9 ms·

By far the best thing with XFCE is that it does not change, it merely improves. Other DEs and applications radically change the UI between releases. I have my

By far the best thing with XFCE is that it does not change, it merely improves. Other DEs and applications radically change the UI between releases. I have my XFCE desktop working as I want now and I don't want to change it or having to learn where buttons are located after an update. With Gnome and Windows I feel like a lab rat for their UI experiments.

prmoustache 3y ago
Not sure about that. XFCE started as a clone of CDE. Now compare original CDE with XFCE and it is not really the same thing. Sure, Gnome change from v2 to v3 was a major change in UI, but mostly for the better and Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior.
- reidrac 3y ago
  Surely is more about slow evolution than revolution.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    But Gnome did only a revolution once and since then it is the same. I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately and Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly for those looking for a gnome classic evolution that no one was really forced into using gnome 3.
    - Nursie 3y ago
      > I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately Yeah it did. They announced gnome 3 and deprecated 2 on the same day, and seemed to have made the deliberate choice to not allow them to coexist. As soon as your distro moved, bam, you were done. > Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly After some months. This stuff was not there on day 1. In the mean time, those of us who did not want to work the way Gnome 3 decided we should, had to find an alternative. And when we found a good one (Xfce for me), we stuck with it.
- ho_schi 3y ago
  Yep. GNOME makes often changes without long term strategy or asking their actual users. The removal of Type-Ahead-Find in Nautilus or background-transparency in GNOME-Terminal where mistakes. On the other hand new applications like Documents or Console required resources but provide no benefit over it counterparts. That said - Nautilus improved a lot in recent years and there are even patches available for Type-Ahead-Find (or Navigation). Same for background-transparency in the GNOME-Terminal. The separated top-bar-menus were also a problem (decoupling menus from application-windows was copied from Apple) but now reverted, they learn. If the design team is aware of the usage and has a plan things fit well! The overview is great for keyboard and mouse users, the dash make simple things simple, they got rid of the useless desktop-metapher (copied from Win95) and also the system-tray (another thing from Win95). The keyboard focused use of GNOME is use core-feature, fast for experienced users and a relieve for novice users. The GNOME-Shell provided a good UI and removed many questionable ideas of the past. Wishlist? Decouple the release cycle of most applications from GNOME, excepting Nautilus and Settings. There is no need to couple Epiphany, Terminal, Maps, Calendar and so. Evolution already skips every second release. And feature-removal should require a good reasoning and not just „I don’t need that myself“. Many options are bewildering, many forks without merges are worse (lost developers and lost users).
  - gryn 3y ago
    My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnome as a DE, well too bad Gmail/office and all other kind of providers won't work. Gnome feels very anti Unix philosophy.
    - tmccrary55 3y ago
      Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.
      - bitwize 3y ago
        More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  > Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior. Not really, even with Plugins everything is handled by Mutter - you don't have the modularity of Gnome 2 where you can switch out the panel, file browser or window manager as you please. Fortunately Mate forked Gnome 2 to retain the old desktop.
  - TheAdamist 3y ago
    MATE is my preferred environment, but is it even viable anymore? Despite being in the package list for fedora(?) on recent versions, It fails to install and talk on the bug thread is just to remove the packages from the repo.
    - silon42 3y ago
      Same here... MATE is the default... can't really migrate to Wayland then.
    - pantalaimon 3y ago
      Ubuntu Mate still seems to be doing fine, but yea the latest mayor update of the desktop was two years ago, development isn't very busy there.
- II2II 3y ago
  One of the nice things about Linux is that users have choice. A lot of people were put off by the transition to Gnome 3 and continue to be (self included). Which is fine since the desktop environment/window manager can be swapped out. It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. As for Xfce changing, that is to be expected since people's needs change over time. It is simply nice when those changes are gradual and not radical.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    >It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. It's not clear at all - Wayland is in some ways a regression compared to X (try writing your own WM - tinyWM is 50 LOC, whereas the Wayland equivalent TinyWL is over 1000), and doesn't just "improve" X but changes paradigm entirely. I'd like to see [Arcan](https://www.arcan-fe.com https://www.arcan-fe.com) be the future, it seems more elegant than Wayland.
- jcarrano 3y ago
  Yes, quite different but roughly the same paradigms. I recently used an old HP-UX workstation with HP VUE and it felt very familiar and intuitive, not to mention the aesthetics were awesome.
- kwanbix 3y ago
