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101-413: Xfce or XFCE (pronounced as four individual letters) is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Xfce aims to be fast and lightweight while still being visually appealing and easy to use. It embodies the traditional Unix philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of separately packaged parts that together provide all functions of
202-586: A chroma keying or green screening extension . Compositing was introduced by way of the Composite Extension . Compositing managers use hardware acceleration through this extension, if available. Under X11, the ability to do full 3D-accelerated compositing required fundamental changes to the window system protocol in order to use hardware acceleration. Originally, a number of modified X11 implementations designed around OpenGL began to appear, including Xgl . The introduction of AIGLX would eliminate
303-543: A complete rewrite of the project based on GTK , a non-proprietary toolkit then rising in popularity. The result was Xfce 3.0, licensed under the GPL. As well as being based completely on free software , it gained GTK drag-and-drop support, native language support, and improved configurability. Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1. In version 4.0.0, released 25 September 2003, Xfce
404-421: A compositing manager, if a window stops repainting itself when requested by the window manager, its last repaint will remain displayed and the window might be dimmed. Often, the title changes to reflect the status of the window as unresponsive. A program may prevent its window from being moved or unmapped, but generally will not cause repainting problems. One of the first systems with a compositing windowing system
505-422: A distance. Zoom effects such as the fish eye magnifier and zoom desktop effects provide this functionality. A preview of a window can be displayed in a pop-up thumbnail when the user hovers its associated taskbar button. This allows the user to identify and manage several concurrently running programs. Windows with similar names and icons tend to cause confusion, especially when their title bars overlap;
606-400: A drop-down terminal emulator, similar to Guake or Tilda . Xfwm is a window manager, supporting custom themes. Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm integrates its own compositing manager . A file searching tool, able to perform in-name and in-text matching, as well searching by file type and last modified time. It is also capable of performing indexing by using an mlocate database. Thunar
707-601: A larger program called Mission Control . On macOS, "widgets" (single-purpose applets ) such as a clock, note pad, and calculator can appear by pressing a hotkey . Widget engines speed work by keeping commonly used widgets accessible while unobtrusive. They are handled by the Dashboard program in macOS. Compiz starts with a blank Widget Layer, allowing the user to add applications by clicking on them. A variety of widgets are supported, including Screenlets , gDesklets and SuperKaramba . Windows Vista provides gadgets that
808-606: A niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat , has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development. Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change
909-467: A number of displays and virtual desktops . Computer graphics technology allows for visual effects to be rendered in real time such as drop shadows , live previews, and complex animation. Since the screen is double buffered , it does not flicker during updates. The most commonly used compositing managers and compositing window managers include: The window manager sends each window a message to repaint itself when needed. Windows may overlap. When
1010-420: A number of features that make the user interface more accessible, simpler to use or with eye candy elements. Vector graphics , such as TrueType fonts and 3D-accelerated elements, can be expanded without degradation (usually due to aliasing ). A screen magnifier enlarges an area of the screen, making portions of text easier to read – whether to prevent eye strain , for the visually impaired , or simply at
1111-437: A panel clock plugin and an international clock application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different time zones. With Xfce 4.16, and the dropping of GTK2 support for panel plugins, orage was replaced with DateTime plugin. Mousepad is the default text editor for Xfce in some Linux distributions, including Xubuntu . Mousepad aims to be an easy-to-use and fast editor, meant for quickly editing text files, not
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#17327835396571212-581: A single unified term that could refer to both concepts, although Richard Stallman argues that it fails to be neutral unlike the similar term; "Free/Libre and Open Source Software" (FLOSS). Richard Stallman 's Free Software Definition , adopted by the FSF, defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price, and that which upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest known publication of this definition of his free software definition
1313-451: A software development environment or an editor with a large plugin ecosystem. It does offer tabbed files, syntax highlighting, parentheses matching and indentation features commonly found in software editors. It closely follows the GTK -system release cycle. It originated as a fork of Leafpad , was developed by Erik Harrison and Nick Schermer, but has since been rewritten from scratch. Parole
1414-534: A stack – similar to a flip-style selector in a 1950s jukebox , or a Rolodex . In some systems, the user can press Alt-Shift-Tab to navigate backwards. Visual transitions are applied to each item while navigating. Common implementations of flip switching include Flip 3D in Windows and Shift Switcher in Compiz. Cover switching is like flip switching with a few, mostly visual, differences. Instead of one stack with
