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Xfce is great

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Re: Xfce is great

#151

Post by benrutter »

maqnius wrote: post #144

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#152

Post by beAbU »

kristopolous wrote: post #7

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/ (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/ As for as early xfce check out https://xteddy.org/…

Sourceforge gives me the heeby-jeebys though.

Re: Xfce is great

#153

Post by lproven »

voidfunc wrote: post #25

Loved XFCE but it's borderline unusable with high DPI monitors and dual monitor setups that aren't the same.

> dual monitor setups that aren't the same.

Absolutely categorically false: I daily-drove such a config on openSUSE for 4 years, 9-5 Mon-Fri.

One portrait, one landscape: fine. 2 portrait flanking one landscape: fine. Laptop + 2 external displays, 1 big in portrait, 1 small in landscape: fine. 2 screens, vertically stacked: fine. 2 side-by-side, one big one small: fine.

Everything works exactly as expected. Panels stay put. Some apps can't remember their positions but they can't on any WM or desktop.

Very dissimilar resolutions gets tricky but that's down to Xinerama not Xfce. It's true on all X11 desktops.

Xfce can do fractional scaling on a per-display basis to get on-screen features the same size, but it results in some displays getting slightly blurry. Tolerable for short-term use but not all day every day, for me.

But Xfce is 100% usable in heterogenous multihead and indeed handles this as well or better than almost any other mainstream X11-based desktop.

Re: Xfce is great

#154

Post by al_borland »

andrewflnr wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#155

Post by porridgeraisin »

Reubend wrote: post #6

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.

Arc-darker GTK and Kvantum (if you use QT apps) themes.

Qogir-dark icon theme.

Whisker menu, application icon+ labels and the system tray thing in the bottom panel.

Basically, it looks like windows 7.

Re: Xfce is great

#156

Post by intheitmines »

maqnius wrote: post #144

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.

i3 + xfce works well for this

Re: Xfce is great

#157

Post by mikkupikku »

liotier wrote: post #124

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#158

Post by thomas-mc-work »

timonoko wrote: post #122
timonoko wrote: post #120

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.

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

What exactly do we see here?

Re: Xfce is great

#159

Post by masfoobar »

avhception wrote: post #103

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#160

Post by honktime »

liampulles wrote: post #108

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 tryi…

xfce wayland seems to work fine/most components are ported. I started it up in wayland mode just now and it seems to work fine.
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