According to this blog entry by Sean Davis, Xfce contributor and Xubuntu Technical Lead, Xfce 4.12 is to be released in about one week, this being quite an important announcement, since it comes after almost three years in which no new releases have occurred.
Xfce hasn’t seen a major release in almost three years, with 4.10 being the last stable release, bundled in distributions such as Xubuntu or Linux Mint Xfce edition.
After what seems like an eternity, a new release of Xfce is finally just around the corner. Xfce 4.10 was released in 2012, and since then development has happened in small bursts for each project.
The release date has been set to February 28, in less than one week:
With just one week until the determined release date (February 28), string freeze is behind us and all that remains is bug fixes.
A call for contributions has also been made, and according to the announcement, anyone can start contributing in various areas, such as fixing bugs, submitting patches, testing or translations:
If you’ve got some development skills, why not swing by the Xfce Bugzilla and provide some patches? Right now your patches have the best chance of being noticed and merged, so your hard work won’t go to waste!
Switching through applications using Alt+Tab:
Xfce is a complete lightweight desktop environment based on GTK, with a classic desktop and lightweight applications, probably one of the most used DEs together with GNOME, KDE or the Unity interface.
Display settings:
Desktop settings:
Power manager:
According to Sean Davis, there are many more changes under the hood. For more screenshots and the complete announcement, see this link.