A look at XFCE 4.10 on Debian Jessie

4.10 is not a radical upgrade to 4.8 available in Wheezy. XFCE is not in the business of overhauling the desktop paradigm like Gnome 3. It's not so much of a work in progress, more of a finished item, getting a few minor improvements.

I won't bother listing all the changes because that information is available at xfce.org.

I'll just mention a few things that have stuck me in a few days of using 4.10.

The audio mixer plugin for the panel has been updated, and seems a lot easier to set up and less buggy.

4.10 supports a Synaptics touchpad where 4.8 doesn't.

Windows can be tiled by dragging to the edge of the screen.

The application finder has been updated and looks nice. If you have used Gnome 3 and got into the habit of opening an application via a search, the application finder can be a quicker way to find and launch an application than the menu approach.

The biggest change that I noticed in 4.10 was in Thunar, which now has tabs.

The ability to tile windows makes comparing two folders almost as easy as the (now removed and much missed) 'extra pane' feature in Nautilus.

So, is 4.10 an absolutely must-have upgrade to XFCE? Probably not. Is it a useful upgrade that you might be annoyed at having to wait two years in Debian Stable to get? Possibly.