I have Cinnamon up and running and I wanted to remove XFCE and wow, it just won’t go without a fight. Been Googling for about an hour and none of the Arch/Manjaro steps are working. I saw on the Endeavour OS wiki about removing a DE but when I try to remove XFCE4, I get a long list of errors about how it will break all sorts of dependencies.
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Hi!
sudo pacman -Rns xfce4 xfce4-goodies should do the job without harm, just be sure to run this command while using cinnamon.
xfce comes with a lot of apps, like music players, text editor, but since you installed a full DE you’ll have alternatives to them.
and if your unsure if you uninstalled something important you can
sudo pacman -S cinnamon --needed
and
sudo pacman -S $(LANG=C pacman -Si cinnamon |sed -n '/Depends\ On/,/:/p'|sed '$d'|cut -d: -f2 |tr -d '>=[0-9]')
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You’re on the same road as me? I am so waiting to get back to an online installer so i can just install the desktop i want. I’m on Cinnamon also and have been for long time on Antergos and others. I’m interested if you get it removed as i might try also.
Removing Xfce4 wasn’t too painful. Now I am just making sure I have what I need to get some writing done.
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Immediately after install, did not even update, I got into a console window (Ctrl Alt F2) and logged in as root. Did
# pacman -Rnsd --nodeps xfce4 xfce4-goodies
and totally nuked XFCE.
reboot
when lightdm came up, again got into a console window and
# pacman -Syu
Then I checked and make sure I had the intel-ucode and xf86-video-intel packages, which it did.
Next
# pacman -S gnome gnome-extra
When it prompts for which packages to install DO NOT install 7 (gdm) I go through and pick about 40 of the 67 or so packages and made sure 7 was not one of them.
Reboot log-in with lightdm. Worked like a charm. This way I pretty much eliminated XFCE before installing the new DE. Might be a little cleaner, maybe.
Thanks for everyone’s input on this thread. You made it easy.
UPDATE: I think I got it. I issued the following command:
sudo pacman -Rd --nodeps xfce4 xfce4-goodies
… and XFCE4 was nuked. Down side, I lost my Gnome terminal. 
I had to open a new console (ctrl-alt-f_) and login then do: yay gnome-terminal … and installed v3.32.2-1. That the one that came with the default XFCE install?
Unfortunately, that didn’t work. I get this:
sudo pacman -Rns xfce4 xfce4-goodies
checking dependencies…
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: kalu: removing xfce4-notifyd breaks dependency ‘notification-daemon’
Tried removing ‘notification-daemon’ and:
error: target not found: notification-daemon (Guess this failed because I’m a super newb and that was just me being silly at taking a stab at killing that dependency)
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Check my updated post, I was able to finally nuke XFCE4! 
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Okay so i’m confused. Which command did you end up using and did you remove Kalu first? That’s probably what i would have done and then tried it again.
@roadhazard I just ran the command that @Pudge had while in Cinnamon and it worked.
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If you know you don’t want to run XFCE4 from the start, IMHO this is the cleanest way to remove XFCE and give the user a clean as possible Arch base install. IMHO the only thing cleaner would be to install Arch base the Arch Way, but then you wouldn’t have the EndevourOS components that Joe included.
Install EndeavourOS from the latest stable release. Be sure to set both user password and root password. After install is finished, poweroff computer and remove installation media. Reboot and hopefully EndeavourOS comes up for you.
When you get to the Lightdm login window, DO NOT log in. The next steps need to be performed totally outside of XFCE for the cleanest removal. Instead, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 and bring up a Console window. Note that a Console window is not like a Terminal window.
To log in, for user type in “root” followed by root’s password you assigned. Then enter the following:
# pacman -Rnsdd xfce4 xfce4-goodies kalu
let’s look at the pacman options. The following are direct quotes from man pacman
-R, --remove
Remove package(s) from the system. Groups can also be specified to
be removed, in which case every package in that group will be
removed. Files belonging to the specified package will be deleted,
and the database will be updated. Most configuration files will be
saved with a .pacsave extension unless the --nosave option is used.
See Remove Options below.
-n, --nosave
Instructs pacman to ignore file backup designations. Normally, when
a file is removed from the system, the database is checked to see
if the file should be renamed with a .pacsave extension.
