After several months of living with the joy and heartache of KDE4, I decided to take a small vacation, and so I dropped down to the wonderful isle of Xfce.
It’s a desktop environment I haven’t used before, and I’m starting to wonder why. It’s quick, lightweight, it doesn’t get in my way. And yet it’s functional, looks beautiful, and it’s truly responsive. Stability doesn’t even come into the equation. It does what I need it to do and doesn’t complain.
KDE 4.x.x is without doubt a heavyweight, - and it’s definitely something I’ll use again at some point in the future, perhaps next year. But quite frankly I’ve missed some of the speed and responsiveness I’m used to.
For myself atleast, my holiday home may well become my permanent residence, for the forseeable future atleast. If you do decide to take a break, I can’t recommend Xfce enough. The weather’s beautiful down here…
Yes, some of those lighter weight window managers prove that small doesn’t have to be plain. One of my spare time amusements is booting up small distros on older hardware. I was impressed by the look of Openbox which is used by Tinyme, a remaster of PCLOS. Here is a gallery of screenshots.
Notice the embedded status display on the wallpaper.
If you have an older notebook computer with limited RAM, do try the lean alternatives to GNOME and KDE. You might even get some admiring looks from bystanders, alas for your desktop not for you.
conram wrote:
> mooreted;1878312 Wrote:
>> Love Xfce. Not sure why you would need anything else.
>
> Hey, you’re not alone, it’s been my DE for 3 years now:)
> Right now I am playing with 4.6 alpha.
>
>
Was my favorite until I found LXDE. That is my DE now as I look into
playing around with either Awesome, DWM or WMII.
AlienHealer wrote:
> i installed xfce a few weeks ago, when i was having problems with kde,
> sadly it wasn’t preinstalled with the live cd’s, but i loved it.
>
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No but it is an option during install if using the DVD so that is a plus.
RJWEcology wrote:
> It looks nice and clean as well as light. Does it have desktop effects?
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Desktop effects do work with XFCE but personally, I would question why.
Most people that use XFCE do so for it being less resource intensive,
adding desktop effects would just drive it back up.
I play with it to measure the extent of its capability. It is nice to see/know that it is not just a light DE but also capable of candy effects:)
In normal use all are turned off or I boot on another drive with just xfce installed.
It is nice to see/know that it is not just a light DE but also capable of candy effects:)