1515-681: A variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source. Compositing window manager A compositing manager , or compositor , is software that provides applications with an off-screen buffer for each window. The compositing manager composites the window buffers into an image representing the screen and writes the result into the display memory. Compositing managers may perform additional processing on buffered windows, applying 2D and 3D animated effects such as blending , fading , scaling , rotation , duplication , bending and contortion, shuffling, blurring , redirecting applications, and translating windows into one of
1616-535: A wide array of 2D and 3D effects and has relatively low hardware requirements. In 2012, Compiz was included in Ubuntu Linux, and was enabled automatically when supported hardware and drivers were available and the user had not selected 2D Mode. Mutter (Metacity + Clutter ) has replaced Metacity as the default window manager for GNOME . It is featured in the GNOME Shell component of GNOME 3.0. It uses
1717-410: A window in front is moved, it can reveal an area of a window behind that was previously concealed. Window managers are broadly categorised by their strategy for causing that newly revealed area to be displayed to the user. In the "stacking" strategy, the window manager tells the back window to repaint itself. In the "compositing" strategy, the window manager maintains an off-screen memory buffer containing
1818-660: Is a simple media player based on the GStreamer framework. It is designed with simplicity, speed and resource usage in mind, and is part of the Xfce Goodies and uses at least three libraries from the Xfce project (libxfce4ui, libxfce4util, and libxfconf). It is similar to GNOME Videos , but it has some advantages and disadvantages compared to it: An image viewer (supporting slideshow mode). Ristretto can operate on folders of images, and display their thumbnails in addition to
1919-566: Is called a Wayland compositor . Weston is a reference implementation of a Wayland compositor; KWin and Mutter are also Wayland compositors as well as being X11 compositing window managers. Project Looking Glass was a window manager combining 3D rendering and the cross-platform Java programming language. It is now inactive and released under the GNU General Public License . The Granular Linux live CD distribution includes Looking Glass as an optional window manager. In
2020-484: Is incongruent with the interface metaphor (and with a physical office setting). Some systems like the Classic Mac OS avoided this issue with ZoomRects , animating the windows outline "zooming" toward its final position. But on most systems, the sudden appearance and disappearance of GUI elements may seem confusing or even chaotic to inexperienced users. Visual transitions provide context and help distinguish
2121-423: Is like flip switching, except the windows move in a circle, with the current selection in front, usually at the bottom. Most compositing window managers include this feature out of the box , and third-party applications , such as 3d-desktop , are also available. The user can group windows together, such that only one window at a time is visible in each group. In Compiz, the window frame is flipped to indicate when
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#17327835396572222-401: Is the default file manager for Xfce, replacing Xffm. It resembles GNOME's Nautilus , and is designed for speed and a low memory footprint, as well as being highly customizable through plugins. Xfce also has a lightweight archive manager called Xarchiver, but this is not part of the core Xfce 4.4.0. More recently, Squeeze has been started as an archive manager designed to integrate better into
2323-534: Is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird . Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose
2424-663: Is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software . The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation , which were only later available on
2525-480: The SuperTuxKart game, in which various open source mascots race against each other, the mouse is said to be a female named "Xue". Xfce began as a simple project created with XForms. Olivier Fourdan released the program, which was just a simple taskbar , on SunSITE . Fourdan continued developing the project and in 1998, Xfce 2 was released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm. He requested
2626-513: The Amiga 1200 . As such, their window managers have mostly planar rendering capabilities that include composite layering, alpha blending, gradients, high resolution and multiple desktops ("screens") that can partially clip one another. While the window manager in Windows 2000 does perform compositing, it does not perform transformations such as a per-pixel alpha. Few commercial applications took advantage of alpha blending; freeware programs were among
2727-572: The Pandora handheld gaming system. It is the default desktop environment in the following Linux distributions : It is also included as a standard desktop option on FreeBSD and derivatives such as GhostBSD , and in many other Linux distributions not listed above, including Arch Linux , Debian , Gentoo , Ubuntu , openSUSE , Fedora , Kali , Linux Mint , Slackware , Mageia , OpenMandriva , Void Linux and Zorin OS . Kali Linux also uses Xfce as
2828-738: The United Space Alliance , which manages the computer systems for the International Space Station (ISS), regarding why they chose to switch from Windows to Linux on the ISS. In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data , mobility, cloud computing and
2929-457: The cursor , and the window manager . Additionally, Xfce provides a fully GUI -based system for modifying the desktop's status bar and system tray . Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment which omits many of the visually appealing features (such as animations) present in other desktop environments such as KDE Plasma and GNOME . These omissions allow Xfce to run much more smoothly on low-end personal computers . Olivier Fourdan started
3030-665: The hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , announced the GNU project , saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals
3131-494: The internet of things . In 2020, the European Commission adopted its Open Source Strategy 2020-2023 , including encouraging sharing and reuse of software and publishing Commission's source code as key objectives. Among concrete actions there is also to set up an Open Source Programme Office in 2020 and in 2022 it launched its own FOSS repository https://code.europa.eu/ . In 2021, the Commission Decision on
