Following on from the warmly received release Xfce 4.14 the Xfce development team is turning its attention to the next major update.
And there’s some good news: it will arrive much sooner than you, I, or any other fan of this minimally-minded desktop environment could’ve imagined.
“We want to certainly stick closer to our release model (which prescribes a 6-month release cycle) this time and go for roughly a year to get to our next stable release,” says Xfce release manager Simon Steinbeiss.
The development of Xfce 4.14 roughly 4 years from planning to release — hey, it had a lot of Gtk3 porting to do — so word of a shorter timeframe for the 4.16 cycle is very welcome indeed.
Part of the reason that the next major release can arrive (comparatively) quickly is the lack of “technological jumps” scheduled. That’s to say there’s no “port everything to Gtk4” or “go Wayland native at all costs” or anything else that’s both time-consuming and deeply technical.
There’s also talk of improving the “housekeeping” behind the DE, possibly by migrating some of its bug tracking infrastructure to Gitlab (Bugzilla is a bit …off-putting to a lot of contributors).
If you’re interested in learning more about the plans for Xfce 4.16, or maybe even getting involved yourself, just head over the official wiki to pore over the roadmap.
If you’re an ardent Xfce user yourself I’d love to know what kind of features and changes you want to see in the next release. Use the comments space below to fill me (and other readers) in!