Xfce 4.8 GO’ing to Linux in 2011, preview out now

From the ‘Speedy Desktop‘ files:

The first public milestone of the Xfce 4.8 Linux desktop is now out, giving Linux users the first taste of this powerful, yet minimal interface.

With Xfce 4.8 developers have incorporated a long list of changes. Among the biggest items that I see in this new release (so far) is the replacement of the  ThunarVFS with GIO.

“All functionality previously based on
ThunarVFS is now implemented on top of GIO and GVfs,” the release notes state.”This means that
remote filesystems can be accessed via SFTP, FTP, SMB etc,”

GIO is a GObjects based abstraction layer of I/O. Overall, Xfce 4.8 is making extensive use of
GObjects.

For the Xfce Panel, the code has been rewritten in GObjects.

“This makes each individual part easier to understand,” the release noted state. “All
plugins are ported to GObject-based plugins and use Xfconf for storing
their information.”