  Oh my. Gnome3 is so beautiful and so weird. WTF with "activities"? And why have the activities menu at the top left? the menu with all the apps is as horrible as the Windows 8 menu, etc. I rather use Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, or even KDE.
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  > but mostly for the better Say what now? Gnome 3 is such a shitshow that I switched to XFCE because of it.
hydroid7 3y ago
Xfce is really the best. Minimalistic, good looking. I only miss 3 column tiling on my ultra wide screen.
- bradrn 3y ago
  I’ve used Xfce and XMonad together with great success. I’m on Wayland now (using Sway), but I still miss that combination.
- rscho 3y ago
  I do regular 3x3 tiling on XFCE with cmd+numpad. You can define shortcuts in the window manager settings.
jmondi 3y ago
You should read “Who Moved My Cheese” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
- epcoa 3y ago
  [flagged]
- jcarrano 3y ago
  Well, a big part of my job is trying not to move other people's cheeses. In other words, keeping the major version of the software I maintain at "1".
- MR4D 3y ago
  That's probably not the right lesson here. Perhaps you should read "I Moved Your Cheese" [0]. A short summary is here [1] - I highly recommend it. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Moved-Your-Cheese-Someone-Business/dp/1609940652 https://www.amazon.com/Moved-Your-Cheese-Someone-Business/dp... [1] - https://www.bkconnection.com/static/I_Moved_Your_Cheese_EXCERPT.pdf https://www.bkconnection.com/static/I_Moved_Your_Cheese_EXCE...
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  there is no law saying that you must migrate to another DE from time to time. you could keep using the same software your entire life cheese moving, in this context, is not a force of nature. it's something that other people do upon you, and they could elect not to
sho_hn 3y ago
KDE's Plasma hasn't changed the UI radically since the 4.0 release, and 6.0 will also not introduce any radical UI changes. It's settled down quite nicely, and most of the effort has gone into performance optimizations and polish. This is not to detract from XFCE, which is a cool project with many strengths as well, and certainly deserving of enthusiastic users (doesn't matter which FOSS desktop you love, we all win).
- oblio 3y ago
  Has KDE fixed the inconsistent spacing in their default themes? In past eras every time I tried to use KDE the inconsistent spacing in the apps included with the desktop was jarring. I really, really wanted to like KDE as it's super powerful otherwise.
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    There's certainly always a lot of effort going into that direction. The KDE community also has a goals voting process that elects multi-year community-wide goals (each goal gets their own leadership, funded hackathons, budget, etc.), and "Consistency" was one of the more recent batches and is still ongoing: https://community.kde.org/Goals/Consistency https://community.kde.org/Goals/Consistency So I'd say it's worth checking back, and certainly the developers/contributors take your ask seriously enough to vote for it themselves.
nurbl 3y ago
I'm running i3 + xfce-settings for many years and to me it's a perfect solution, extremely stable. I have no opinion on wayland, but I dread the day when I'll have to move to it, as it will mean switching WM, and I assume lots of details will change. But at least it seems XFCE should still work! I just want my desktop environment to fade into the background and not bother me. I'm used to all the little quirks now :)
- loudmax 3y ago
  The `sway` window manager is an attempt to clone i3 for Wayland. If you do have to switch, that part at least, shouldn't be too painful.
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  "Sway" is i3 with Wayland, fear not (so much) You would probably have to change your keybindings a little but otherwise it's very similar... before the Wayland part Switching from i3 to Sway kept 90% of the same config for me, changing only keybinds and output configuration. Keybinds are mostly the same, just some arguments for 'bindsym' don't make sense with Wayland. I did have to override args/env for some things to truly do Wayland, but that's shortening every day It supports X too, but you'll find oddities with copying/pasting between native Wayland and X things
- vidarh 3y ago
  I feel much the same, though I'm running bspwm, with my own cobbled together scripts rather XFCE. There's zero upside to me in an upgrade, but I worry it eventually will become hard to avoid. I'm increasingly tempted to grab a simple Wayland compositor and "bolt on" a minimalist X implementation directly on it to also allow X connections with just enough of the protocol implemented to allow running some simpler X WMs (but I'd love it if someone beat me to it). For WMs with lots of fancy stuff it'd can take quite a bit of the X API to support, but a simple X WM doesn't typically use that many request types (I just looked at i3's source, and it's X interactions are pretty simple...
ensocode 3y ago
exactly this is the reason why I sticked to XFCE. Super stable, no useless changes, easy to use and configurable. Lets me keep my workflow. It's a tool like the workbench of a carpenter. I want to decide how its organized once. And if there is a need to change something, then I will be the one to change that, as I am the one who uses it. Looking forward to Wayland support!
beebmam 3y ago
I like those experiments

prmoustache 3y ago

Not sure about that. XFCE started as a clone of CDE. Now compare original CDE with XFCE and it is not really the same thing. Sure, Gnome change from v2 to v3 was a major change in UI, but mostly for the better and Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior.

