New Projects - Fresh from the Labs

Aside from the usual X11 libraries, here are the needed dependencies, as stated on the project's Web site:

Once you have the dependencies out of the way, head to the Web site, grab the latest tarball and extract it to a new folder. Open a terminal in the new folder, and do the usual:

$ ./configure
$ make

And, as root or with sudo:

# make install

It should work without any issues, and if it doesn't, the configure script should pick up any snags.

Usage

Once the installation finishes, PCManFM can be started either by entering pcmanfm at the command line or by going to Utilities→PCMan File Manager. Once inside the main screen, you'll notice two panes. The left contains links to your home folder, the desktop and your storage devices. The right contains all of your files and folders. For tabbed browsing, you can go to File→New Tab, or press Ctrl-T. You can open a new window by selecting File→New Window or pressing Ctrl-N.

For further usage exploits, I recommend tweaking the settings under Edit→Preferences. Here you can change things such as colors and icon and font sizes, but most important, you can define which terminal you want to load via a shortcut, such as xterm, eterm and so on. Once this is set, when you are browsing around any folders, pressing F4 or choosing Tool→Open Terminal opens a new terminal that already is pathed to the folder in which you're sitting.

Ultimately, PCManFM is the best lightweight file manager I've used so far. It has a feel reminiscent of a streamlined Konqueror, and I recommend it to anyone who needs a file manager that is light on resources. For any lightweight distro builders, I also recommend trying this as your default file manager—the interface is very intuitive and familiar.

Finally, we have a CD-burning application for fans of the Xfce desktop, or even for those wanting a nice but light application for slower machines. According to its Web site, “Xfburn is a simple CD/DVD-burning tool based on libburnia libraries. It can blank CD-RWs, burn and create ISO images, as well as burn personal compositions of data to either CD or DVD. It is currently under heavy development.”

Xfburn—Very K3b-ish but without the Bulk

Installation

Xfburn is available in some repositories, but as usual, it's typically an older version (I'm compiling 0.3.0 at the moment; at the time of this writing, the Ubuntu servers have version 0.2.0). Running with the source version, there are a few picky requirements, but not too many. Like almost all Linux apps designed for a certain desktop, they can be run in any desktop you like, but you need to have some of the original desktop's libraries installed. So yes, install Xfce while you're there.

As for other dependencies, the configure script whined about libburn and libiosfs, which I installed from the Ubuntu archives, but that didn't work. The Web site mentions libburnia, which I couldn't find in the archives at all, so I actually grabbed the source for libisofs and compiled that, which did work (the libburnia/libisofs home page is at libburnia-project.org). The last thing the configure script niggled about was something called exo, which was fixed when I installed libexo and libexo-dev. After that was all sorted out, it was smooth sailing from there.

So, grab the latest tarball, extract it, open a terminal in the new folder and do the usual:

$ ./configure
$ make