XFce uses GNU autoconf and GNU automake to generate the makefiles. As a result, configuration can be performed as simply as typing ./configure in the xfce source directory !
Typing ./configure --help will give a list of available options.
Once the configuration is over, run make and make install. On Linux systems, you might want to reduce the size of executables by doing a make install-strip. This will discard all symbols from the program files (for example, xfce is 10 times smaller without the symbols).
Three convenient scripts are provided for easy installation/configuration of XFce.
Run xfce_setup to set up replacement files in user's home directory. These files will fire up xfwm and xfce every time the user starts an X session (through startx or through xdm).
The existing configurations files are saved in a hidden directory ($HOME/.xfce_bckp).
Afterwards, one can use xfce_remove to restore the previous configuration files.
To upgrade from an existing xfce installation, type xfce_upgrade. This will adjust the setup files to any changes that may have occurred between the two releases.
The directory specified at configuration time for the data can be overridden afterwards by setting the environment variable XFCE_DATA to another directory.
bash$ export XFCE_DATA=/usr/local/share |
csh$ setenv XFCE_DATA /usr/local/share |
Since XFce supports Native Language Supports (NLS), make sure the environment variable LANG is correctly set for your country.
bash$ export LANG="fr" |
csh$ setenv LANG "fr" |