13.3.3. Xfce and Others
Xfce is a simple and lightweight graphical desktop, which is a perfect match for computers with limited resources. It can be installed with apt-get install xfce4. Like GNOME, Xfce is based on the GTK+ toolkit, and several components are common across both desktops.
Unlike GNOME and KDE, Xfce does not aim at being a vast project. Beyond the basic components of a modern desktop (file manager, window manager, session manager, a panel for application launchers and so on), it only provides a few specific applications: a very lightweight web browser (Midori), a terminal, a calendar, an image viewer, a CD/DVD burning tool, a media player (Parole) and a sound volume control.
Figure 13.3. The Xfce desktop
13.4. Tools
13.4.1. Email
13.4.1.1. Evolution
COMMUNITY Popular packages
Installing the popularity-contest package enables participation in an automated survey that informs the Debian project about the most popular packages. A script is run weekly by cron which sends (by HTTP or email) an anonymized list of the installed packages and the latest access date for the files they contain. This allows differenciating, among the installed packages, those that are actually used.
This information is a great help to the Debian project. It is used to determine which packages should go on the first installation disks. The installation data is also an important factor used to decide whether to remove a package with very few users from the distribution. We heartily recommend installing the popularity-contest package, and participating to the survey.
The collected data are made public every day.
→ http://popcon.debian.org/
These statistics can also help choose between two packages that would seem otherwise equivalent. Choosing the more popular package increases the probability of making a good choice.
Evolution is the GNOME email client and can be installed with apt-get install evolution. Evolution goes beyond a simple email client, and also provides a calendar, an address book, a task list, and a memo (free-form note) application. Its email component includes a powerful message indexing system, and allows for the creation of virtual folders based on search queries on all archived messages. In other words, all messages are stored the same way but displayed in a folder-based organization, each folder containing messages that match a set of filtering criteria.
Figure 13.4. The Evolution email software
An extension to Evolution allows integration to a Microsoft Exchange email system; the required package is evolution-exchange.
13.4.1.2. KMail
The KDE email software can be installed with apt-get install kmail. KMail only handles email, but it belongs to a software suite called KDE-PIM (for Personal Information Manager) that includes features such as address books, a calendar component, and so on. KMail has all the features one would expect from an excellent email client.
Figure 13.5. The KMail email software
13.4.1.3. Thunderbird and Icedove
This email software, included in the icedove package, is part of the Mozilla software suite. Various localization sets are available in icedove-l10n-* packages; the enigmail extension handles message encrypting and signing (alas, it is not available in all languages).
Figure 13.6. The Icedove email software
Thunderbird is one of the best email clients, and it seems to be a great success, just like Mozilla Firefox.
Strictly speaking, Debian Squeeze contains Icedove, and not Thunderbird, for legal reasons we will detail in the “Iceweasel, Firefox and others” section later on; but apart from their names (and icons), there are no real differences between them.
13.4.2. Web Browsers
Epiphany, the web browser in the GNOME suite, uses the WebKit display engine developed by Apple for its Safari browser. The relevant package is epiphany-browser.
Konqueror, the KDE file manager, also behaves as a web browser. It uses the KDE-specific KHTML rendering engine; KHTML is an excellent engine, as witnessed by the fact that Apple's WebKit is based on KHTML. Konqueror is available in the konqueror package.
Users not satisfied by either of the above can use Iceweasel. This browser, available in the iceweasel package, uses the Mozilla project's Gecko renderer, with a thin and extensible interface on top.
Figure 13.7. The Iceweasel web browser
CULTURE Iceweasel, Firefox and others
Many users will no doubt be surprised by the absence of Mozilla Firefox in the Debian Squeeze menus. No need to panic: the iceweasel package contains Iceweasel, which is basically Firefox under another name.
The rationale behind this renaming is a result of the usage rules imposed by the Mozilla Foundation on the Firefox™ registered trademark: any software named Firefox must use the official Firefox logo and icons. However, since these elements are not released under a free license, Debian cannot distribute them in its main section. Rather than moving the whole browser to non-free, the package maintainer chose to use a different name.
The firefox command still exists in the iceweasel package, but only for compatibility with tools that would try to use it.
For similar reasons, the Thunderbird™ email client was renamed to Icedove in a similar fashion.
CULTURE Mozilla
Netscape Navigator was the standard browser when the web started reaching the masses, but it was progressively left behind when Microsoft Internet Explorer came around. Faced with this failure, Netscape (the company) decided to “free” its source code, by realeasing it under a free license, to give it a second life. This was the beginning of the Mozilla project. After many years of development, the results are more than satisfying: the Mozilla project brought forth an HTML rendering engine (called Gecko) that is among the most standard-compliant. This rendering engine is in particular used by the Mozilla Firefox browser, which is one of the most successful browsers, with a fast-growing user base.
Squeeze also brings a relative newcomer on the web browser scene, Chromium (available in the chromium-browser package). This browser is developed by Google at such a fast pace that maintaining a single version of it across the whole lifespan of Debian Squeeze is unlikely to be possible. Its clear purpose is to make web services more attractive, both by optimizing the browser for performance and by increasing the user's security. The free code that powers Chromium is also used by its proprietary version called Google Chrome.
13.4.3. Development
13.4.3.1. Tools for GTK+ on GNOME
Anjuta (in the anjuta package) is a development environment optimised for creating GTK+ applications for GNOME. Glade (in the glade package) is an application designed to create GTK+ graphical interfaces for GNOME and save them in an XML file. These XML files can then be loaded by the libglade shared library, which can dynamically recreate the saved interfaces; such a feature can be interesting, for instance for for plugins that require dialogs.
The scope of Anjuta is to combine, in a modular way, all the features one would expect from an integrated development environment.