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Frequently Asked Questions
How to pronounce Xfce ?
“Ecks Eff See Eee”
What does it mean ?
The name Xfce originally stood for XForms Common Environment, but since then, Xfce was rewritten twice and doesn't use XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but the F is no longer capitalized (not “XFce”, but “Xfce”). Currently the abbreviation doesn't stand for anything (suggestion: X Freakin' Cool Environment). It's not pronounced “X-Face”. There is no “a” in it.
What does the logo mean ?
A mouse, obviously, for all kinds of reasons like world domination and monsters and such.
On which platforms does Xfce run currently ?
Xfce is developed to be versatile. It is currently supported on Linux, Solaris and BSD, but has been known to run in some shape or form on IRIX, MacOS X, and Windows.
Under which license is Xfce distributed ?
Xfce 4 components are licensed under free or open source licenses: GPL or BSDL for applications and LGPL or BSDL for libraries. Read the documentation, the source code, or the Xfce homepage for more information.
How long between two official release ?
There is no set schedule, but there are goals the developers try to meet. That said, the creation of deadlines does not lend itself well to those working without compensation. So the overall goal is to release a new version as certain goals are reached. Unfortunately, that does not allow the advanced statement of any release schedule. Please check back often to read any news releases about the product.
How to configure Shortcuts / Hotkeys / Menu Accelerators ?
A number of Xfce applications (Thunar, for example) support the standard GTK2 way of changing shortcuts: simply hover over the menu option with the mouse pointer and press the keyboard shortcut you want to rebind it to.
To delete a keyboard assignment, press the Backspace key while you are on the menu entry.
If the shortcut doesn't change, then you need to enable the feature in GTK+. This can be achieved in 3 ways:
- If you are running the Xfce desktop environment, enable Editable menu accelerators in the User Interface Preferences dialog.
- If you are running GNOME then you can enable Editable menu accelerators in the Menu and Toolbars control center dialog.
- Otherwise put the following in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file (create the file if it doesn't exist):
gtk-can-change-accels=1
xfsettingsd
is running you must change the setting with the Xfce GUI, not through the .gtkrc-2.0
file.
Refer to specific app's documentation to learn how to configure its shortcuts.
Is there some way to call the menu with the keyboard in the xfce?
Assign a key with the Keyboard Settings → Shortcuts to the command xfdesktop -menu
. (This does not work reliably since Linux Kernel is tickless, so xfdesktop -menu needs a fix) The menu will popup where your mouse is located. You can also use xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu
to popup the panel menu (also provided by xfdesktop and make sure you have the plugin in your panel ^_~).
Is it possible to focus the Verve plugin with a key?
Assign a key to the command verve-focus
My windows button does not work in the Keyboard Settings > Shortcuts.
The windows button (also known as the superkey) not working as a modifier is related to the toolkit, GTK+ in the case of Xfce. If you want to have the windows-key working we recommend you to upgrade GTK+ to at least version 2.10.0.
How do I get numlock to start on login?
There are two possibilities to achieve this. Or you should use a display manager that turns the numlock on (eg. gdm, check the settings) or you can use a little program called numlockx, adding numlockx
on in your .xinitrc will do the job.
Is it possible to use Media keys in the Shortcut Editor?
Use xmodmap to assign keycodes to your Media keys to make them available for the Xfce shortcut editor:
To determine keycodes of the multimedia keys use the program xev
. Create a .Xmodmap
file in your $HOME directory containing those keycodes and assign keysyms to them. Example:
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume keycode 237 = XF86AudioMedia keycode 230 = XF86Favorites keycode 236 = XF86Mail keycode 178 = XF86WWW
All possible keysyms can be found in /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB or /usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB. To ensure that the .Xmodmap file is loaded when you start Xfce add /usr/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
to your .xinitrc
or .xprofile
file. When you start the shortcut editor the assigned keysyms should show up when you press one of your multimedia keys. Now it is possible to assign a command to them.
Note: Several problems with auto-loading of .Xmodmap files at xfce startup have been reported (also when issued as autostart command). Search the xfce bugzilla sites for current problems. As a workaround, run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
by hand every time, or try out
editing the somewhat less straightforward xkb configuration files.
How to determine keycodes with ''xev''
All keyboards are different, keycodes can differ(eg. my keyboard with few keycodes above, not working) and of course not everyone has time to search XKeysymDB file. You can acquire keycodes from your keyboard with xev. In terminal type:
xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p'
then press key of which keycode you need, eg. I press “Stop” and got output “174 XF86AudioStop”.
What should I do to change keyboard layout?
There are several options. One is to use xfce4-xkb-plugin
, see http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel-plugins/xfce4-xkb-plugin . You can also use the setxkbmap
command with the two letter keyboard code as argument; you can edit your X server configuration file to choose a different keyboard layout (change the value after Option “XkbLayout”
, e.g.: Option “XkbLayout” “dvorak”
).
Is it possible to change the default shortcut keys?
Yes, of course… Keyboard shortcuts are defined on two locations. The shortcuts to handle the window manager are defined in the Settings Manager > Window Manager Settings > Keyboard. The Default
theme can not be changed, but when you add a theme you can change that one. More global keyboard shortcuts, like volume adjustements, can be found in Settings Manager > Keyboard Preferences > Shortcuts. Again you need to add a new theme before you can start customizing it.
How can I see a list of all the shortcut keys?
Use the following command, which will produce a nicely formatted text list to standard output:
xfconf-query -c xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts -l -v | cut -d'/' -f4 | awk '{printf "%30s", $2; print "\t" $1}' | sort | uniq
If you want to put this list into a file, add > filename
at the end of command.
How do I make a shortcut that doesn't steal focus?
You can't.