Xfce Forum

chriscomputing

Member

Registered: 2025-05-18

Posts: 2

Say Hello! - And my thoughts as a new user

Hello everyone!
I'm happy to be here, and to be part of this community. I skimmed a bit through the forum and everyone seems nice and behaved, I appreciate it. Additionally, the documentation is easy to access (and exists...). All in all, XFCE seems like a friendly welcoming place, which is why I decided to say hi And also leave my thoughts as someone who is used to Plasma and GNOME, but also has used WMs in the past. In other words, I know how to configure and am not afraid to do so, I'm just not used to it anymore and also kind of hope to not have to do it too much.

I've switched my laptop from GNOME to XFCE a couple of days ago. It's been an at times difficult journey, but in the end, I got a decently looking desktop out of it.

In my opinion, XFCE offers unique value next to Plasma and GNOME, as the third independent DE. Plasma is a great DE, but uses QT, which makes theming more difficult and GTK apps never really work that well. Overall it's good and I use it on my desktop. GNOME looks really polished as long as you stick to GTK4 apps, but if you stray of the holy path, you're on your own. Additionally, GNOME isn't as flexible for users and I disagree with some if their UI/UX choices but can't change that since GNOME is supposed to look how GNOME wants it. I'm not sure about LXQT, never tried that, but all other "alternative" DEs are a fork of another DE or controlled by a distro (Cinnamon) or both.

After looking at some screenshot threads, it is evident that most XFCE users heavily customize their desktop. Understandably, the default (at least on EndeavourOS) look is old and not that usable. Even the official screenshots on the XFCE homepage use different panels. I know some users enjoy the retro look, but it's not for everyone, I believe the mainstream (even on Linux) likes a more modern approach. I am aware I'm biased, nostalgia doesn't work on me, I'm too young for that. For reference, Windows XP is older than me and the first OS I've used on the regular was Windows 10. Yes we exist and are of legal age.
But instead of getting a familiar experience out of the box, I have to add the whisker-menu and configure a key to have my application menu pop up when I press Meta (which every DE/OS does automatically and users expect wherever they go), and then I have to do some research, find and install the docklike plugin to get a more modern taskbar which works like users are used to.
And all of that for the workflow, I tried a GTK theme and now I have 3 different window decorations: One from XFWM for SSD, one from my theme for CSD and one from my icon package (weird but ok) for GTK4 apps. I blame the latter on GNOME though.
What I want to say is, it is hard to get going on XFCE and I believe onboarding experience could be greatly improved and more users would consider XFCE if getting going wouldn't be so cumbersome.

I hope I did not alienate you all. I like XFCE and I will stick with it for now. Please don't throw me out Take my long feedback as observations of a single user. As I said, I am used to more polished DEs with a higher headcount and higher budget. I don't expect XFCE to be the same, but feel like it could be improved upon. I didn't encounter bugs yet, everything is working as expected, I have the freedom to change what I want to change and that's all really great. I would be interested in eventually contributing towards a revised default look, if interest exists. I've read the contribution guide, it is extensive and well written. I feel like I should use XFCE a bit more before I get too deep in the weeds.

Cheers,
Chris

vm_x

Member

Registered: 2024-02-12

Posts: 23

Re: Say Hello! - And my thoughts as a new user

Welcome.

I don't think XFCE is trying to win any popularity contests, it solves a specific problem for a specific group of people who have the default looks very low down on priority list.

You are free to customize it and enjoy it, cheers.