8 ms·

Xfce is great

• kachapopopow 9mo ago
  XFCE is great for VNC setups where a full desktop is unrealistic
  • rcarmo 9mo ago
    Yup. That’s what I use it for.
• andrewflnr 9mo ago
  If anyone is actually switching to Linux in the current hype cycle, I'd very much recommend starting with XFCE if you can. In my experience it really does seem to be the lowest-BS desktop out there, like the good parts of Windows XP.
  • ntnsndr 9mo ago
    I'm not sure I agree. It takes getting used to, and the default designs tend to feel old-fashioned, giving a false impression that it won't do what you need. The settings feel like you're almost in a config file. Except for on old computers, Gnome or Cosmic are safer starting points. I guess I assume "BS" means "UX flourishes that most end users are used to," and I'm not sure minimizing it immediately is the best approach to bring people into the ecosystem.
    • andrewflnr 9mo ago
      > the default designs tend to feel old-fashioned, giving a false impression that it won't do what you need Who is actually getting this impression? What thing that they "need" is in doubt? > I guess I assume "BS" means "UX flourishes that most end users are used to," You assume incorrectly. Every OS and DE finds some way to be obnoxious, even when you've learned the tricks and keyboard shortcuts. XFCE just seems to have the least of them. It's predictable. I think a new user will be able to navigate it immediately. I don't know about KDE, but I sure couldn't say the same about Gnome 3.
    • pantalaimon 9mo ago
      For older machines I'd recommend Mate. It's a fork of old Gnome 2, so it got a lot more polish back on the day, even though some of it bit rotted away. It's still a very nice desktop and you can combine it with Compiz if you want to have some fun.
    • literallywho 9mo ago
      I've tried Cosmic recently and it's glitches galore right now (on nvidia at least). I think safest point is KDE. The most familiar paradigm, mature wayland support with mixed refresh rate displays, HDR and other modern features that XFCE can't do.
      • _0ffh 9mo ago
        Yeah, I think it might be a driver thing (or driver interaction with XFCE code). After ~10 years of using XFCE, I recently for the first time encountered flickering, after an NVidia driver update. I disabled compositing and it went away. Still happy, but clearly something broke there. Pretty sure someone's trying to fix it, somewhere.
        • rabf 9mo ago
          That was the Nvidia 580 driver, its a known issue. 575 dirver is working fine.
        • steanne 9mo ago
          yes. https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/580-release-feedback-discussion/341205/944 https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/580-release-feedback-d...
    • Nursie 9mo ago
      > The settings feel like you're almost in a config file. What on earth? No, the config has dialogues and intuitive controls. There is a settings-editor you can go into if you need to, with a bit more of a regedit kinda feel, but I haven't looked in there in years. > Gnome or Cosmic are safer starting points. In Gnome, can I move the UI elements to locations I want them in? Or are we still in a situation where it's opinionated and you have to seek plugins to get an experience that you actually want?
      • lproven 9mo ago
        > In Gnome, can I move the UI elements to locations I want them in? No. > Or are we still in a situation where it's opinionated and you have to seek plugins to get an experience that you actually want? Yes, 100%. COSMIC feels like GNOME but done right to me. It's not as pretty but while it looks and works pretty much the same by default, you can choose what goes where. Saying that, I still much prefer Xfce.
  • al_borland 9mo ago
    I usually end up with XFCE by necessity. I’m usually running Linux on older systems. I completely gave up on KDE many years ago, as it was always so heavy and slow. I want to like Gnome, but some of their decisions are ones I can’t wrap my head around or get used to. Depending on the system, it can also be a bit slow. XFCE seems to just work.
  • hulitu 9mo ago
    > I'd very much recommend starting with XFCE Kids those days. twm or fvwm shall be ok.
• mmh0000 9mo ago
  I have to agree, XFCE is great! It's weird that when using something like Windows, KDE, or Gnome, I notice a delay between clicking and the thing happening on screen. It's maybe 100ms or so, but after using XFCE for years, there's a notable and, for me, infuriating delay in many modern GUIs. And it's not my computer; I'm sitting here with 32 cores, 128GiB of RAM, and a somewhat fancy AMD video card. Anyway, I LOVE XFCE. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles in my DE, I just need it to launch applications, bind some hotkeys, and otherwise stay out of my way.
  • roomey 9mo ago
    I have to agree. In fairness I am biased in that I have used xubuntu (xfce Ubuntu distro) for many years, but the one "feature" is that now I find it hard to use any other OS because of "perceived latency". I see a top comment here speaking about an inefficient architecture.. that may be the case under the hood, but if you use it for a while, the "click lag" is very noticeable when you move off it. Maybe it's not a good thing! /s. When I started a new role, I had to use a mac for a week until IT did a Linux swap out, and I found it so frustrating. Mostly the inability to set shortcuts that were muscle memory, but also the lag. I have noticed lag more on a brand new iPhone (the pro one) then on my face... Which is something
  • mcv 9mo ago
    Maybe I do need to check out xfce, then. I use kfe, and I'm often frustrated by the ui freezing, and the mouse cursor slows down a lot. Sometimes the delay between clicking and something happening is seconds. I'm baffled at how modern OSs can be so bad at ui (because Windows and Mac do it too.)
    • kombine 9mo ago
      This kind of stuff was happening to me maybe 2 years ago on Plasma 5 with X11 (I can't believe Plasma 6 is two years old now!). After I switched to Wayland during the Plasma 6 upgrade, the DE has been buttery smooth and most of the major bugs were gone.