reidrac 3y ago
Surely is more about slow evolution than revolution.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  But Gnome did only a revolution once and since then it is the same. I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately and Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly for those looking for a gnome classic evolution that no one was really forced into using gnome 3.
  - Nursie 3y ago
    > I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately Yeah it did. They announced gnome 3 and deprecated 2 on the same day, and seemed to have made the deliberate choice to not allow them to coexist. As soon as your distro moved, bam, you were done. > Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly After some months. This stuff was not there on day 1. In the mean time, those of us who did not want to work the way Gnome 3 decided we should, had to find an alternative. And when we found a good one (Xfce for me), we stuck with it.
ho_schi 3y ago
Yep. GNOME makes often changes without long term strategy or asking their actual users. The removal of Type-Ahead-Find in Nautilus or background-transparency in GNOME-Terminal where mistakes. On the other hand new applications like Documents or Console required resources but provide no benefit over it counterparts. That said - Nautilus improved a lot in recent years and there are even patches available for Type-Ahead-Find (or Navigation). Same for background-transparency in the GNOME-Terminal. The separated top-bar-menus were also a problem (decoupling menus from application-windows was copied from Apple) but now reverted, they learn. If the design team is aware of the usage and has a plan things fit well! The overview is great for keyboard and mouse users, the dash make simple things simple, they got rid of the useless desktop-metapher (copied from Win95) and also the system-tray (another thing from Win95). The keyboard focused use of GNOME is use core-feature, fast for experienced users and a relieve for novice users. The GNOME-Shell provided a good UI and removed many questionable ideas of the past. Wishlist? Decouple the release cycle of most applications from GNOME, excepting Nautilus and Settings. There is no need to couple Epiphany, Terminal, Maps, Calendar and so. Evolution already skips every second release. And feature-removal should require a good reasoning and not just „I don’t need that myself“. Many options are bewildering, many forks without merges are worse (lost developers and lost users).
- gryn 3y ago
  My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnome as a DE, well too bad Gmail/office and all other kind of providers won't work. Gnome feels very anti Unix philosophy.
  - tmccrary55 3y ago
    Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.
pantalaimon 3y ago
> Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior. Not really, even with Plugins everything is handled by Mutter - you don't have the modularity of Gnome 2 where you can switch out the panel, file browser or window manager as you please. Fortunately Mate forked Gnome 2 to retain the old desktop.
- TheAdamist 3y ago
  MATE is my preferred environment, but is it even viable anymore? Despite being in the package list for fedora(?) on recent versions, It fails to install and talk on the bug thread is just to remove the packages from the repo.
  - silon42 3y ago
    Same here... MATE is the default... can't really migrate to Wayland then.
  - pantalaimon 3y ago
    Ubuntu Mate still seems to be doing fine, but yea the latest mayor update of the desktop was two years ago, development isn't very busy there.
II2II 3y ago
One of the nice things about Linux is that users have choice. A lot of people were put off by the transition to Gnome 3 and continue to be (self included). Which is fine since the desktop environment/window manager can be swapped out. It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. As for Xfce changing, that is to be expected since people's needs change over time. It is simply nice when those changes are gradual and not radical.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. It's not clear at all - Wayland is in some ways a regression compared to X (try writing your own WM - tinyWM is 50 LOC, whereas the Wayland equivalent TinyWL is over 1000), and doesn't just "improve" X but changes paradigm entirely. I'd like to see [Arcan](https://www.arcan-fe.com https://www.arcan-fe.com) be the future, it seems more elegant than Wayland.
jcarrano 3y ago
Yes, quite different but roughly the same paradigms. I recently used an old HP-UX workstation with HP VUE and it felt very familiar and intuitive, not to mention the aesthetics were awesome.
kwanbix 3y ago
Oh my. Gnome3 is so beautiful and so weird. WTF with "activities"? And why have the activities menu at the top left? the menu with all the apps is as horrible as the Windows 8 menu, etc. I rather use Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, or even KDE.
dmitrygr 3y ago
> but mostly for the better Say what now? Gnome 3 is such a shitshow that I switched to XFCE because of it.