-s, --recursive
Remove each target specified including all of their dependencies,
provided that (A) they are not required by other packages; and (B)
they were not explicitly installed by the user. This operation is
recursive and analogous to a backwards --sync operation, and it
helps keep a clean system without orphans. If you want to omit
condition (B), pass this option twice.
-d, --nodeps
Skips dependency version checks. Package names are still checked.
Normally, pacman will always check a package’s dependency fields to
ensure that all dependencies are installed and there are no package
conflicts in the system. Specify this option twice to skip all dependency checks.
Again, to review
# pacman -Rnsdd xfce4 xfce4-goodies kalu
When pacman finishes removing xfce, reboot the computer
# systemctl reboot
At lightdm, Do Not log in as there is nothing to log into. Hit Ctrl-Alt-F2 for console window.
# pacman -Syu (update what we have left before installing new DE)
# sytemctl reboot
At lightdm Ctrl-Alt-F2 for console window
then install DE of choice as per EndeavorOS wiki or Arch linux wiki. In my opinion, If you install Gnome 3, do not install gdm (Gnome Desktop Manager) so as to give all DE versions conformity across EndeavourOS as to the Desktop Manager.
Please excuse the length of this post. Just wanted to be concise.
Pudge
User Error: Replace user and try again.
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Thanks,
This is great i didn’t know this was an option. I have installed Arch the Arch way and i felt that Antergos worked better. Not only that i feel Endeavour also works better. Maybe i still need some more insight on installing Arch. I installed Cinnamon desktop. I don’t find installing Arch hard. It’s the setup and configuration afterwards and installing the desktop and components. I have done it a number of times but it froze once on me trying to shut it down. I have never had that with Antergos, Manjaro, Endeavour and almost every other Arch based distro i have tried which is most of them. So right now i installed Xfce and Cinnamon which is no problem on Endeavour and i used your method to remove Xfce. Are you suggesting it would be better to reinstall it your way? I don’t have an issue doing that if it’s going to be better in some way. Also i might just do that anyway as i like to know things i can and can’t do. Thanks for your input.
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As long as you have the system setup like you want it, and there are no problems, I would leave it like that. The only difference is you MAY and that’s a big MAY have a few extra XFCE config files or other files lying around compared to the above mentioned way, but that won’t hurt anything. I would hunker down with what you have and wait until the stable EndeavourOS Cinnamon release comes out later this year. Then load the stable EndeavourOS Cinnamon on a test computer (if possible) and check it out compared to what you have.
If someone knew ahead of time that they didn’t want XFCE, I was just suggesting a way that MIGHT be less problematic than installing the DE they want , then get rid of XFCE.
Remember, this comes with no Warranty, use at your own risk. If someone tries this, wear safety glasses and make sure no small children are around. 
Thanks I appreciate this. Would you be able to run me through installing Arch the Arch way. I would like to see if I am missing something as I have installed it a few times but something doesn’t seem right.
Great tutorial, but unlike Antergos we’re not going to have a uniform DM in the online installer, we recommend to use the dedicated DM for DE’s like Gnome and KDE for a better experience.
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For those installing KDE afterwards also remove Qt5 configuration tool ‘qt5c’ so changes in the appearance through system settings can take effect.
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So i am back to Cinnamon desktop as i have installed it by removing Xfce right after the initial install via @Pudge instructions. In the mean time i installed Arch Cinnamon again just because. What i really don’t like is they don’t give you the folders in Home. (Downloads, pictures etc) So you have to create them yourself. No big deal but then there is no folders in Places. I don’t know how you create them. Why bother putting the Places? Archlabs was like this too. Anyway i have EndeavourOS set up again on Cinnamon and it works great. This is Arch with flare!
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You mean like the download, pictures, music folders, correct? Did you install xdg-user-dirs-gtk? If they don’t show up, you can run the following command as a regular user:
xdg-user-dirs-update
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No i didn’t install it but i was looking at it. So in order to update it you need to install that first? So i take it, it’s not a gui version.
I can’t recall if it runs automatically after install or not, which was why I included the command in my previous post.
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Probably not but it may when you first install it? I just noticed Arch labs was the same and Arch. Both have no folders in places. Or folders in Home. Just more work to do.