"Why GNOME refugees love Xfce" (The Register)

[Ric_NYC]

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/9683/xfcexubuntudesktop.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/853/xfcexubuntudesktop.jpg/)



GNOME 3 has become something of a polarising moment for the popular Linux desktop. In chasing visions of tablets, touchscreens and the mythical "everyday user", the GNOME 3 Shell has left many Linux power users scratching their heads, wondering why the GNOME developers decided to fix a desktop that wasn't broken.
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Perhaps more important to GNOME 3 refugees, Xfce isn't planning to try "revolutionising" the desktop experience. Development is historically very slow – the recently released Xfce 4.8 was two years in the making – and the Xfce project tends to pride itself on the lack of new features in each release. The focus is generally improving existing features, polishing rough edges and fixing bugs rather than trying to out whiz-bang the competitors.

The resistance to new features has earned Xfce a reputation as a lightweight desktop, but it's not significantly smaller than GNOME or KDE (if you're looking for lightweight, check out LXDE). Xfce did, in my testing, start up much faster than either GNOME or KDE and using the desktop environment feels much snappier. However much of that is due to Xfce's very minimalist default apps rather than a significantly smaller code base.

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More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/09/xcfe_for_gnome_refugees/

[3Miro]

The article is to the point, however, I have a few comments:

- Leafpad is actually an LXDE app. Xfce used to have Mousepad, but development on that one has stopped for quite some time and most xfce distros adopted Leafpad as it is basically the same thing (i.e. minimalistic editor). On my machines I have Leafpad for default, and then both Geany and Gedit if I need special features. When I just want to open a file, leafpad does it in an instant, if I need extra features, I have the more advanced editors.

- Xfce panel is more stable and more friendly when it comes to multi-monitor setups (compared to Gnome 2).

- The default Windows Manager xfwm4 is much faster than Unity (Compiz) or Gnome-shell (Mutter) and it has more features than Gnome 2's Metacity.

Xfce is only lacking in terms of easy customizations (sometimes you have to dig a bit or even write your own scripts/command) and Thunar lacks a few of the Nautilus plugins (all the major ones are present and Thunar is much much faster). I switched to xfce long before the whole Gnome 3 thing, mostly because I think Xfce is more than Gnome 2.

[BrokenKingpin]

I am in that camp... was a long time Gnome 2 user, and when Gnome 3 came out I switched to Xfce and I like it a lot.

LXDE is lighter, but I don't find it all that much faster than Xfce in day to day use, and Xfce is a more complete desktop environment in my opinion.

I am very happy with Xubuntu 11.10, and highly recommend it if you don't like Gnome 3 or Unity.

[Pirate Zoro]

Having tried XFCE, LXDE, and GNOME-shell, I have to say that XFCE is by far the best of the three. While not as light as LXDE, it feels much more usable and complete. I highly suggest Xubuntu to people that don't like Unity or GNOME-shell, even though I am not one of those people. I love Unity to death, but the speed and customization of XFCE is the big seller, both of which Unity has not quite yet accomplished.

[Rodney9]

I find Lubuntu to be perfect for me.