XFCE 4.10 Available for Precise in the Official PPA

XFCE 4.10 was released only on the 28th of April, so it didn't make it into the Xubuntu 12.04 release. Thus, Xubuntu 12.04 comes with XFCE 4.8 by default. Yesterday, XFCE 4.10 packages for Precise were made available by the Xubuntu Developers team via the official PPA. Those who are using Xubuntu 12.04 can upgrade using this PPA, and those running any other desktop environment in Ubuntu 12.04 can also install XFCE 4.10 from it.

XFCE 4.10 comes with quite a few new features and lots of improvements. For details, please take a look at the official tour here:

http://www.xfce.org/about/tour

For the complete changelog, take a look here:

http://www.xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.10

Ubuntu Installation

For upgrading XFCE 4.8 to XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 12.04, get to a Terminal and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

PPA: https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/xfce-4.10

Note: WebUpd8 points out that there might be an issue with some 'held back packages' when doing an upgrade:

If after running "dist-upgrade", you get 3 held back packages which can't be upgraded, open Synaptic Package Manager (it's installed by default in Xubuntu), click the "Mark all upgrades" button, then "Apply". Synaptic will ask to remove one package and install a new one - select yes and you're done.

If you are running any other desktop environment in Ubuntu 12.04 and want to install XFCE 4.10, just replace the last command above with:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Or alternatively, for a more pure XFCE, without pulling in all the extra Xubuntu stuff, run instead:

sudo apt-get install xfce4

If you face some problems with XFCE 4.10, or the upgrade itself, and want to revert to the default XFCE 4.8, run these commands:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10