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Xfce is great

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Re: Xfce is great

#61

Post by roomey »

mmh0000 wrote: post #3

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 XF…

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

Re: Xfce is great

#62

Post by pantalaimon »

ntnsndr wrote: post #34
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'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 app…

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#63

Post by bitwize »

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…

Fvwm ran exactly that way on my Pentium-60 and I do not recall ever experiencing performance or latency issues; matter of fact, my Linux desktop of the time was more efficient than Windows. The FvwmPager, FvwmButtons, and FvwmTaskBar modules are separate programs launched by fvwm and communicate with it via IPC. Sacrificing modularity to avoid performance issues that were hard to see even on machines from 30 years ago—let alone on today's hardware—is a bit penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Re: Xfce is great

#65

Post by shevy-java »

voidfunc wrote: post #25

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

Yeah, I noticed this recently with my ultra-widescreen monitor. That was indeed strange; normally XFCE works super-well.

Re: Xfce is great

#66

Post by shevy-java »

Nursie wrote: post #35
voidfunc wrote: post #25

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

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#67

Post by mcv »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #17

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.

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#68

Post by literallywho »

ntnsndr wrote: post #34
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'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 app…

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#69

Post by esseph »

nine_k wrote: post #42
esseph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But maybe people want to run XFCE AND play competitive fps? It would be embarrassing for gnome to be more performant there than XFCE.

Don't full-screen apps sidestep the DE compositor anyway?

It's a specific setting in XFCE you have to turn on, and most people try to bypass it anyway by manually disabling the compositor with hotkeys. Auto detection of the full screen windows has been hit or miss, especially when running things through proton/wine.

Also with x11 if you go through the steps to get Variable Refresh Rate going and you are dual monitor, it will max the refresh of both to the slowest monitor. :(

Wayland doesn't have that issue.

Re: Xfce is great

#70

Post by voidfunc »

shevy-java wrote: post #66
Nursie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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!
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