I am a long time XFCE user and like its simplicity while still have the possibility to change things.
Speed is another reason i use it, and the fact that you can create your own thunar custom actions.
Of course no DE is perfect, the standard menu is not very useful to me so i replaced it with whisker menu
will remember this next time I try xfce. did not think it could be done
The one thing that really blew me away was the sheer speed of file IO. I don’t know what’s different to KIO in Plasma, but file transfers and ops absolutely fly in XFCE.
And the renaming tool is quite good too. As for speed/responsiveness, if I could not use the font anti-aliasing, it would be really snappy.
I’ve had to go back to XFCE because it still uses X11. Wayland causes World of Warcraft to crash and freeze up for me, across DE’s, distros and different hardware.
So back to X11 and it works flawlessly.
I’ve missed XFCE, and it works perfectly fine. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything on the desktop, so I’m happy.
In the end I shifted the DPI to 130 which worked really well for my 27” 1440p screen. Fonts are flawless. No fractional scaling needed.
For my 27" 1080p, even with the right DPI value it looks ugly without anti-aliasing.
It’s also been better since I set the variable FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0", but it doesn’t work for everyone.
Yes Thunar is great for bulk renaming. Not needed to do that in a while though.
If KDE Plasma went away I would probably use XFCE4 because I need Git support in my file manager. If thunar-vcs-plugin is installed, Thunar has Git support. The last time I checked, Nemo doesn’t offer Git support.
EDIT:
Ooops. It seems that Nemo now has git support.
although it looks like this might be from a third party and is not in the AUR yet.
Pudge
I initially used XFCE back when I tried different *buntu distros. While vanilla XFCE might appear plain and boring, it can be made to look really snazzy.
I became enamored with Openbox and Tint2 when I came across CrunchBang Linux back in the early 2000’s. However, development has ceased for Tint2 and I began to experience issues with the panel under Debian Unstable, so I made the decision to use XFCE since it has been in development for years and development efforts are being made to make it work under Wayland.
I’m still working on changing the default menu to match what I had under Openbox though. Quite a bit of work, but once I have it done, I will not have to work much on it any longer.
Can you explain what you mean here? Do you mean Openbox’s desktop right-click app menu, or do you mean the app menu in the Xfce panel?
Or something else entirely?
Also, I use Archcraft, and tint2 works just fine here. I use it in all my X11 DEs/WMs.
I’m guessing that the reason tint2 has ceased development is because it is now feature-complete and bugs are based on user configs.
XFCE is my overall favorite as well. All desktops have their strengths but XFCE is the one that seems to hit the sweet spot of usability and customize-ability overall. It’s default config might look dated, but it’s very easy to get a more up to date look. I look forward to it fully adopting Wayland.
Xfce is my personal fav when it comes to full-blown DEs as well.
It’s snappy, configurable, modular, predictable and stays out of the way.
The only thing needed would be stable Wayland experience.
I was working on changing the XFCE menu. I’ve completed the changes under both of my Debian installs as well as EndeavourOS, except for including some of the EndeavourOS scripts.
No, Tint2 development didn’t cease because it’s feature complete. I think the developer lost interest in the project. Development also may have ceased because the developer had no plans to port Tint2 to work under Wayland.
I see. Well, Xfce does plan to stay around in the Wayland era, so definitely not a bad choice there. You can end up having the Xfce panel in all DEs and WMs.
Like I said though, tint2 has no issues with my installation. I would share my config (configs, really - there are at least 20), but I remember trying it in my MX Linux installation, and it failed badly. This is very likely due to the way the maintainer of Archcraft (seemingly intentionally) makes his config files complicated to edit and/or share.
That said, you could download his tint2 config files from his GitHub and try to figure them out if you have the patience.
Xfce Desktop Environment Is Getting a Rust-Based Wayland Compositor
The Xfwl4 Wayland compositor will be based on the smithay project, not wlroots, and should be ready for the major Xfce 4.22 release later this year.
Eurgh, no thanks. I use XFCE to get away from Wayland so I can play WoW. Wayland is fine with Steam games, but WoW has major issues with it where it freezes up regularly for some reason.
After reading the blog post, it will support XWayland for apps using Xorg.