• fooker 9mo ago
  Also try LXDE and LXQT if you would like a 'lighter KDE' vibe instead of the 'lighter gnome 2' vibe of XFCE.
  • bionsystem 9mo ago
    Yep LXQt is a beast, super snappy and complete. I use it on an old laptop (2012) and it still works great with a very low memory footprint (much lower than XFCE when I tested a bunch of them).
  • tmtvl 9mo ago
    LXQt is great, except for the fact it can only do 'regular, italic, bold, bold italic' for font weights even when a font supports medium (my preferred font weight, regular just seems so dainty now I've gotten used to medium). I also like the fact that it allows use of any window manager and even supports Wayland now (so Wayfire is an option).
  • prmoustache 9mo ago
    If I want something light, I tend to gravitate towards fluxbox, icewm, i3/sway, windowmaker or twm depending ony mood and the paradigm I am looking for. There are many other options though.
• Reubend 9mo ago
  I love the idea of a minimal desktop environment, but I've never tried XFCE. Are there any themes that folks here would recommend to make it much prettier? I find the screenshots on their homepage very intuitive but a bit ugly.
  • andrewflnr 9mo ago
    Are you sure just switching up the colors and background image wouldn't do it for you? I just looked at the homepage to see if it was anything different than I see on my machine, and if anything it looks nicer there. It's certainly nothing fancy, but I feel like there's hardly enough there to really count as "ugly". It all fades into the background quickly when you're doing actual work on it. But YMMV I guess.
  • erikw 9mo ago
    My reflexive response was "xfce is ugly, and that's by design", but actually, this looks pretty slick: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/13k5p5o/xfce_my_xfce_points/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/13k5p5o/xfce_my_x...
  • voidfunc 9mo ago
    > Are there any themes that folks here would recommend to make it much prettier? You're probably not the target audience then. It's not a DE that prioritizes prettiness. If you want something that looks like the 90's desktop metaphor, it's exactly that and it's really good at that.
    • avadodin 9mo ago
      > It's CDE-conformant, I know this!
  • ntnsndr 9mo ago
    Remove all the xfce design elements you don't like. Ytou can even use a borderless theme, eg https://github.com/ushioichi/borderless-xfwm-theme https://github.com/ushioichi/borderless-xfwm-theme I added i3 so everything is on the keyboard. XFCE is great because it lets you put it in the background. The GUIs are there when you need them, but it is just as happy if you don't.
• tommica 9mo ago
  Xfce is really good, used to have it as a daily driver. His points about how they do not feel the need to change does seem correct, and it is amazing. As a windows user you should be able to figure it out pretty easily!
  • nine_k 9mo ago
    Xfce is pretty customizable. Out of the box it may look like OSX, or like Windows. But you can make it fit your needs, not adjust yourself to the machine and somebody's design decisions, or (often) lack thereof. Unlike Gnome, Xfce is pretty un-opinionated; I can do away with everything that annoys me in Gnome, macOS, and Windows, while keeping the good bits, and having many more good bits none of these offer.
• kristopolous 9mo ago
  xfce way back in the day was trying to clone CDE which is open source and actively maintained these days https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/ (really. last release was in november 2025) Just in case you want an even more vintage experience. There's also people trying to keep the SGI experience alive, but this one is a clone: https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ As for as early xfce check out https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/xfce-default.jpg https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/xfce-default.jpg (I'm actually on that site from 25 years ago: https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/twm-cjmckenzie.gif https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/twm-cjmckenzie.gif)
  • amenod 9mo ago
    > Just in case you want an even more vintage experience. Just to clarify, it's not about "vintage experience". Xfce is deceptively simple - it gets out of your way and let you do whatever you wish. The original settings are sensible as they are, but you also can customize it as you wish. It is pretty un-opinionated.
  • anthk 9mo ago
    Instead of Maxx Desktop, check EMWM plus the goodies: https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html I won't consider XFCE vintage but sane, boring but working. Vintage would be a vanilla FVWM, or MWM, or TWM/CTWM. But not so much, as things come full circle. EvilWM would look outdated and crappy under Slashdot threads in 2001 or close, because it looked something from the 80's, altough some bright users stated that it saved tons of RAM for applications. Its clone CWM nowadays it's highly praised by OpenBSD users as a no-bullshit, floating-no tiling madness window manager (and by me too). It works, it can work without any mouse for every window action (even resizing), it doesn't need dmenu, you can use virtual desktops and search between opened windows with autocompletion. So, forget about RSI's, your hands can literally rest.
    • thw_9a83c 9mo ago
      EMWM is really nice. Too bad that Wyaland will make alternative WMs like this one very hard to use and obsolete in the long run.
• GrowingSideways 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • dangus 9mo ago
    You…ever see a screenshot of Gnome? This statement of yours is also a bit silly considering Linux desktops have way more in common with macOS than with Windows. They share a whole bunch of concepts like POSIX compliance, use the same shells, and they even share a package manager (Homebrew, which seems to be gaining a bit of Linux popularity lately). Even CUPS comes to mind.
    • GrowingSideways 9mo ago
      Gnome is still a windows knockoff yea? Can you use readline bindings in a textfield? Edit: I mean, usable text fields. Like you have on a mac. You hit control-a and it goes to the start of the field. The command key is for interacting with the application. > You…ever see a screenshot of Gnome? Let's talk usability, not bullshit. Also gnome looks like... the rest of computers. It has no usability and is indistinguishable from other windows knockoffs
      • dangus 9mo ago
        I am more confused than when we started, what exactly are you saying macOS is doing that nobody else is doing? > use readline bindings in a textfield I don’t even know what this means.