hydroid7 3y ago

Xfce is really the best. Minimalistic, good looking. I only miss 3 column tiling on my ultra wide screen.

bradrn 3y ago
I’ve used Xfce and XMonad together with great success. I’m on Wayland now (using Sway), but I still miss that combination.
rscho 3y ago
I do regular 3x3 tiling on XFCE with cmd+numpad. You can define shortcuts in the window manager settings.

jmondi 3y ago

You should read “Who Moved My Cheese” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F

epcoa 3y ago
[flagged]
jcarrano 3y ago
Well, a big part of my job is trying not to move other people's cheeses. In other words, keeping the major version of the software I maintain at "1".
MR4D 3y ago
That's probably not the right lesson here. Perhaps you should read "I Moved Your Cheese" [0]. A short summary is here [1] - I highly recommend it. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Moved-Your-Cheese-Someone-Business/dp/1609940652 https://www.amazon.com/Moved-Your-Cheese-Someone-Business/dp... [1] - https://www.bkconnection.com/static/I_Moved_Your_Cheese_EXCERPT.pdf https://www.bkconnection.com/static/I_Moved_Your_Cheese_EXCE...
nextaccountic 3y ago
there is no law saying that you must migrate to another DE from time to time. you could keep using the same software your entire life cheese moving, in this context, is not a force of nature. it's something that other people do upon you, and they could elect not to

sho_hn 3y ago

KDE's Plasma hasn't changed the UI radically since the 4.0 release, and 6.0 will also not introduce any radical UI changes. It's settled down quite nicely, and most of the effort has gone into performance optimizations and polish. This is not to detract from XFCE, which is a cool project with many strengths as well, and certainly deserving of enthusiastic users (doesn't matter which FOSS desktop you love, we all win).

oblio 3y ago
Has KDE fixed the inconsistent spacing in their default themes? In past eras every time I tried to use KDE the inconsistent spacing in the apps included with the desktop was jarring. I really, really wanted to like KDE as it's super powerful otherwise.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  There's certainly always a lot of effort going into that direction. The KDE community also has a goals voting process that elects multi-year community-wide goals (each goal gets their own leadership, funded hackathons, budget, etc.), and "Consistency" was one of the more recent batches and is still ongoing: https://community.kde.org/Goals/Consistency https://community.kde.org/Goals/Consistency So I'd say it's worth checking back, and certainly the developers/contributors take your ask seriously enough to vote for it themselves.

nurbl 3y ago

I'm running i3 + xfce-settings for many years and to me it's a perfect solution, extremely stable. I have no opinion on wayland, but I dread the day when I'll have to move to it, as it will mean switching WM, and I assume lots of details will change. But at least it seems XFCE should still work! I just want my desktop environment to fade into the background and not bother me. I'm used to all the little quirks now :)

loudmax 3y ago
The `sway` window manager is an attempt to clone i3 for Wayland. If you do have to switch, that part at least, shouldn't be too painful.
bravetraveler 3y ago
"Sway" is i3 with Wayland, fear not (so much) You would probably have to change your keybindings a little but otherwise it's very similar... before the Wayland part Switching from i3 to Sway kept 90% of the same config for me, changing only keybinds and output configuration. Keybinds are mostly the same, just some arguments for 'bindsym' don't make sense with Wayland. I did have to override args/env for some things to truly do Wayland, but that's shortening every day It supports X too, but you'll find oddities with copying/pasting between native Wayland and X things
vidarh 3y ago
I feel much the same, though I'm running bspwm, with my own cobbled together scripts rather XFCE. There's zero upside to me in an upgrade, but I worry it eventually will become hard to avoid. I'm increasingly tempted to grab a simple Wayland compositor and "bolt on" a minimalist X implementation directly on it to also allow X connections with just enough of the protocol implemented to allow running some simpler X WMs (but I'd love it if someone beat me to it). For WMs with lots of fancy stuff it'd can take quite a bit of the X API to support, but a simple X WM doesn't typically use that many request types (I just looked at i3's source, and it's X interactions are pretty simple...

ensocode 3y ago

exactly this is the reason why I sticked to XFCE. Super stable, no useless changes, easy to use and configurable. Lets me keep my workflow. It's a tool like the workbench of a carpenter. I want to decide how its organized once. And if there is a need to change something, then I will be the one to change that, as I am the one who uses it. Looking forward to Wayland support!

beebmam 3y ago

I like those experiments