Xfce

Long-term owners

XFCE like 12 years ago was already pretty customizable and it remains customizable

Sep 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• KDE PlasmaA highly customizable, polished Linux desktop that feels familiar to Windows users and handles fractional scaling well, though some report crashes, odd defaults and a need for heavy tinkering.650recommend
• GNOMEA consistent, modern Linux desktop with a fast keyboard-driven workflow and sensible defaults, though many say it removes features and needs extensions that break between releases.340recommend
• COSMIC desktopPeople recommend it as a smooth, polished Linux desktop with tiling built in and good defaults out of the box. The common caveat is that it still has rough edges and is not fully finished.75recommend
• Cinnamon desktop environmentA polished, Windows-like Linux desktop that is simple and light on resources. Critics say it is less customizable than KDE or GNOME.57recommend
• MATE DesktopLong-running fork of GNOME 2 that people pick for its familiar layout, stability and low fuss. Development has slowed, so newer features like fractional scaling are missing.29recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 305 comments. Each links to the original.

1. because it provides only the strictly necessary functions and it allows me to easily combine otherwise conflicting applications

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch”

2. an X11 desktop that didn't do much fancy 3D rendering (Xfce) because it didn't have enough VRAM for triple-head and compositing

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Matrox: Graphics for Professionals”

3. in the few cases where the UI basically hasn't changed in a long time (XFCE, VLC, probably more), they fucking love it

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000”

4. windows 98 ergonomics (that's NOT sarcasm) with more customisation and not trying to re-invent the wheel every month

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating”

5. My Xfce desktop looks a lot like my Gnome 2 desktops used to. I've never felt the need to switch to anything else

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

6. when compared to GNOME and KDE, XFCE does use less resources and is indeed snappier, with near feature parity.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

7. it's a breath of fresh air. Everything just works how you'd expect it to work, and it gets out of your way.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Xorg-Server 26.0.99.901”

8. it's smaller, simpler, lighter, faster, more coherent, and complies much better with Windows's keyboard UI

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Kumander Linux – A Linux Distro with a Windows 7 Desktop”

9. you can make it fit your needs, not adjust yourself to the machine and somebody's design decisions

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

10. I'm pretty happy with my Linux Xfce setup. It allows me to customize the UI to my heart's content

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence”

11. Xfce has long been the only DE that gets out of my way enough for me to actually be productive

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

12. If anyone is looking for a desktop environment that does not get in your way, that is the one.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “How to declutter, quiet down, and take the AI out of Windows 11 25H2”

13. It is snappy and very performant for my needs and I work on it daily for software development

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

14. it really does seem to be the lowest-BS desktop out there, like the good parts of Windows XP

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

15. I'd rather have confusing customisation (as Xfce can be) than no customisation like GNOME.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop”

16. borderline unusable with high DPI monitors and dual monitor setups that aren't the same

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

17. I did it breathlessly with Xfce, on much older Apple hardware, and it was... just fine.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”

18. which is really just a fairly low-resource, stable embodiment of the classic GNOME feel

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

19. Xfce is deceptively simple - it gets out of your way and let you do whatever you wish.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

20. as it just works, has least amount of issues & babysitting nvidia drivers & breakages

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

21. I've had a hell of a time getting it to work nicely with multiple high DPI monitors.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “KDE onboarding is good now”

22. it's just a really good, simple window manager, desktop, and set of basic utilities

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief”

23. to provide a minimal environment without the instabilities of modern GNOME and KDE

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

24. more fully featured was always known to be less of a resource hog vs gnome and KDE

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Wayland "Intrinsically Faster Than X11, but Not Necessarily More Efficient"”

25. XFCE like 12 years ago was already pretty customizable and it remains customizable

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop”

26. Window snapping dimensions are oft still wrong, i get visual artifacts sometimes

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

27. it didn't keep up with my high resolution monitors. But it was fast and flexible

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Pro with All‑New M5 Pro and M5 Max”

28. It works very well although standard window-management keystrokes don't work.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop”

29. The main hassle that I've found is that I have to mentally train myself to remember that a lot of the keyboard shortcuts in a boring stock xfce4 desktop environment

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “AI Agent Has Root”

30. it has 1px thin area to grab, and last time I checked they just mentioned you should use alt right click instead

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe”

31. It's because you're using XFCE, which might be one of the last desktops to adapt to Wayland.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Wayland, Pipewire, Open Source Slowly Closing?”

32. It's wayland support is utterly broken right now and getting very little attention.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch”

33. But Xfce is 100% usable in heterogenous multihead and indeed handles this as well or better than almost any other mainstream X11-based desktop.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

34. Xfce is way too minimal to be great. An great DE must be written mostly in JavaScript and hoard gigabytes of memory

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “XFCE Is Great”

35. I think something like XFCE came close to providing a Windows-like taskbar but it was still far, far behind

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable”

36. I use XFCE, where you can set directly the DPI values of the monitors, so that everything will work fine.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Enhancing X11 Application Security with LXC”

37. do a better job at acting like an actual desktop environment and surfacing the capabilities of the system

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS”

38. Just stick XFCE on a modern minimal-ish distribution and you'll have this with modern compatibility.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11”

39. The only DE's that I haven't had poor experiences with are xfce, bspwm, i3/i3gaps, and xmonad.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”

40. Supports the tray plugins, has GUI settings, I don't ever have to use the CLI to configure it

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release”