Someone recently asked me about the Debian Xfce 4.10 status, as apparently I forgot to update this post series.

So, as you might have noticed, the full Xfce 4.10 desktop environment is currently in Debian Jessie (current name for testing). All in all, the transition went well and smooth.

One of the most regular question I get about Xfce 4.10 is the panel behavior when it comes to the “task bar” expansion. In xfce4-panel 4.8, when people wanted to have a full side panel with a task bar plugin inside, they added a “Windows buttons” plugin and configured the panel to 100% length. Then the “Windows buttons” would expand to occupy all the free space on the panel. It was a special case plugins, as usually other plugins only used a fixed space. Now, in 4.10, this is not the case anymore. “Windows button” uses a fixed size. And the plugins are left-aligned, which means usually people end up with some space at the far right of the panel. To restore the previous behavior back (which is actually the pre-4.8 behavior, 4.8 was an exception by itself), one needs to add a “Separator” plugin, then configure it to expand (and optionnally select a transparent handle). Then move it next right to the “Windows buttons” plugin.

Another thing which might be a bit surprising for upgrading users is the change in the “Action buttons” plugin, which people usually use to logout. In 4.8, by default, it's set to run the logout dialog. In 4.10, by default, it's set to logout directly (but with a confirmation dialog). If you prefer the previous behavior, you can just configure the “Action buttons” plugin and select the “Log out…” item instead of the “Log out” one (I know, it's a bit confusing).

If you have any question, don't hesitate to reach us by mail or on irc (#debian-xfce on Freenode). Other than that remember that Xfce really needs you help, both in Debian and upstream (and at that point, I'd say *especially* upstream). There's a lot of unmaintained project under the Xfce umbrella, some of them part of the core (like xfce4-power-manager), so if you have some spare time and some C/GTK+ knowledge, feel free to contact the Xfce team on the mailing list.