        • deathanatos 9mo ago
          They mean pretty much like they say. readline is a thing that reads lines being input by a user, in a terminal context. It includes a number of keybindings that make editing & navigation while editing the line-to-be-input easy, such as ^A, which moves the cursor to the start of the line. bash or zsh in emacs mode is similar, those these two have their own line editors, technically. macOS adopted some (but not all) of the common keybinds from that era into their UI. I.e., in a GUI text entry field in macOS, you can hit ^A to move the cursor to the start of the text entry. (I don't know that this particular UI-ism would make or break an OS for me, personally, though.) Given how UI is implemented, this would be up to the toolkit. In GTK3, this was called "key themes"; there was, I think, an "Emacs" theme that would do what they desire. I do not know if GTK4 still has this, however (and I suspect it was removed). (I think more users are going to expect ^A to be select-all, and home/end and ^← for word navigation, etc. These are the defaults. Thus key themes were probably little used.)
• dangus 9mo ago
  I like XFCE for capturing the spirit of an era, and it’s still lightweight, so in that sense it’s excellent. If I was more purely looking for something lightweight I think I’d end up with some other choice with a more modern design language. Even thinking about this subject still makes me a little miffed about the “need” to constantly evolve look and feel of the UI. Liquid Glass changed looks without innovating on functionality. It added bloat and confusion without providing any innovation to justify it. The whole system is so bad that I followed through on selling my Mac to go with a Linux laptop. At least with modern KDE/Gnome you can make a user experience argument over XFCE for why you’d upgrade. Okay, it’s not as snappy and lightweight, but you get a lot of functionality out of it. But these commercial operating systems are changing the UI to satisfy a marketing department rather than users. It has to look different or else there’s nothing new to sell.
• Fiveplus 9mo ago
  While I appreciate the author's enthusiasm for the traditional desktop metaphor, this analysis conflates interface familiarity with architectural efficiency. It is a pleasant sentiment please don't get me wrong but technically a bit short sighted. The author praises xfce's modularity and unix-like separation of components (xfwm4, xfce4-panel, xfdesktop), failing to realize that this design pattern is actually a performance antipattern in the modern display server model. In the X11 era, the server arbitrated these components. In the Wayland era (which I must assume is the baseline context), the compositor is the server. Forcing the panel and window manager to communicate via IPC rather than sharing a memory space in a monolithic compositor introduces unavoidable frame-latency and synchronization issues. Issues specifically regarding VBLANK handling and tear-free rendering that integrated environments like plasma or sway solved years ago.
  • readthenotes1 9mo ago
    Can you quantify those performance problems? Would I notice them on a 2018 vintage laptop?
    • getcrunk 9mo ago
      Just thinking out loud here, but even if it’s a performance anti pattern, xfce is a light weight de so you wouldn’t see it over all I guess. To my eye most Linux de’s are much lighter or responsive than windows or Mac
    • Fiveplus 9mo ago
      Hmm, I'd say that on a 2018-era machine, you won't measure this in raw CPU throughput. In all probablity, your cores are fast enough to mask the context switching. The performance deficit here is strictly in the domain of motion-to-photon latency or frame pacing. I guess my point is that in xfce's split architecture, the compositor acts as just another X11 client. This enforces a path where window contents often round-trip through the X server before composition. Quantitatively, this typically adds at least one frame of input lag compared to the zero-copy direct scanout path available to monolithic wayland compositors. You likely won't notice this while editing text. However, the architecture doesn't perform well when you attach an external monitor. Since X11 shares a single virtual coordinate space, it cannot synchronize VBLANK across two outputs with different refresh rates or clock domains. ps: and please don't call your 2018 machine vintage, it makes my secondary thinkpads feel prehistoric :D
• BatteryMountain 9mo ago
  Basically whenever I use a machine that has an nvidia gpu, I always use xfce, as it just works, has least amount of issues & babysitting nvidia drivers & breakages. For everything else I use KDE. I have some old chromebooks (flashed with chromebox firmware) that uses xfce too, which works great! So kde & xfce is the only two desktops I use these days & have patience for.
  • mcv 9mo ago
    Does the DE matter for your GPU? Can you give some examples of what xfce does better than kde when you've got Nvidia? Because I've got Nvidia and am using kde.
    • mrmlz 9mo ago
      XFCE is x11 only which might alleviate some Wayland bugs with nvidia.
• nice_byte 9mo ago
  Yeah, xfce is as close to an ideal desktop experience on Linux as it gets. A competent desktop environment really doesn't need that much. Post-2010ish Gnome and kde are like some sort of sick joke. The fact that there are people who actually contribute their precious free time to these, feels to me profoundly sad.
  • kombine 9mo ago
    GNOME is indeed annoying, but Plasma is a flagship Linux desktop experience, which has become self-evident with it's adoption by Valve for SteamOS as well as increasing number of newer distributions choosing it as default.
  • hulitu 9mo ago
    > Yeah, xfce is as close to an ideal desktop experience on Linux as it gets. fvwm is better
    • nice_byte 9mo ago
      nice joke
• voidfunc 9mo ago
  Loved XFCE but it's borderline unusable with high DPI monitors and dual monitor setups that aren't the same.
