Xfce is great

#1

Post by mikece » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 4:39 AM UTC

Re: Xfce is great

#2

Post by andrewflnr » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:26 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#3

Post by mmh0000 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:27 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#4

Post by fooker » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:29 AM UTC

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

Re: Xfce is great

#5

Post by kachapopopow » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:31 AM UTC

XFCE is great for VNC setups where a full desktop is unrealistic

Re: Xfce is great

#6

Post by Reubend » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:35 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#7

Post by kristopolous » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

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/xwinman/screenshots/xfce-default.jpg (I'm actually on that site from 25 years ago: https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/twm-cjmckenzie.gif)

Re: Xfce is great

#8

Post by GrowingSideways » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Xfce is great

#9

Post by dangus » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 5:43 AM UTC

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.

Re: Xfce is great

#10

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

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!