sometimes have mailinglists, some of them
are not hosted on foo-projects.org:

xfc:          xfc-dev at xfce.org
thunar:       thunar-dev at xfce.org
xfce goodies: goodies-dev at xfce.org


o Which Xfce user/project groups exist?

+ The Xfce team - This is the main Xfce development group that develops
the Xfce Desktop Environment. This group provides the core items of the
Xfce desktop such as session manager, window manager, panel, Xfce
libraries and such. This team also takes care of some Xfce applications
such as Xfmedia, Orage, Xffm, thunar etc. -> http://xfce.org/

+ The Xfce i18n team - a enthusiastic group of translators from all
over the world is working actively on updating and adding new translations
to the Xfce components. -> http://i18n.xfce.org/

+ The Xfce Goodies group - Any 3rd-party Xfce application is considered
an automatic member of the goodies team. The team shares a website at
http://goodies.xfce.org/ and hosts a public SVN repository.  Everyone is
welcome to contribute his Xfce application here!

+ Individual Xfce projects - Many Xfce developers and enthusiasts have
contributed or developed Xfce applications themselves. Some are too
large (xfc -> http://xfc.xfce.org/, pyxfce -> http://pyxfce.xfce.org/)
to be a goody and have their own website. You can find all of them on
the Xfce Directory (once it's finished!). -> http://directory.xfce.org/


o So what if I need help?

Getting help might be easier then you think. There's no phone number you
can call for Xfce support but we do have a large group of people that
are willing to help you in other ways. Here's a short list of them:

Official documentation: http://www.xfce.org/documentation/
User Forum:             http://forum.xfce.org/
IRC channel:            irc://irc.freenode.net/#xfce
Wiki:                   http://wiki.xfce.org/
Bugreports:             http://bugzilla.xfce.org/
List archives:          http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce

Other FAQ's exist and may prove useful to you:

http://www.spuriousinterrupt.org/projects/xfce4/index.php#faq


o I've read the websites and I still need help!

Asking on a mailing list for help is hard: Everyone will read your
question and will criticise you if you submit a question in the wrong
way. Here's some hints to maximize the chances that you get what you
want as quickly as possible:

+ Do some research first
+ Ask the right people
+ When asking in IRC, ask for pointers to help, not the explanation
+ When asking in mailinglists, format your mail properly
+ Use english
+ Be specific and detailed (but not too much)
+ Re-post the solution so others can learn

If you follow these rules everyone will be happy to help you! But don't
be afraid to ask though, this mailinglists is exactly for asking questions!

There's a good in-depth document that explains the etiquette that most
senior ML members follow. You should read this if you become a frequent
ML poster as it explains _why_ we write this way in a really good way:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Take 15 minutes to read this document, it will help you later and you
will understand much better how to get your question answered.


o No disclaimers please

If you are posting from an email account where a legal disclaimer is
automatically appended to your outgoing messages, please disable it.
If you cannot, please use a different email account, or register for a
free webmail account (GMail, Yahoo, etc.).  Note that such a disclaimer
means very little when you post an email to a public mailing list with
public archives.  Extraneous disclaimer text in email can make your
message harder to read, and tends to add a lot of useless content when
messages are replied to repeatedly.  Remember that you're posting to
a community of hundreds of people, and it's impolite to use up their
time unnecessarily.


o Quoting style?

It's very hard to understand a thread of messages if they become replies
to replies and everyone mixes quoting styles. That's why there is
something called "quoting style", that describes how you should quote
the previous posters contents when you reply to a mailinglist message.

We prefer that you use "Top quoting". That means that you should put
your reply _below_ (Put the quote on top/above your reply) the original
poster's message. That way the contents are in chronological order and
you can read the entire message thread without figuring out where the
reply belongs.

Here's a good FAQ on how to quote:

http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/nquote.html

Basically:

+ quote at the top
+ prune text from the quote that is irrelevant
+ remove footers and headers (condense)
+ put the reply directly next to (in between) the original text


o What about you guys?

Well we're just a bunch of geeks (we need girls) who like Xfce... Most
of us work on Xfce outside of our normal daily occupation such as real
work or real study (except some lucky people who do both). If you're
interested in getting to know the Xfce team a bit closer (and are okay
with a little abuse, being teased or ignored etc) you're welcome to join
us on our IRC channel (#xfce on the freenode IRC network) or read our
blogs. This might not always be about Xfce but that's life. ->
http://blog.xfce.org/


o Most commonly asked questions

There are a few questions that get asked much more often then any other.
We hope we can provide you with the information here to find out for
yourself how to find more information about them.

+ How can I start up applications (to a specific desktop | when I lauch
Xfce)?

Use the session-manager. If you still have problems with some
applications not behaving or remembering their desktop number then you
might consider using "devilspie". You can add links to applications in
~/Desktop/Autostart, but the session-manager also remembers which
applications you had running when you last logged out (and saved your
session!), and will start them again (so don't close your applications
before logging out!)

+ Can I replace Xfce program X with my favorite program Y?

Yes, you can. Xfce is developed with the idea of modularity in mind in
all components. This means that you can replace xfwm4 with another
window manager, replace xfdesktop with rox or idesk, or even nautilus.
Most of the times you can just kill the xfce component and start the
application you want to run instead, and use the session manager to
save your session when you exit.

+ How can I shutdown my computer in Xfce?

Read
http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-session#xfsm-shutdown

+ Can I install multiple Xfce versions concurrently?

You can actually, but it's a nightmare if you install one of them in a
system-default location. The best thing to do is to install every Xfce
version in a non-system location like /opt/xfce/$(XFCE_VERSION) and
adjust your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH to point to the preferred version
at run time.

+ My desktop or desktop menu has disappeared!?

It appears that xfdesktop is no longer in control of the desktop. Often
xfdesktop has died, or some other program took over the desktop. Make
sure that xfdesktop is still running first. Nautilus takes over the
desktop by default too. Please start nautilus with the --no-desktop
flag, or use gconf-editor and unset the flag that tells nautilus to
handle the desktop (/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop). Start
xfdesktop again and you should be OK again.

+ How do I edit the system application menu?

The menu is partially autogenerated by xfdesktop. If you want to just
delete or add one or two applications, add the proper .desktop file
(usually in /usr/share/applications). With the xfce4-menueditor, you can
completely customize the menu.

+ What other (hidden) settings exist?

A lot. Take a look into the manual for hidden settings for each
component.
http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfwm4#hidden_options
http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-panel#panel-kiosk

+ Where can I get Xfce packages for XXX?

The up-to-date list of other packages is found on our website and includes
links to debian, suse, freebsd etc. packages for Xfce. Please visit:

http://www.xfce.org/download/

o Xfce ML FAQ - maintainer

The current FAQ maintainer is: sofar at foo-projects.org