  • shevy-java 9mo ago
    Yeah, I noticed this recently with my ultra-widescreen monitor. That was indeed strange; normally XFCE works super-well.
  • Nursie 9mo ago
    You can do some xrandr magic to make it better and set a virtual rendering target that keeps things consistent across screens. It's a bit of a pain to work out though.
    • shevy-java 9mo ago
      Thing is: my default IceWM works better on the same monitor here than XFCE does. Something seems to not be considered by the current XFCE code.
      • voidfunc 9mo ago
        Haven't thought about IceWM in ages, that's good to know it works out of the box well. I'll have to check it out!
  • rhubarbtse 9mo ago
    How high? What kind of problems? I very recently upgraded from a dual fullhd to a dual 4k setup and I was genuinely surprised how little problems I had setting everything up to the high DPI displays. I am genuinely interested in hearing what pitfalls might still await me.
    • marginalia_nu 9mo ago
      Most HighDPI issues on X based DEs is from lack of fractional scaling, which means the scaling needs to happen in the applications instead (with separate configs for each UI toolkit), leading to lots of weird issues with inconsistently scaled UI elements on monitors sized such that integer scaling produces an inappropriate scale. It doesn't affect all monitors, but some DPIs really don't play well with X. The fractional scaling you get on Wayland leads to some element of blur instead, but that's a far lesser evil, the jank is a bigger issue IMO.
• Grom_PE 9mo ago
  I've found Xfce with Wallis theme to be quite comfortable after I ditched Windows 7. Been using it for 3 years now. Also I enjoyed how easily I could modify it: - xfwm4: zoom only to multiples of integer, nearest neighbor only - xfwm4: stop moving zoomed area after the cursor when Scroll Lock is on - xfce4-screenshooter: supply custom actions with parameters %x %y %w %h of a selected rectangle, allowing me, for example, to select a rectangle and then launch a screen recording script. Never found the use for multiple desktops, though. The only part that irritates me is having to interact with the GTK file chooser (file open dialog). Someday I might be annoyed enough to replace it.
  • koyote 9mo ago
    > The only part that irritates me is having to interact with the GTK file chooser (file open dialog). Someday I might be annoyed enough to replace it. That's probably my only annoyance as well. Is there an easy way to replace it? Not being able to see the path as a string is very "un-linux".
  • rabf 9mo ago
    The file chooser can be somewhat tamed in the settings editor. For example to get the buttons back to the bottom of the dialog where they belong: disable the "DialogsUseHeader" setting under "xsettings" in xfce4-settings-editor
• bobse 9mo ago
  [dead]
• Nursie 9mo ago
  I concur with the author - XFCE is a great desktop. I first used it on an eeepc because something light was the order of the day. But then Gnome 3 happened and I made the switch on my full-strength machines too. It works and it works well. It's theme-able. It's not opinionated about how I should use it so I can put bars wherever I want, launchers, menus, systrays wherever I like, and I can do it all with a few clicks and dragging and dropping stuff. Generally a great DE and one that won't screw you over on update, which is something I've come to value.
• puppybowl2026 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • capitol_ 9mo ago
    What on earth do the Direct Rendering Manager api have to do with commercialization?
    • lproven 9mo ago
      I think they meant Digital Rights Management, but it's only a guess.
  • shevy-java 9mo ago
    I have no idea what - or why - you wrote these three sentences. Do they have anything to do with the xfce entry linked in? Because I don't see the connection.
• Beijinger 9mo ago
  "Xfce is lightweight, typically using ~400-600MB RAM at idle" ROTFL. Moksha, the lightweight desktop for Bodhi Linux, has very low RAM requirements, with a default install using under 100MB of RAM
  • thisislife2 9mo ago
    True. And Fluxbox maybe uses less than 10 MB ram. Context is important - when compared to GNOME and KDE, XFCE does use less resources and is indeed snappier, with near feature parity.
• ivanb 9mo ago
  That 500x313 screenshot of the desktop does not help any argument.
  • rcarmo 9mo ago
    Try this one: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/04/12/2330 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/04/12/2330
• intalentive 9mo ago
  I made the jump to Mint Xfce when MS announced it would stop supporting Windows 7. Pretty seamless transition. I still enjoy that older minimal style reminiscent of the early 00s.
• Daunk 9mo ago
  I've been using XFCE for a long time now. I often give GNOME and KDE Plasma a try, but I have to tweak GNOME so much to make it usable, and KDE Plasma keeps crashing and has weird issues (Steam friends list being delayed for example), which just got worse when they switched to Wayland. I really do feel like XFCE on x11 is the logical choice, it "just works" and every app runs well (Discord has broken hotkeys on Wayland), it's stable, and whenever people see my XFCE setup they think it's something like KDE Plasma because it looks so "good" (or different at least). It even works well even on my 32:9 aspect ratio monitor, which isn't something I can say about some other desktops.
  • cdaringe 9mo ago
    I love and use xfce, but it “just works” for me only ~98%. Window snapping dimensions are oft still wrong, i get visual artifacts sometimes , etc. minor issues. With gnome i may not love everything about it, but i change nothing and it does “just work” closer to 99.9+% Seems like YMMV
• chr15m 9mo ago
  Long time user. It really is the absolute chefskiss. It's all about the small details, keeping things constant, and the minimalism. Can't praise it highly enough and I'm very grateful to everybody who works on it!
• blurbleblurble 9mo ago
  Anyone using it with Niri?