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3232-609: The open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS , free or libre. "Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software . The precise definition of the terms "free software" and "open-source software" applies them to any software distributed under terms that allow users to use, modify, and redistribute said software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay
3333-574: The Desktop Window Manager in Project Longhorn to the 2003 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference , demonstrating wobbly windows . Severe delays in the development of Longhorn caused Microsoft not to debut its 3D-compositing window-manager until the release of Windows Vista in January 2007. Implementing compositing under the X Window System required some redesign, which took place incrementally. Metacity 2.8.4
3434-638: The EU. These recommendations are to be taken into account later in the same year in Commission's proposal of the "Interoperable Europe Act" . While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
3535-706: The FOSS ecosystem, several projects decided against upgrading to GPLv3. For instance the Linux kernel , the BusyBox project, AdvFS , Blender , and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3. Apple , a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang , which is another FOSS compiler but is under a permissive license . LWN speculated that Apple
3636-653: The Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights. After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in
3737-599: The Mac in Mac OS X 10.2, and for Linux in a Luminocity prototype. Currently, window managers using OpenGL include Compiz, KWin, and the Quartz Compositor, while Desktop Window Manager currently uses DirectX 9. OpenGL is still not fully supported in hardware, so performance of OpenGL-based compositing should continue to improve as hardware improves . Stacking window managers running on the X Window System (X11) required
3838-586: The XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but it is no longer capitalized as “XFCE” and is no longer an abbreviation for anything (although suggestions have been made, such as “X Freakin' Cool Environment”). The Slackware Linux distribution has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", a loose interpretation of the initialism. Per the FAQ, the logo of Xfce is "a mouse, obviously, for all kinds of reasons like world domination and monsters and such." In
3939-472: The Xfce desktop, and though no releases have been made since 2008, the git repository of squeeze has been active and this version is more feature-rich than the last stable release. Starting with version 4.4, Xfcalendar was renamed to Orage (French for "thunderstorm") and several features were added. Orage has alarms and uses the iCalendar format, making it compatible with many other calendar applications, e.g. vdirsyncer to sync via CalDAV . It also includes
4040-515: The Xfce project in late 1996 as a Linux version of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), a Unix desktop environment that was initially proprietary and later released as free software . The first Xfce release was in early 1997. However, over time, Xfce diverged from CDE and now stands on its own. The name Xfce originally stood for “XForms Common Environment”, but since then Xfce has been rewritten twice and doesn't use
4141-504: The Xfce project, but it can be used in other X Window System environments as well. It supports tabs, customizable key bindings, colors, and window sizes. It was designed to replace GNOME Terminal , which depends on the GNOME libraries. Like GNOME Terminal, though, it is based on the VTE library. Xfce Terminal can be configured to offer a varying background color for each tab. It can also be used as
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4242-432: The active image. A CD/DVD optical disc authoring software . Starting with the 4.12 release of Xfce, Xfburn is also able to burn Blu-ray discs. A screen saver and session-locking program first packaged with the 4.14 release of Xfce. It uses screensaver themes compatible with Xscreensaver. Although forked from MATE Screensaver, it depends only on Xfce libraries. Xfce is included as one of the graphical user interfaces on
4343-445: The active window in its group has been changed. macOS displays a preview of every window on the screen by tiling them. Other systems with similar functionality (Microsoft Windows, Compiz, KWin, third-party applications) are referred to as Exposé clones. The hotkey to activate Exposé is not Alt-Tab, but rather F3. Mac OS X 10.7 combines several other compositing features developed by Apple—such as Exposé, Dashboard , and Spaces —into
4444-402: The actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption. Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB , owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008. Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both
4545-419: The aftermath of it being discontinued, some of its features, such as cover switching and thumbnail live previews, have found their way onto other window managers. Its more original features included window tilting, two-sided window frames and parallax scrolling backgrounds. While they are able to run on 3D-capable hardware, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS are designed to run on old legacy Amiga computers, starting with
4646-412: The application is running with root privileges , warning the user that they could damage system files. Xfce Panel is a highly configurable taskbar with a rich collection of plug-ins available for it. Many aspects of the panel and its plug-ins can be configured easily through graphical dialogs, but also by GTK style properties and hidden Xfconf settings. A terminal emulator is provided as part of
4747-470: The author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities. Although there is an almost complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) and have
