Installing XFce4
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## Installing XFce4

### Components of XFce 4

The XFce 4 components are packaged separately. At the time of this writing the following modules are available.

#### Libraries

Unlike previous versions, XFce 4 provides a development platform consisting of a set of libraries that provide helper functions and widgets to make a program fit in nicely with the XFce 4 environment.

libxfce4util

  Library with non-graphical helper functions.

libxfcegui4

  Widget library and X Window System interaction.

libxfce4mcs

  Settings management library used by most XFce 4 modules.

#### Desktop

These modules provide the basic functionality of the desktop environment.

xfce-mcs-manager

  Settings manager. Provides a control center for settings manager plugins that are installed by other modules.

xfce-mcs-plugins

  Settings manager plugins. These plugins provide settings dialogs for general items that are not part of a package, e.g. GTK settings, mouse settings and keyboard settings.

xfwm4

  The XFce 4 window mananger. Manages the placement of application windows on the screen, provides window decorations and manages workspaces or virtual desktops.

xfce4-panel

  The XFce 4 panel. Provides program lauchers, a workspace switcher, a clock, panel menus and more.

xfdesktop

  Desktop background manager. This program sets the background image and/or color, and provides a root window menu. The module also provides two settings manager dialogs that allow you to change the background and change number of workspaces.

xfce-utils

  Essential utilities and scripts. Provides a taskbar, the XFce 4 about dialog, a run dialog and several important scripts that are used by other packages including the panel. Also contains this user guide.

xffm

  File manager with integrated samba network browser.

xfprint

  Print dialog. Provides a graphical frontend for printing. Includes `xfprint4` and `xfprint-manager`.

gtk-xfce-engine-2

  Theme engine for GTK2. Not required for the desktop, but it's a nice theme engine so you might just as well give it a try.

#### Extras

There are a number of additional packages that are not part of the main desktop release that provide themes or extra functionality.

xfwm4-themes

  Window decoration themes for xfwm4.

xffm-icons

  Icon themes for the xffm file manager.

xfce4-themes

  Icon themes for the XFce 4 panel.

xfce4-iconbox

  An iconbox that can be used as an alternative for the taskbar provided in the xfce-utils package. See the section called “Getting started” to find out how to modify the startup script.

xfce4-mixer

  Volume control for the panel. Includes simple mixer dialog.

xfce4-systray

  Notification area or system tray for the panel. Note that there can be only one system tray running at the time, so you have to disable the system tray on the taskbar to use this panel plugin.

xfce4-toys

  Less serious utilities and additions for the panel. Currently contains a tips/fortunes dialog and an xeyes implementation for the panel.

xfce4-trigger-laucher

  Provides a toggle button for the panel, showing on or off state. Check the README file provided in the package for more information.

### Binary packages

The XFce 4 project officially only releases source code for the desktop environment. However, binary packages may have been contributed by other people for your OS or distribution.

Martin Loschwitz is the debian developer who maintains the XFce 4 packages for Debian unstable. Up-to-date versions should be available soon after the release.

Look at the XFce site for download locations and additional information about available binary packages.

If you could not find binary packages for your OS, they may be available from your OS vendor or distributor, or you can install XFce 4 from source.

### Building from source

Look at the XFce site for download locations for the source tarballs.

Building the packages should be a simple matter of unpacking the tarballs and, from the top source directory, typing:

    ./configure && make && make install

Some package will have extra configure options available. You can find them by typing ./configure `--help`.

XFce 4 depends on pkg-config, GTK+ >= 2.0.6, libxml2 and, for xffm, on libdbh, which is available from SourceForge. If you installed these from a binary package, make sure you have the corresponding `-dev` packages installed as well.

Optionally you can install librsvg >= 2.2, for SVG icon support, and libstartup-notification, to have a busy cursor when loading applications that support this standard.

If you install into a different prefix from pkg-config, you have to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable to include the path to the *.pc files installed by the XFce 4 libraries, which is ${prefix}/lib/pkgconfig. For example:

    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

All source tarballs also contain a so called spec file that allows you to build your own rpm's:

    rpmbuild -ta module-x.y.z.tar.gz

### Using CVS

The latest development sources for XFce 4 are available from CVS.

Look here for information on how to obtain the latest development updates from CVS. You can also use the WebCVS link to browse the CVS tree.

### Additional software

The XFce Goodies project collects third-party contributions for XFce 4. There are some excellent panel plugins available that greatly enhance the functionality of XFce 4.

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