  • c45y 9mo ago
    I use thunar with niri and some of the taskbar applets for bluetooth etc in waybar
• sgt 9mo ago
  I ran XFCE back in say, 2005, 2006 or so. It looks almost exactly the same! I guess that's also the purpose of XFCE - to provide a minimal environment without the instabilities of modern GNOME and KDE or be exposed to Wayland quirks. Just roll with it like it's 20 years ago.
• i_am_a_peasant 9mo ago
  This was my first DM, i even put my mother on it on her home laptop. I use i3 nowadays, glazewm on windows, and aerospace on macos. anything that’s not a tiling window manager nowadays just feels wrong to me. Even if sometimes my screen doesn’t look pretty because i randomly threw on virtual screen 7 all the windows i don’t currently use.
• KronisLV 9mo ago
  Lovely post, Xfce indeed is what I also reach for, especially when I need something for limited hardware, a small install size or just something quite stable and dependable! It’s probably not the #1 in all of those categories, but does a good enough job across all of them that I’m satisfied. > I stopped writing posts like this for years, out of fear of how people from specific desktop environments would respond. I personally also quite liked Cinnamon with Linux Mint, which was similarly pleasant out of the box, but I’m also sorry that the author had to deal with people I guess getting kinda heated over their preferences?
  • cassepipe 9mo ago
    Cinnamon is indeed great ! Looks great out of the box and easy to configure quickly. I generally have to set a bunch of options and set up two shortcuts and I can do that under a minute. I think it deserves more praise. GNOME is too limited and I get lost in KDE, cosmic does not support gestures yet... I always come back to it.
  • davidgerard 9mo ago
    The greatest drag on Linux adoption is Linux evangelists.
• rauli_ 9mo ago
  Xfce is way too minimal to be great. An great DE must be written mostly in JavaScript and hoard gigabytes of memory in order to render a single window.
  • abenga 9mo ago
    If I understand the target of your snark, Gnome shell on my machine uses 172MB of RAM, if I sum all other gnome-related stuff (gdm-wayland-session, gjs, gnome-session-service, etc), it's 200MB. Hardly GB. You don't have to lie to make a point.
    • twelvedogs 9mo ago
      yeah, i have a couple older machines and tried xfce and it wasn't really worth it memory wise, sure xfce is probably lighter but it's easily less than 100 meg difference
      • vanderZwan 9mo ago
        Ok, but did you also run it for a while and compare how snappy or laggy the different DEs are? Because with xfc my old T440s Thinkpad from 2013 is still perfectly fine for browsing the web, or watching movies on the HD projector, without sacrificing too many modern interface conveniences. I can't say the same for Gnome or KDE, and that's no slight against either (I happily use the latter on my more recent work laptop). Having said that VSCode runs perfectly fine on the T440s too, so Electron and JavaScript aren't the fundamental reason those DEs are too demanding to use.
        • miniupuchaty 9mo ago
          I'm writing this on my old 2014 acer aspire. Currently gnome-shell is taking 135MB of ram, with other gdm/gnome related background services ranging in 700KB-3.2MB each to like 20MB together. And it's as snappy as my sway config I log into depending on the needs. I just spammed virtual desktop changes, opening Files, browsing, and it's as snappy as it is in sway. I think gnome is getting a lot of unfair performance criticism online as it looks like something that would be slow. Maybe it was slow back in the starting gnome3 days. Maybe there are some heavy differences in how distros package it? (arch btw) ... though I will say that from my experience it's the KDE that's the slow one. I don't have it installed currently on this machine but had in the past and have it on my steam deck(which is stronger then this laptop). It feels sluggish and I have this bouncing cursor wait animation in my head right now just thinking about it.
• enricotr 9mo ago
  If someone somehow enlarge the 1px handle for windows resizing by default (not default theme) I can say 'it's perfect'.
  • Daunk 9mo ago
    That is not XFCE itself, that is up to your theme. I'm on the Dracula theme and have about 16 pixels.
    • hxorr 9mo ago
      Are there any themes that allow changing window border size, title bar size, scrollbar width etc, like win 9x?
      • ReallyOldLurker 9mo ago
        My scrollbar changes in Debian: 1. as root, edit /etc/environment and add: GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 2. in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css add: .scrollbar.vertical slider, scrollbar.vertical slider {min-width: 10px;}
  • pred_ 9mo ago
    The workaround for me is to always resize by clicking Alt, right click, and drag. At the end of the day, that's probably just straight up easier, since you never need to bother getting close to the borders of the windows.
    • Daunk 9mo ago
      I recommend changing the key to Super. As holding down Alt and clicking/dragging is often used by many applications and simply won't work then.
      • KeybInterrupt 9mo ago
        I just learned that you can use Super + Left Mouse to drag windows around and Super + Right Mouse to resize, due to this discussion. I have been using XFCE forever, mostly using hotkeys for tilling, and just did not know :D Thanks !
• rich_sasha 9mo ago
  I used to be on Gnome when it was the old interface (windows XP style), then moved to MATE. Never used Xfce. How does it compare to MATE? I remember mate being ever so slightly unstable (not sure if it was HW compatibility issues).
  • Nursie 9mo ago
    Xfce and MATE are fairly similar in a lot of ways. Back in the day Xfce had more emphasis on being lightweight than Gnome 2 did. In terms of being able to put your UI elements wherever you want, being simple, configurable and non-opinionated, it's all very similar. I would assume (could be wrong) that Xfce is under more active development than Mate. I made the switch when Gnome 2 was killed overnight, and Mate didn't yet exist. My Xfce desktop looks a lot like my Gnome 2 desktops used to. I've never felt the need to switch to anything else or 'back' to Mate.