4848-498: The causal relationships of GUI elements. Instead of just disappearing, a window may fade away, or visibly shrink to the taskbar. A pull-down menu that has been clicked may smoothly radiate outward from the menu bar, making it easier to determine its origin and purpose. Gradual and natural transitions may be especially helpful for elderly or visually impaired users who notice changes to the screen more slowly and with less clarity. For example, an inexperienced user may impulsively click on
4949-434: The concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code . A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." Companies have indeed faced copyright infringement issues when embracing FOSS. For many years FOSS played
5050-502: The copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States —previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable. Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code. In 1983, Richard Stallman , longtime member of
5151-404: The date and time plugins. Applications developed by the Xfce team are based on GTK and self-developed Xfce libraries. Other than Xfce itself, there are third-party programs which use the Xfce libraries . Xfce provides a development framework which contains the following components: One of the services provided to applications by the framework is a red banner across the top of the window when
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#17327835396575252-473: The desktop environment when running on the ARM platform. Debian makes a separate netinstall CD available that installs Xfce as the default desktop environment. In 2013, Debian briefly made it the default environment, replacing GNOME. Free and open-source software Free and open-source software ( FOSS ) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute
5353-416: The desktop environment, but can be selected in subsets to suit user needs and preferences. Another of its priorities is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org . Xfce is a highly modular desktop environment, with many software repositories separating its components into multiple packages. The built-in settings app offers options to customize the GTK theme, the system icons ,
5454-557: The display engine Clutter, which has been ported to all major operating systems, netbooks and smartphones . Since version 4, KDE's window manager KWin has compositing capabilities. KWin features much of the same functionality also present in Compiz . With the Wayland protocol, a compositing window manager is also a display server ; there is no display server separate from the window manager. The combined window manager/display server
5555-406: The first mainstream operating system to feature software-based 3D compositing and effects, provided by its Quartz component. With the release of Mac OS X v10.2 and Quartz Extreme , the job of compositing could move to dedicated graphics hardware . In 2003 Sun Microsystems demonstrated an ambitious 3D graphics system called Project Looking Glass to layer on top of its Swing toolkit. It
5656-657: The first to experiment with it, albeit through optional settings. Compositing was introduced with Desktop Window Manager in Windows Vista . Windows Vista and Windows 7 allow the user to disable Desktop Window Manager by selecting the Windows Basic appearance settings. In addition, it is automatically disabled by Windows in order to perform hardware overlay through the Overlay Mixer Filter . The compositing approach makes it easier to implement
5757-407: The full appearance of each window, including the back window. With a stacking manager, the repainting process can become corrupted when a program that is slow, unresponsive or buggy does not respond to messages in a timely manner. A malicious program can cause the system to appear unstable by simply neglecting to repaint its window. Then, one or more of the following conditions may result: With
5858-562: The functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software. Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software. Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify
5959-416: The goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits . Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software. It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software. According to Linus's law
6060-567: The government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs ) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980,
6161-491: The historical potential of an " economy of abundance " for the new digital world , FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism . According to Yochai Benkler , Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School , free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites
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#17327835396576262-485: The level of interest in a particular project. However, unlike close-sourced software, improvements can be made by anyone who has the motivation, time and skill to do so. A common obstacle in FOSS development is the lack of access to some common official standards, due to costly royalties or required non-disclosure agreements (e.g., for the DVD-Video format). There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining
6363-545: The more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS. Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix
6464-477: The most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB , Percona , and Drizzle . All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use
6565-415: The need to use Xgl, and allow window managers to do 3D accelerated compositing on a standard X server, while still allowing for direct rendering . Currently, NVIDIA , Intel , and ATI cards support AIGLX. Compiz introduced a cube effect, which allows the user to see up to 6 virtual desktops at once. Each desktop is converted into a surface texture of the cube, which can be rotated at will. Compiz displays
6666-640: The open source licensing and reuse of Commission software (2021/C 495 I/01) was adopted, under which, as a general principle, the European Commission may release software under EUPL or another FOSS license, if more appropriate. There are exceptions though. In May 2022, the Expert group on the Interoperability of European Public Services came published 27 recommendations to strengthen the interoperability of public administrations across
