Xfce is great • Hacker News Board

Re: Xfce is great

#11

Post by Fiveplus » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#12

Post by andrewflnr » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#13

Post by bionsystem » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

fooker wrote: post #4

Also try LXDE and LXQT if you would like a 'lighter KDE' vibe instead of the 'lighter gnome 2' vibe of XFCE.

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).

Re: Xfce is great

#14

Post by erikw » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:46 AM UTC

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.

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_x...

Re: Xfce is great

#15

Post by dangus » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

GrowingSideways wrote: post #8

[flagged]

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#16

Post by readthenotes1 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:50 AM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

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 perf…

Can you quantify those performance problems? Would I notice them on a 2018 vintage laptop?

Re: Xfce is great

#17

Post by BatteryMountain » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#18

Post by nine_k » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

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 perf…

As a decades-long Xfce user, I greatly value Xfce's modularity, and don't care the slightest bit about improving the display server performance. Xfce is already snappy well beyond my level of sensitivity, and I won't trade the flexibility I have and use for a sliver of extra performance I don't even think I might need.

(Yes, it's plenty snappy on an external 4K@60 monitor. A desktop environment is not a competitive FPS where a single extra frame of latency lowers your chance of being productive.)

Re: Xfce is great

#19

Post by getcrunk » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

readthenotes1 wrote: post #16

Fiveplus wrote: post #11

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 perf…

Can you quantify those performance problems? Would I notice them on a 2018 vintage laptop?

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

Re: Xfce is great

#20

Post by nice_byte » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

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.