• dgan 9mo ago
  I ve excludively used Xfce thru my linux journey, but cant make it work for a high dpi framework laptop. So Gnome it is :(
  • hulitu 9mo ago
    xrandr ?
• kstenerud 9mo ago
  I really wanted to like XFCE, but the tiny tiny window grab area for resizing is just too damn frustrating.
  • dgan 9mo ago
    I have deleted all window decorations and use F... keys to manipulate resize/move. But you could totally increase the height instead of deleting them
    • kstenerud 9mo ago
      Yup, there are hacky workarounds, but what I'm after is the industry standard of grab areas that extend beyond the visible borders of the windows (which became more popular as high DPI monitors became the norm - and then Apple recently took to excess). And this is something the XFCE team have expressly said that they will NOT do. And so I moved on to Mate.
      • dgan 9mo ago
        I installed Fedora + gnome onnmy new Framework, it definitely works better out of the box, but i dislike the design :/
  • quchen 9mo ago
    You can configure a window resize hotkey. I use Win+(drag the window with right mouse) and it resizes it i the way you expect, moving the corner closest to the cursor. Left click would move the window instead of resizing. This is by far my favorite way to resize and I don't know why it's not an industry standard.
    • iancoleman 9mo ago
      The default config for this is to use Alt+(right-click drag) to resize and Alt+(left-click drag) to move. I use this so much once I found it, this solved my frustration with the tiny resize border on the window itself. This setting can be found in Settings > Window Manager Tweaks > Accessibility > Key used to grab and move windows: Alt
• jamiejquinn 9mo ago
  I ran a pretty vanilla xfce setup from about 2010 until 2024 until I moved to i3. Xfce is great generally, pretty easy to backup and share the whole config, ideal collection of apps. I'm sure gnome and kde have more features but for a good, solid, predictable desktop experience, cannae beat xfce.
• avhception 9mo ago
  When KDE 4 came out, I switched to Gnome 2. When Gnome 3 came out in (checks notes) 2011, I switched to XFCE. And that was that. I have a minimal taskbar at the bottom of my screen, with a little tray and a little button for the whisker menu. But I usually launch that using hyper + space. It gets out of my way, it gets shit done, I love it. Let's hope that it will survive the Wayland transition.
  • davidgerard 9mo ago
    I did exactly the same series of switches.
  • masfoobar 9mo ago
    I don't have as much hatred towards Gnome 3 like everyone else does. Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not defending it. I was a little heart broken as I really liked Gnome 2. However, I tried to be optimistic with their plans overall. (I think the early days on Gnome 3 featured something call Gnome Legacy to keep that Gnome 2-ish feel. I likely stayed on that for a while) I still use Gnome 3 today... but Xfce would certainly be my second choice.
    • avhception 9mo ago
      I don't have "hatred" towards Gnome3. I use it for friends and families desktops, they seem to like it. I have also rolled out about ~20 Gnome3-based desktops for my employer. That said, there are definitely areas were Gnome could be improved. Some of them are understandable and probably stem from a lack funding / devs. Others less so, like removing the options to scale / stretch / center the wallpaper w/o installing "Gnome tweaks".
      • masfoobar 9mo ago
        Yeah - I find it a little frustrating that the first thing to do after installing Gnome3 is to install Tweaks.
        • 9mo ago
• WhereIsTheTruth 9mo ago
  I moved away from XFCE over the CSD drama, despite winning that battle, the resistance showed me the project lacks the backbone to resist GNOME long term
• liampulles 9mo ago
  I'm a longtime fan of XFCE. I try all sorts of DEs from time to time on spare computers, but I reliably come back to XFCE, which is really just a fairly low-resource, stable embodiment of the classic GNOME feel. I used mainline Ubuntu for a few years until they released GNOME 3 (which I hated then and hate now) and then I switched to Xubuntu and was happy again. I made a conscious decision a few years ago (after trying yet another distro that went tits up), I was going to stop playing around WITH linux and start playing around ON linux for computers that I needed to get actual work done on. If one wants a classic Linux feel that is fairly stable, XFCE and a Debian base is pretty good for that. I am a little concerned about the whole Wayland situation, since the XFCE team seems to be taking a fairly anti-Wayland stance at the moment. It has forced me to manually move from Wayland back to X11 on new installs to get a relaible experience, which is not reliably straightforward and seemingly may become more problematic as time progresses.
  • davidgerard 9mo ago
    they're actively working on Wayland and very much want it to work well there? https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap One problem is I think Xfce has no paid developers, it's all spare time.
    • pamcake 9mo ago
      Yeah, my worry has recently been the opposite: That at least from afar they seem onboard the same Wayland track as the other DEs just at a slower pace. As long as Xorg is around I hope Xfce never deprecates X.
    • liampulles 9mo ago
      Quote from your link: "It is not clear yet which Xfce release will target a complete Xfce Wayland transition (or if such a transition will happen at all)."
  • alextingle 9mo ago
    Wayland just seems really unstable to me. I try it occasionally, but glitches, freezes or crashes quickly drive me back to X.
• noosphr 9mo ago
  Xfce is the definition of comfy computing. They have a visual language that's not changed for decades and just works. I prefer tiling window managers with no decorations, but whenever I have an app that doesn't play nice with xmonad I open an xfce x server and do my work there.
