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Introduction
This page is meant as guide for the use of Virtual Machine images created for Xfce developers and users who wish to test and preview the latest builds of Xfce coming from GIT Master branch. The images are based on openSUSE Xfce RAT, which is the [https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/X11:xfce:rat Xfce Development OBS Repository for Tumbleweed.] The build process is fully automated and happens regularly giving users qcow2 disk images with Xfce's latest builds based on openSUSE's rolling release Tumbleweed.
Currently there are qcow2 images for KVM & Xen but support for Virtual Box, VMware and Vagrant are in the works.
The “vanilla” disk image ships Xfce completely unmodified from Git sources and without any openSUSE visual tweakings. This gives Xfce devs (and testers alike) who want to build and test software inside a complete Xfce environment the most convenient way to do so.
Download
* [https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/xfce:/rat:/images:/upstream/images/ KVM & Xen image “vanilla” version]
Setup with GNOME Boxes
Once downloaded, these qcow2 can be used “out of the box”. The most convenient way is to import them in 'gnome-boxes' aka Boxes, which is a simple application for managing virtual machines through QEMU, KVM and libvirt. Boxes imports and boot the images easily and focuses on getting things working out of the box with very little input from user.
Read more about it on their [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Boxes website].
<gallery perrow=4>
File:Gnome-boxes-create-vm.png|1. Create Virtual Machine
File:Gnome-boxes-select-image.png|2. Select “Operating System Image File”
File:Gnome-boxes-select-image2.png|3. Browse Downloaded Image
File:Gnome-boxes-review-and-create.png|4. Costumize Memory and Create
</gallery>
First Boot
When these images are imported they can be launched and a “first time boot” wizard will guide you through a basic setup. <gallery perrow=4> File:gnome-boxes-running.png|1. Open Newly Created Virtual Machine File:gnome-boxes-grub.png|2. Boot from Grub File:gnome-boxes-first-boot-wizard.png|3. Follow the First Boot Setup Steps File:gnome-boxes-loaded-opensuse.png|4. Have a lot of fun! </gallery>
Maintenance
Once inside the guest virtual machine up and running, you can maintain the setup and update it like a regular Tumbleweed system by running the following command in a terminal. <pre>sudo zypper dup</pre>
This command will fetch all the latest packages from both the Tumbleweed distribution and OBS [https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/X11:xfce:rat X11:xfce:rat] repo.
Building from sources
Although Xfce components come in pre-compiled packages regularly updated, it is possible to build directly from source code. Fetching all the necessary dependencies can be easily achieved by the commands
zypper source-install
or
zypper si
followed by package name. Example:
<pre>sudo zypper si libxfce4ui</pre>
The command above fetches all the dependencies needed to build libxfce4ui. Other commands and examples for the Zypper package manager can also be found in this [https://en.opensuse.org/images/1/17/Zypper-cheat-sheet-1.pdf cheat-sheet.]
Alternatives to Boxes
While Boxes is the easiest way there are of course quite a few others like virt-manager, virt-install or Cockpit Web console. All of them are expected to work like any other solution supporting qcow disk images.