6767-606: The panel to prevent buggy plugins from crashing the whole panel. In February 2009, Xfce 4.6.0 was released. This version had a new configuration backend, a new settings manager and a new sound mixer, as well as several significant improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce's core components. In January 2011, Xfce 4.8.0 was released. This version included changes such as the replacement of ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO , udev , ConsoleKit and PolicyKit , and new utilities for browsing remote network shares using several protocols including SFTP , SMB , and FTP . Window clutter
6868-544: The parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages. Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit , and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim. By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth —the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general. By realizing
6969-473: The position of every such window on the taskbar has to be memorized. When there are many open windows in this manner, the user often has to resort to trial and error—clicking each taskbar button one-by-one—before proceeding. Window switching allows one to quickly preview several windows at once by temporarily rearranging them against a decorative background. After a selection is made, the windows are then restored to their original arrangement. Selection begins when
7070-589: The project be included in Red Hat Linux , but it was refused due to its XForms basis. Red Hat accepted only open-source software released under a GPL - or BSD-compatible license, whereas, at the time, XForms was closed-source and free only for personal use. For the same reason, Xfce was not in Debian before version 3, and Xfce 2 was distributed only in Debian's contrib repository . In March 1999, Fourdan began
7171-418: The required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software. On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has
7272-484: The right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so. As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available. "We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable -- one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could." Official statement of
7373-518: The selection at the top, two symmetrical stacks are shown with the current selection front and center (similar to the window tilting feature in Looking Glass). Cover Flow is an implementation of cover switching in macOS. More recent versions use blurring to de-emphasize non-selected items. Cover Flow has also been implemented in other software published by Apple such as iTunes . This is also referred to as "flick-book view." Ring switching
7474-637: The software user's civil liberty rights via the " Four Essential Freedoms " of free software. Other benefits of using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware , stability, privacy , opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers , desktops , smartphones , and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today. The free software movement and
7575-419: The software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software . FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software , where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users. FOSS maintains
7676-521: The source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users. As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly. FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software. FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with
7777-518: The trademarked name MySQL. In August 2010, Oracle sued Google , claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but
7878-583: The user can place on the Windows Sidebar (Sidebar gadgets), a Windows Live start page (Web gadgets), or an external display, such as the user's mobile phone ( SideShow gadgets ). The Windows Sidebar was a visible partition in Windows Vista, and was eliminated in Windows 7, along with Sidebar gadgets which were changed to Desktop Gadgets . Before compositing window managers were developed, windows would instantly jump in and out of view, which
7979-528: The user either enters a hotkey combination , moves the mouse pointer to a hotspot on the screen , or, in some situations, uses the mouse's scroll wheel . Items are navigated using the keyboard or mouse. An item is selected by either releasing the hotkey, hitting the Enter key or clicking on it with the mouse. The flip switcher is an enhancement to the Alt-Tab switching feature. Running windows are arranged into
8080-837: The vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers. Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships. While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases it has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software. This varies per case, and usually depends on
8181-485: The web. Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond 's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software. In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again. From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software , including source code,
8282-534: Was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens , publisher Tim O'Reilly , Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles. While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by
8383-539: Was announced in April 2016 and was officially released on 12 August 2019. The main goals of the release included porting the remaining core components from GTK 2 to GTK 3; replacing the dependency on dbus-glib with GDBus , GNOME's implementation of the D-Bus specification; and removing deprecated widgets. Major features were postponed for a later 4.16 release. The minimum GTK 3 version was bumped from 3.14 to 3.22. Xfce 4.16
8484-447: Was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public-domain software (FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights ). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge. By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry
8585-462: Was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM , filed January 17, 1969,