  • compass_copium 9mo ago
    Also prefer a tiling wm, but xfce is great to keep installed for guest accounts on your PC
• klondike_klive 9mo ago
  Xfce has long been the only DE that gets out of my way enough for me to actually be productive instead of excited by the possibility of different configurations.
  • faustlast 9mo ago
    Have you tried a tiling window manager? All I want is an empty black screen and an app launcher.
    • klondike_klive 9mo ago
      I admit I'm intrigued by the idea. Do you have any recommendations?
      • ewzimm 9mo ago
        The main tiling window manager using Wayland is Sway, although personally I like the simplicity of DWM. You can easily edit the configuration and compile it yourself. One of the things I love about XFCE is its modularity. It's literally just a collection of programs that work independently, so while I use DWM, if I need a panel, I just type "panel" into dmenu, and XFCE panel runs right on top of it with no problems, aligning perfectly over the DWM top bar. If you want to try a more complete DE, I'd recommend COSMIC. It's fresh and fast and very customizable.
• timonoko 9mo ago
  I just discovered alt-scroll just by accident. Desktop Zoom (Xubuntu/Kubuntu): In Xfce (Xubuntu) and KDE (Kubuntu), Alt + Scroll is the default shortcut to zoom in and out of the entire desktop. This is an accessibility feature used to magnify specific parts of the screen.
  • timonoko 9mo ago
    Also I have "make-icon" to bragg about: convert -size 24x24 -gravity center -background yellow -fill black\ label:$1 ~/.local/share/icons/$1.png file=~/.local/share/applications/$1-noko.desktop echo [Desktop Entry] > $file echo Name=$1 >> $file echo Comment=noko-made >> $file echo Exec=$1 >> $file echo Terminal=false >> $file echo Icon=~/.local/share/icons/$1.png >> $file echo Type=Application >> $file
    • thomas-mc-work 9mo ago
      What exactly do we see here?
      • nh2 9mo ago
        A shell injection vulnerability ad soon as somebody copies the same approach somewhere else or trained your LLM on it. Write correct code by default, always, otherwise it will end up somewhere you care about. The best way to do that is to avoid shell, as a language that makes writing insecure code the most convenient. (The original intent looks like it's making a desktop/launch icon, e.g. you might call it with "firefox" as an argument and it would put its logo into an application starter, provided a logo of the correspond name is already in the place the script expects.)
      • timonoko 9mo ago
        Erh? Bash-reading disability? make-icon ABCD: 1) Makes a small picture ABCD.png from the first letters of the string "ABCD". 2) Makes ABCD application icon to using the picture ABCD.png. 3) Moving youres pointing device on that icon and pressing appropriate button now executes ABCD. "convert" is from Imagemagick of course.
• liotier 9mo ago
  I used to love Xfce, when KDE felt clunky to me and Gnome went in directions I found insane. Since then Gnome remains Gnome, but KDE has matured to a stage where most of the defaults feel like they were designed for me - and any that doesn't can be easily changed. After a period of using more and more K* applications, I realized I might as well switch desktop... Xfce is now a fond memory, and the times have moved on.
  • Insanity 9mo ago
    I’m still on xfce, but haven’t used KDE in more than 10 years. Hearing lots of good things about it lately so maybe it’s time to give it another shot.
  • msl09 9mo ago
    I had a similar experience. I only moved from xfce when my nvidia board kept killing my X session in creative ways. I'm pleasantly satisfied with kde, but I only have high praise for xfce usability.
  • mikkupikku 9mo ago
    I want to like KDE, but it's just too unreliable for me. My last foray was about a year or two ago, I had to stop using it because an update something in KDE's power management broke and my laptop no longer reliably suspended when the battery was low (manually triggered suspends still worked fine.) I've been repeatedly having experiences like this with KDE, each time I fall back on LXQt with kwin and everything looks a bit uglier but just simply works. I don't know what's going on in KDE, but I assume they've got too many software architects with their heads in the clouds, designing a byzantine mess of abstraction and indirection until even they lose track of where in the code the functionality actually lives. That's all just my assumption though, all I really know is that basic features keep breaking between releases.
    • stock_toaster 9mo ago
      Could also be packaging issues. Kde has been pretty stable for me on debian 13.
    • 9mo ago
• pjmlp 9mo ago
  Xfce is what I settled on, when still using GNU/Linux desktops. I used a multitude of UNIX environments since 1994, starting with IBM X Windows terminals connected to DG/UX, and thanks to the way Unity got dropped, the way GNOME 3.0 went down, windowmaker no longer being actively developed, Xfce it was.
  • pjmlp 9mo ago
    Correction, UNIX GUI environments.
  • anthk 9mo ago
    Windowmaker it's still developed.
    • pjmlp 9mo ago
      From where I am standing it feels more like bug fixing than anything else, like it was back in the 2000's, when I used to see what were the new WINGs coming out, and play around with GNUStep integration.
• kamikazechaser 9mo ago
  I used XFCE (MxLinux) for 5 years until recently when I moved to KDE Plasma (Fedora) because of Wayland support. Imo, KDE is better and more resource efficient. I also got a free 10 fps boost on DotA 2 on the same hardware and settings. Zed and a lot of other apps are better supported on Wayland.
• emilfihlman 9mo ago
  I used to use XFCE a lot, but since then, even though it sucks in its own ways quite a lot, Gnome defaults to a nicer environment nowadays and doesn't seem so resource intensive anymore.
