Why XFCE?

[manyroads]

what I really dislike at XFCE is the poor multi-monitor environment support.

That should be XFCE-4.12.3 and XFCE-4.14. We're at 4.12.1.

There was also this curious post: Why do people often use XFCE for multiple monitor setup?

I have to say multi monitors work fine for me...

[fehlix]

That should be XFCE-4.12.3 and XFCE-4.14[/url]. We're at 4.12.1.

re multi-montor support: I don't have any issues with my dual monitor setup using xfce4-display-settings version 4.12.3 which is available for some time now from our "fresh" mx-testrepo and comes with xfce4-settings version: 4.12.3-1~mx17+1.

[WarhawkCZ]

what I really dislike at XFCE is the poor multi-monitor environment support.

That should be XFCE-4.12.3 and XFCE-4.14. We're at 4.12.1.

There was also this curious post: Why do people often use XFCE for multiple monitor setup?

I played with the latest settings as recommended here.

[Cavsfan]

About 10-11 years ago I decided to try something besides Windows and ended up trying Ubuntu 9.04 or whatever it was. Pretty much liked Gnome as it was then but, when Unity came along, that pretty much blew it for me.
Then a friend suggested Arch Linux, which I invested lots of time preparing for and then tried installing, only to quit after about 3-4 days. I waited about a week, started fresh and got it installed. Just with Xfce as the DE.

I loved it and ever since, anything I mess with has to have Xfce or it's not an option. On Arch Linux I don't even use a DM, I just boot into TTY1, login, X starts along with startxfce4 and my desktop comes to life.
Since then I have to have Xfce as the DE on everything. I was really pleased to see I could just install Xfce on MX Linux as the only DE. Usually you have to install Gnome or something similar and then install the Xfce goodies.
A couple of friends were pushing me to try MX Linux 18.1 and I put it off as just "another Debian distro". Boy, was I wrong. I have been pretty pleased with MX since I installed it a couple of weeks ago.

It seems to be a very stable distro and I love the working Fusion Icon, Compiz and Emerald WD.

My son got a beast of a new PC his friend built for him and so he gave me his 5 year old PC with a 4th gen. i7. The specifics are in my signature, except there wasn't enough room for 2 2TB SATA drives configured in RAID 0.

So, now everything is UEFI and of course Xfce as well. I have Arch Linux, Fedora 29, openSUSE TW, Xubuntu 18.04, MX 18.1 Continuum all using Xfce.
I've since installed Arch several times and of course like anything, it gets easier the more you do it. It just takes me several hours now except that first time was a bear.

I figured out in Thunar how to have access to all my Places on the left side is to right click on Documents, for example and then click "send to" side pane.
I've got a media partition that has a music folder. I mount the media partition in fstab and send them both to the side pane too.



What is really nice about Xfce is that it is the same on every distro. Mousepad, Thunar, the settings, pretty much everything is the same no matter what distro you happen to be on.
I probably have too many systems but, I like to play around with all of them. I look for new ones to install all the time and MX Linux was a good find.
Thinking about Slackware next but, I'm in no hurry. Playing with this stuff keeps me alive.

I can't lie Arch Linux is the best. It's the best documented and stable yet bleeding edge distro there is but, with my limited amount of experience with MX Linux, it is definitely 2nd for sure IMO.

[Cavsfan]

FYI: Xfce 4.13 anything would be bad to install. 4.13 is a development version and the one we should get is 4.14.
On Arch Linux Xfdesktop went from 4.12.4-2 to 4.13.3-1 and everyone's compositing and transparency went away; the conky background went black.

The thread about that can be seen here: xfdesktop seems to be broken.

But, if you put xfdesktop on hold, everything works fine. 4.13.3-2 was released but, until 4.14 comes out we are pretty much keeping that on hold.

[dreamer]

FYI: Xfce 4.13 anything would be bad to install. 4.13 is a development version and the one we should get is 4.14.
On Arch Linux Xfdesktop went from 4.12.4-2 to 4.13.3-1 and everyone's compositing and transparency went away; the conky background went black.

The thread about that can be seen here: xfdesktop seems to be broken.

But, if you put xfdesktop on hold, everything works fine. 4.13.3-2 was released but, until 4.14 comes out we are pretty much keeping that on hold.

4.13 is a development version, but several distros have been using it for many months. Xubuntu uses xfdesktop 4.13 in both 18.10 and 19.04. Manjaro also uses 4.13. So the problem lies in Arch, not Xfce

[deanr72]

Well, thanks for the feedback so far. I've just discovered something else that I've not seen (or certainly not discovered) on a distro before - the ability to hide icons in the notifications area. Incredible. Now I can go from this:



To this:



With one click of the mouse button

[jeanpaulberes]

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

Hi,
better then filemanagers from other DE's is to use independent filemanagers with double pane capabilities such as SpaceFM and DoubleCmd ;-)
Kind regards,
Paul

[jessexschilling]

I'm curious: Given that many people use computers with pretty good specs, why are users happy with the XFCE DE?

What are the pros of this desktop environment even when NOT using old or low-end equipment?

Given the range of DEs available, why opt for XFCE a) as a user and b) as a creator?

I answer this question the same way anytime it is asked when I am using a "lightweight" option for DE or WM on higher spec gear...

Why would I want my computer to be idling above 300MB of RAM when I am doing absolutely nothing? Many DE's (including Windows 7 etc.) that are flashy and pretty and such gobble up my RAM (800MB+ to 1GB+). Now RAM may be relatively cheap nowadays, but, again, why would I want to be using that RAM for "nothing" all the time? On the system I am using currently, I only have 4 GB of RAM. If my DE uses nearly a GB or more to just sit there and do nothing, imagine what its going to be like trying to render large audio/video files or browse the web with multiple tabs, etc. etc.

When it comes to my computers, I want efficiency. (Actually that goes for most everything). I want my software to utilize memory efficiently, intelligently.

If XFCE uses under 400MB doing nothing, that's better than KDE or GNOME using 800+ to do the same (no)thing. Better yet is IceWM, JWM, or i3 using under 100MB. Shoot, even Trinity in Q4OS using a couple fewer MB than XFCE (maybe around 10MB less).

[richb]

Why would I want my computer to be idling above 300 MB of RAM when I am doing absolutely nothing?

Interesting. I do not care how much RAM I am using as long as my machine does not slow down or I run out. Idling my computer uses about 1.5 GB of its 16 GB of RAM. I understand for lower spec machines with little RAM it becomes more of an issue.

So low RAM usage is not a consideration for me using XFCE. I like its configurability and the ease to configure it.
I think it shows there are different reasons why people use XFCE.