Why XFCE?

[deanr72]

XFCE, as tweaked by MX, works very well for me except that Thunar lacks a split-screen mode and can access only local files.
For split-screen and remote files I use konqueror which runs fine in the XFCE environment.

What's the advantage of split screen mode (I just discovered this in Nemo thanks to your post) versus the simple right click > open in new tab?

I'm also not sure what you mean by 'local files'. Files which aren't on your computer, I presume. As I don't know that those are I guess I don't this feature

Split-screen lets you drag and drop files from one place to another in one window.
No, by local files I mean files which are on your computer, as opposed to those on another machine on the internet.

Doh! Of course I meant 'are' not 'aren't'. Would you believe I'm a proofreader

[Eggnog]

I've used a few DEs in my time. I like some of them. But I always prefer Xfce if the distribution supports it. Some users have to have bells and whistles, and more bells and newer whistles. I don't need wobbly things and spinning things. My goal is not to play with the DE. I just want my DE to work and stay out of my way. Xfce does that nicely. I don't even mind Thunar. I'm kind of getting to like it. But the biggest reason I like Xfce is that it just doesn't piss me off.

[GuiGuy]

.......
Doh! Of course I meant 'are' not 'aren't'. Would you believe I'm a proofreader

Well, you are off-duty when you are posting to this forum, so you may be forgiven

I think you can see that most MX users enjoy the XFCE environment: of course you are entitled to prefer others.
But why not give the MX version of it a trial? .... You might even get to like it after a day or two!

[BV206]

What I like about XFCE:
Whiskermenu.
Thunar right click custom actions.
Right click on desktop gives you full menu including Thunar custom actions.
No dancing/wobbling/spinning/fading animated crap.
Customized panels; as many you need or want.

What I don't like:
On most distros I have tried the non-default themes can have elements that don't look right or work properly (I haven't check all of them on MX yet so I don't know how bad it is).
Not easy to customize colors of window decorations & other theme components.

[entropyfoe]

BV206,

Same here, I like XFCE, and especially the MX implementation.

You hit one of my wishes...
I have tried many themes, but all of the bars across the top of the windows seem black or dark.(I have not explored ALL of them, but many)

I like dark or black desk top wallpapers, so the title bars do not contrast a lot, which makes grabbing them some what harder than it should be.

[vancouver]

I chose MX Linux specifically because of Xfce.
If it weren't for that, I could have gone with KDE Neon or something like that.

There are too many things to list but show me anything else besides Xfce that can spawn a monitor background image over two monitors?

[manyroads]

[...]
You hit one of my wishes...
I have tried many themes, but all of the bars across the top of the windows seem black or dark.(I have not explored ALL of them, but many)

I like dark or black desk top wallpapers, so the title bars do not contrast a lot, which makes grabbing them some what harder than it should be.

Here are some themes that mix & match well together and deal with the too dark to find border issues. Qogir, victory-gtk, IceBlue. They are all available on http://xfce-look.org

[Eggnog]

BV206,

Same here, I like XFCE, and especially the MX implementation.

You hit one of my wishes...
I have tried many themes, but all of the bars across the top of the windows seem black or dark.(I have not explored ALL of them, but many)

I like dark or black desk top wallpapers, so the title bars do not contrast a lot, which makes grabbing them some what harder than it should be.

On xfce-look.org there is a theme called XFCE-D-PRO-1.6. Once I found that I stayed with it. I've been using it for quite a while now. Give it a shot. It will give you a lighter title bar, too. I believe it was made by a member here a while back, if I recall correctly.

[BitJam]

IIRC XFCE was originally chosen (over KDE) to work on a netbook owned by Jerry3904. I believe that scratchig a personal itch is an extremely effective way to do development. The question then is why did the Mepis community accept the change from KDE to XFCE? And why did the Linux community as a whole embrace DE's like XFCE over the traditional DE giants KDE and Gnome?

For me, personally, I was an avid KDE user and even a dev up until KDE-4. I think the last release of Mepis used KDE-4 but it did not work on my system so I had to change to a different DE/Window Manager. Believe it or not, I use e16 which I've customized to add the features I needed most from KDE-3.

In my own very personal (grumpy old man who still drives a Volvo 240 wagon) opinion, I think KDE-4, Gnome, and even e17 went astray. They got too fancy or self-absorbed or something. I remember when something like this afflicted the PC hardware industry. The big players felt they had a lot of lock-in and thus felt free to deviate from standards and make their own "standards". There was a time when I recommended people stay away from the big name brands because they had more problems working with Linux (usually due to custom drivers needed to access hardware).

I think the Mepis community switch from KDE-4 to XFCE was much easier than a transition from KDE-3 would have been. My guess is that KDE-4 was not as fully embraced as KDE-3 was. There is a similar effect on the Windows side where the transition from Windows-7 to Linux with XFCE can be less painful than the transition from Windows-7 to Windows-10.

So if we see why not KDE or Gnome, that still leaves the question of why XFCE instead of one of the other many substitutes. XFCE may not be unique in this but it hits a sweet spot of doing enough without doing too much. I think this became a big boon to the MX (= Mepis + antiX) community because it allowed us to spend our limited developer resources refining, customizing, and improving rather than wrestling with the fancy features of the DE. These benefits get passed on to users because we've been able to spend a number of years focused on improving the user experience.

In addition, we're still able to have the hardcore devs contribute to the forums. This helps in two ways. It gets users the best possible help and it also lets the devs know what is going on in the front lines and what users are having trouble with. IMO if we can continue to do this then MX will continue to be a competitive and compelling distro. If we get overwhelmed in the forums then quality will start to suffer and perhaps we too will be led astray.

[figueroa]

For those who want Thunar to offer a dual panel, it's on the Xfce wish list. As they say, vote early, vote often to get it moving up the popularity chain.

I find it most convenient to launch two instances of Thunar and copy/paste or drag/drop from one to the other. In fact, I find it more intuitive than a two-panel approach.