UPDATE
There’s now an initial release of xfwl4, and AUR packages that you can test:
ORIGINAL POST
Brian Tarricone has created a “Pre-release tasks” checklist at the Xfce GitLab. No items checked so far, but you can monitor it to see the progress towards a first release of xfwl4.
After reading that, I looks like Xfce is going with RUST. First Cosmic, now Xfce?
Pudge
XFCE is still such a delightfully simple (yet powerful) DE. It does things other environments don’t do, which is surprising. If Plasma didn’t exist. I’d absolutely be on XFCE.
They had a post about the evaluation process earlier. Beside of the technical Rust merits it seems that one of the core devs vastly prefers it:
Rather subjective: Brian has a strong preference to write code in rust over writing code in C.
What things it does other DEs don’t do? I never tried that, so I’m curious.
Virtual desktops (not screens, for those who are just about to kick in with a “but akshully” 
) with individual wallpaper, no addons, no plugins, just straight choose your desktop and choose your wallpaper. Done. (And now I want to jump from Plasma back on to it.. gah.. 
)
Go on, give in to temptation 
LOL temptation happened a few minutes ago, running gloriously alongside Plasma.. gods it’s always a mental exhale when I load it up..
Huh… just five items left now to complete? Wow that’s progress.. I’m guessing since Brian was specifically funded to work on this full time, it’s a win either way. Good times!
Wow that is quick! I guess someone 
is going to have to eat their prickly words 
always been stopped to install both at the same time and it’s been lots of years with XFCE since I left crunchbang and with the distro openbox, nowadays running plasma but really want to try XFCE Wayland
Didn’t mean to rain on your party 
Now go and play with your 
Only one pre-release task left now - https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwl4/-/work_items/60
Brian’s work to bring XFCE up to current toolsets is huge, he rejoined XFCE in 2022 and it shows. Looking forward to seeing XFCE thrive for many years to come.
XFCE is the one desktop I keep coming back to. I think it gets underestimated because the default desktop is so “retro” looking. For me, it just seems to hit the sweet-spot between usability and customize-ability. Currently running Plasma and, once you zero in on it’s strengths, it’s a darned nice desktop. I particularly like the calendar extension to the Digital Clock widget. XFCE though, it just seems to be my overall favorite.
I could wrote this comment word by word
Absolutely! 
It’s defaults look retro, but it’s easy to get it looking good
KDE Plasma is deservedly the favourite desktop of Arch users, but sometimes it just “too much” for me, whereas Xfce is “just right”.
4.21.0
- Initial release
If you’re feeling very brave, there are two alternative AUR packages (both updated today):
UPDATE
Brian Tarricone has published a blog post about the release, saying “Think of this as an alpha release”, and including “a list of notable things that won’t work”:
Came here to see if this had been posted, thanks for sharing! Can’t believe the pace Brian’s been working at since going full time, let’s hope by the end of the year there’s an initial release. Looking very promising!