Most 4.6 plugins work with 4.8 too after they have been recompiled against the new library.

How do I do that? (Sorry for the newbie question.)

One positive side of Xfce is compiled from source is that it's noticeably faster than the one installed from DEBs.

Yay, I too successfully installed Xfce 4.8 on Xubuntu 10.10

Do all panel plugins work (mailwatch, notes etc.) ? I have successfully installed xfce4.8 in
Lucid but 4.6 plugins don't work (and there is very few 4.8 plugins)

And does it work now?

Yes it works fine now
Thank you !

XFCE is great on my dual screen display !

So if I understand you correctly I need to remove first all DEB Xfce packages for the individual components that are listed in "xfce-4.8.tar.bz2"?

When I get to the installation of  dependencies like libxfce4util, where do I get them? Via apt-get from the current Maverick repositories?

"(xfwm4:2721): xfwm4-WARNING **: The display does not support the XComposite extension.

(xfwm4:2721): xfwm4-WARNING **: Compositing manager disabled."

In the first lines of .xsession-errors.

What could cause that ? I made my best during compilation to have all the features included.

I tried to install Compiz, and I also had a composite-something error.

Video driver involved ?
I use the fglrx (proprietary ATI driver) modified by sgfxi in order to work on my 2.6.36 kernel.

EDIT : After some googling, I found out that there is an option for the composite extension in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
I simply commented the line :
Option      "Composite" "disable"
under the :
Section "Extensions"

At the end of the file.

I followed the instructions on the page you mentionned, all went fine.
I had the same issue with the menu and tweaked a bit to get one, but it will not update.
There is another, newer thread for this issue : http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=5675

Concerning the compositor I have an issue. I can enable it, check boxes, change opacity settings but nothing happens, even after reboot.

My xfwm4 seems to be ok :
wfwm4 -V
    - Startup notification support:                 Yes
    - XSync support:                                Yes
    - Render support:                               Yes
    - Xrandr support:                               Yes
    - Embedded compositor:                          Yes
    - KDE systray proxy (deprecated):               No

I still have the folders where the compilation of each module was compiled, so I can provide any file needed for help.

Thanks in advance !

UPDATE on the Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 front...

So i compiled XFCE 4.8 on my old laptop - the same Ubuntu 10.10 as for my desktop (actually is Mint 10 I followed the compiling instructions from here - http://www.xfce.org/download/building - see the Dependencies section; i took out libxfcegui4  and   libxfce4menu because they are deprecated.

MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE ANY OLD XFCE 4.6 PACKAGE FIRST !

So in short this is the order that i used for the compilation :

1. libxfce4util
2. xfconf
3. libxfce4ui
4. garcon
5. exo
6. xfce4-panel
7, thunar
8. thunar-vfs
9. xfce4-settings
10. xfce4-session
11. xfdesktop
12. xfwm4
13. xfce-utils
14. xfce4-appfinder
15. gtk-xfce-engine

Everything went ok; i don't have the issue with the notification area - so i suspect there are some issues with it on my desktop and thunar starts in a second The menu still doesn't want to load so i had to compile libxfce4menu from the 4.6.2 series from the internet (http://archive.be2.xfce.org/src/xfce/li … .2.tar.bz2) and use a custom menu (right click on the menu, properties - use custom menu file option - the path should be - /usr/etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu).

I tested the menu by installing a new app and it works ok.

I will keep testing - so far everything is very quick and snappy and there are lots of new things to explore. If you want panel transparency you need to activate the compositor in the Window Manager Tweaks section in the Settings Manager.

Cheers..

Thank you for the reply.

So :

Check if the compositor is properly compiled in xfwm4: xfwm4 -V
---
    This is xfwm4 version 4.8.0 (revision e316a45) for Xfce 4.8.0
    Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
    Compiled against GTK+-2.22.0, using GTK+-2.22.0.

    Build configuration and supported features:
    - Startup notification support:                 Yes
    - XSync support:                                Yes
    - Render support:                               Yes
    - Xrandr support:                               Yes
    - Embedded compositor:                          Yes
    - KDE systray proxy (deprecated):               No
---
So i presume everything compiled ok; after removing several old libraries of xfce 4.6 i recompiled several 4.8 components and the compositor is working fine now.
---

For proper menu support you need xfce-utils 4.8.0 and the garcon library (replacement of libxfce4menu).
---
I compiled those 2 and yet i had the same issue, until i selected a custom menu with the "Use custom menu file" option in the Applications Menu window. Regarding garcon, do you know why it is not included in the main source archive for XFCE 4.8 ? This is what i used : http://archive.se.xfce.org/src/libs/garcon/0.1/
---
For the notification area i will open a bug report as per your advice; as a side note - after i remove it from the top panel and place it in the bottom panel, everything worked; it looked like because of the number of apps, the notification area is "trying more room" without success and thus the flickering and the cpu load.

thanks again...