8686-472: Was first shown at the 2003 LinuxWorld Expo . Although Apple threatened to sue Sun for breach of intellectual-property rights, other window managers have implemented some of the functionality in Looking Glass. By 2006 development was discontinued by Sun, whose primary business was transitioning from graphically oriented Unix workstations to selling enterprise mainframes. Microsoft first presented
8787-534: Was in the February 1986 edition of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of August 2017 , it is published in 40 languages. To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's " Four Essential Freedoms ". The Open Source Definition
8888-509: Was introduced, as well as a re-written text editor and an enhanced file manager . Xfce 4.12 also started the transition to GTK 3 by porting application and supporting plugins and bookmarks. With 4.12, the project reiterated its commitment to Unix-like platforms other than Linux by featuring OpenBSD screenshots. Xfce 4.13 is the development release during the transition of porting components to be fully GTK3-compatible, including xfce-panel and xfce-settings. The planned release of Xfce 4.14
8989-572: Was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative. Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune. He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix
9090-528: Was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto . The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and " copyleft " ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls " The Four Essential Freedoms ". The Linux kernel , created by Linus Torvalds ,
9191-637: Was reduced by merging all Thunar file progress dialog boxes into a single dialog. The panel application was also rewritten for better positioning, transparency, and item and launcher management. 4.8 also introduced a new menu plugin to view directories. The 4.8 plugin framework remains compatible with 4.6 plugins. The display configuration dialog in 4.8 supports RandR 1.2, detecting screens automatically and allowing users to pick their preferred display resolution , refresh rate , and display rotation . Multiple displays can be configured to either work in clone mode , or be placed next to each other. Keyboard selection
9292-578: Was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License . FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD ) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server , commonly referred to as Apache,
9393-765: Was released in August 2004. However, the first widely publicized compositing window manager for X was Xfwm , released in January 2005. On 26 January 2005 Compiz was released, introducing fully accelerated 3D-compositing to the Linux platform. KDE 's KWin also supports compositing. In compositing, 3D effects could be applied on windows to provide 3D desktop effects. Modern compositing window managers use 3D hardware acceleration. Compositing window manager software communicates with graphics hardware via programming interfaces such as OpenGL or Direct3D . The earliest widespread implementations using this technique were released for
9494-485: Was released on 15 December 2022. This release mainly focused on new features and improvements to the Thunar file manager including an image preview sidebar, split view, recursive file searching, better mime type handling, per-file color highlighting, undoing up to 10 actions, a recently opened files location, restoring open tabs on startup, and a customizable toolbar. Other changes include a keyboard shortcut editor and merging
9595-478: Was released on 22 December 2020. Some notable changes in this release include new icons with a more consistent color palette; improved interfaces for changing system settings; various panel improvements like animations for hiding, a new notification plugin with support for both legacy SysTray and modern StatusNotifier items, and better support for dark themes; and more information included in the About dialog. Xfce 4.18
9696-409: Was released on 28 February 2015, two years and ten months later, contrary to mass Internet speculation about the project being "dead". The target of 4.12 was to improve user experience and take advantage of technologies introduced in the interim. New window manager features include an Alt+Tab dialog, and smart multi-monitor handling. Also, a new power management plugin for the panel's notification area
9797-527: Was released under the Apache License 1.0 . In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar , a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software . This code
9898-525: Was revamped to be easier and more user-friendly. Also, the manual settings editor was updated to be more functional. The 4.8 development cycle was the first to use the new release strategy formed after the "Xfce Release and Development Model" developed at the Ubuntu Desktop Summit in May 2009. A new web application was employed to make release management easier, and a dedicated Transifex server
9999-410: Was set up for Xfce translators. The project's server and mirroring infrastructure was also upgraded, partly to cope with anticipated demand following the release announcement for 4.8. Xfce 4.10, released 28 April 2012, introduced a vertical display mode for the panel and moved much of the documentation to an online wiki . The main focus of this release was on improving the user experience. Xfce 4.12
10100-540: Was the Commodore Amiga , released in 1985. Applications could first request a region of memory outside the current display region for use as bitmap. The Amiga windowing system would then use a series of bit blits using the system's hardware blitter to build a composite of these applications' bitmaps - along with buttons and sliders - in display memory, without requiring these applications to redraw any of their bitmaps. On March 24, 2001, Mac OS X v10.0 became
10201-469: Was upgraded to use the GTK 2 libraries. Changes in 4.2.0, released 16 January 2005, included a compositing manager for Xfwm which added built-in support for transparency and drop shadows, as well as a new default SVG icon set. In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included the Thunar file manager, a replacement for Xffm. Support for desktop icons was added. Also, various improvements were made to
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