• motbus3 9mo ago
  Years ago, one of the most intelligent and brightest guys I worked with was using xfce His setup was almost non existent apart from few customisations. I remember he told me that xfce was the best one could get, while not being unpolite, he implied the problem was that people liked too much too have bells and blinking lights. I kept using for a while what I was using, but after giving a try, yeah, that was all I needed.
  • tuetuopay 9mo ago
    that's pretty much what I get with i3/sway and why i'm sticking to them. is it ugly? probably. does it gives me screen real estate? definitely. does it get out of the way? heck yes! in the days before I went full on tiling, xfce was one of my go-to choices.
• downsplat 9mo ago
  I've used Xfce exclusively since Gnome jumped the shark many years ago. It's fast, does the job nicely, and stays out of your way. I do hope they get stable on Wayland sometime soon, because X11 seems to have lost its momentum, and I would probably like to enable fractional scaling on my next laptop.
  • rabf 9mo ago
    You do not need fractional scaling, just set the correct dpi in settings and use a high dpi theme.
• maqnius 9mo ago
  Is there something like a tilling extension for xfce? Not snappy corners but actually tilling by default? I'm currently on popos (using GNOME) and enjoy the tilling of its GNOME extension. Actual tilling wms were too hackish for me whenever I tried them.
  • benrutter 9mo ago
    I don't think so - have you tried popOS's latest Cosmic DE though? I think it's in Beta now - it's a written from scratch desktop environment, that puts the tiling extension like behavior as a first class citizen. If you wanted something more lightweight and minimal, but complete with tiling, it's a good option.
  • intheitmines 9mo ago
    i3 + xfce works well for this
• KnuthIsGod 9mo ago
  xmonad is my main. XFCE is when my backup when I break xmonad.
• tmtvl 9mo ago
  I used to like Xfce until KDE 4 won me over. Since Xfce switched to GTK 3, though... if you put Thunar and the Xfce system settings next to each other they don't look like they're part of the same project and that's a shame.
• vdupras 9mo ago
  Let me join on this XFCE love fest. I also think it rocks, but it's more than that. It's also my go-to install for "friends and family" linux installs (Debian stable and XFCE). I've been doing a couple of these over the years, and the great thing about XFCE is that it doesn't change, while at the same time being fairly intuitive and discoverable to the tech-unsavvy people. So, with XFCE, I explain things once and I don't have to explain things to that person ever again. It stays as is over the years! One only have to make sure to disable the virtual desktop (4 screens by default) thing and be sure to only keep one. That's the most confusing thing to non-tech-savvy that ever was. "Where have all my windows gone?! I moved the mouse and poof! they were gone" Also, it runs great on old hardware. It's mostly what I've been doing. Family and friends tell me how they'll need to buy a new computer because theirs can't go on the internet anymore. I tell them "no you won't!". And then their computer becomes super fast again. Make my Computer Great Again.
• mnls 9mo ago
  Never liked it. Terrible font rendering.
• jmclnx 9mo ago
  I am a fvwm person, but if I had to use a desktop environment, xfce would be my first choice. I find it works great for me. Once it ends up on Wayland and I am forced to use Wayland, right now xfce will be my choice. Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window. The same is true for GNOME, but KDE it is allowed. I expect this is a gtk thing.
  • ReallyOldLurker 9mo ago
    > Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window. If I understand your comment correctly, right click on the Panel --> Panel Preferences, Display tab. Checkmark "Keep panel above windows". This allows windows to use the panel section of the screen. Combine with "Automatically hide the panel: intelligently".
• tsoukase 9mo ago
  When I read about the awesomeness of Wayland I become tempted to try it. Then I remember I am immersed in Xfce4 which I can never leave and I forget it. Really, Wayland Vs Xfce is the current war of DEs.
• ivraatiems 9mo ago
  XFCE and LXDE are saviors for old machines. I frequently install Xubuntu and Lubuntu on old Chromebooks (e. g. HP Chromebook 14 from around 10 years ago, 2GB RAM, Celeron processor), and you can quickly get a fully functional, usable system. I'm not writing code on them, but you can easily use them for all the things the average person needs on a daily basis from their computer. It's great that these projects have not given into "the times" or tried to become things they're not. They're great at what they do and I hope they remain that way.
• gtest 9mo ago
  Many people praise KDE. But to me, KDE is extremely ugly. Admittedly, I use Gnome. I have few requirements for a DE and most existing DEs meet my need[1]. Many in the Linux community hate Gnome (not sure what the short comings are). I use it mainly because it is the default in most cases. But KDE is extremely ugly out of the box: the panel at the bottom. The window frames, the mouse pointer, the menues. It takes some work to make it reasonable. What are the features that people actually use on KDE that are missing on Gnome (or require some work to get on Gnome)? I mostly see only the argument that KDE is "extremely customizable" compared to Gnome. I agree, but what is the actual customization that one does that make the difference, which are more work to achieve (or impossible) on Gnome? I am genuinely asking: I can live with ugly DE if I am missing something I don't know. [1] my needs: ability to switch windows, ability to press super key to search for an app, ability to display time.
  • aorth 9mo ago
    > Many people praise KDE. But to me, KDE is extremely ugly. > > Admittedly, I use Gnome. Same. To each their own, but I also prefer the aesthetics of the GNOME and GTK ecosystem. Though I use Sway as a WM the past few years, I always opt for GNOME and GTK apps when there are options. I've been using Linux since about 2000.