from my impression ... all in all , configuring xfce is easier , faster and much more "standardized" in comparision with other de ... you dont have to configure 5 different things on 5 different seperate occasions in-order to achieve just one part of a look and feel ... and yet it is still a powerfull and highly configurable de ...


//but i still prefer rox all the same ...


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In fact i voted for gnome ..as i use it ..but after i heared very good things about xfce i tried it.

I got Xubuntu ..and yes..it is an excellent DE.

It is fast simple configurable and has very nice applets and goodies.And still when i need any gnome appliation i can use it.Yes very nice alternative.

Good thing Xfce 4.4 made it out just before the vote...

bloat is a term used for people that believe there system is running slower because there is to much stuff running. I've personally run my system with a bare minimum startx (in gentoo BTW) and all environments ran ut2004 exactly the same. As for KDEvsGNOMEvsXFCE its more of a GTKvsQT for performance wise. This thread I believe is a vote for usability (yes performance can be part of usability if to slow). Technically XFCE (uses C lang + simple) should always run faster, GNOME (uses C lang + more complex) second, and KDE (uses C++ lang + complex) third. Of course the factor of the programmers efficiency comes into play also. C should be faster then C++ but by a very small amount. I also agree that people will vote for what they adapted to as said earlier in here. Even if its complete garbage (i.e. what mozilla refers to as mammon), people will argue for their life its better.

I would have to go with XFCE 4.4 (beta was 4.399 or something in 2006 - I can't recall the version number). Even though the final didn't make it til this year the beta made it out in 2006. I believe out of all the Desktops XFCE made some major leaps last year. Plus if KDE4 makes it this year, I believe it will steal the crown for 2007 anyway. Gnome crowd need to step it up a notch. Both KDE and XFCE are quickly gobbling up the open source market for Desktops. KDE being the almighty powerful one and XFCE coming from the other direction as the lightweight contender. Both do those jobs better than Gnome which puts Gnome in an awkward place. Why? Because Gnome philosophy is such that they really don't want to be a KDE type Distro (in other words a powerhouse of tools and apps). They used to ride on the reputation of being a lightweight distro but other desktops such XFCE do the lightweight desktop much better than Gnome and are catch up on the features as well. I think it's bold enough to say that Ubuntu and Fedora saved Gnome (I don't count Suse because they altered the way gnome is layout and I don't consider it pure gnome). It's also a good bet that XFCE 4.4 will continue to get more popular with smaller distros and Remasters in 2007.

You must have very low standards... Or perhaps run an extremely stripped down KDE. I shudder to contemplate either KDE or Gnome on a PIII w/380MB of ram. Maybe XFCE, but on such a box I'd probably "roll my own" based on a wm such as IceWM, OpenBox, etc.

I don't personally care for ROX - just not my cup of tea, but agree it qualifies as a DE so should have been in the line up.

Obviously you're very biased here as KDE runs significantly faster than Gnome. Instead of defaulting to the Gnome Fanboy mode, why don't you conduct an thorough evaluation - use EACH of the main DE's as your MAIN workstation for a month or two and then come back and talk to me. Maybe then we can have an objective discussion. That would be nice

Okay, hre we go w/my long winded opinionated opinion...

I delayed voting until Xfce-4.4 officially went stable. I spent several hours refamiliarizing myself with latest versions of Gnome (2.16), KDE (3.5.5), and Xfce (4.4), putting them through the grinder. While something can be said for each and personal preference has a LOT to do with it, Xfce DESERVES my vote for all the nice improvements over 4.2.

My main workstation is a rather high end machine and runs everything pretty fast. I wanted to get a better feeling for more average hardware, however, so the test box used was a 2GHz P4 w/a gig of ram.

Gnome was by far the most sluggish, Xfce the fastest, and KDE in the middle. No surprises there. Gnome would have been unusable on this machine for daily work - just too much wait time, especially Evolution. However, I do prefer the cleaner Gnome look over the cluttered and cutesy KDE look.

I'd rate KDE as doable on this machine and would have been my second pick. The now seemingly ubiquitous use of icons on vertical oriented menu bars kind of irks me though. Not sure what the usability "experts" have to say about that - it serves a function to crowd more things in but I just don't care for it. The excessive eye candy still intrudes but I could live with it if I needed a really well fleshed out DE with about every app I could ever think of needing. KDE also beats Gnome in the ease of configuration department.

Xfce takes the cake for it's improvements, speed, modularity, etc. Nice to see that some devs still adhere to "The Unix Way". Of course, loading Gnome and KDE libs at start up slows Xfce down a fair bit, wh/is to be expected. I personally never missed desktop icons, but hey, it's nice that Xfce now has them. I'm pretty much a command line commando, so file managers have never been of much of a priority with me but Thunar, coupled w/Thunar Volume Manager extension is a very nice touch, and the big win for this release of Xfce. Extensive improvements to Terminal, Auto Start, Panel, Settings, Xfwm4, and Print Manger are much welcomed as well, however, and not to be overshadowed by Thunar. Orage has improved a lot upon it's predecessor but still has a ways to go for me.

Anyhow, all in all, Xfce-4.4 devs get a well deserved congratulatory clap on the back from me. Great job guys!

with a "2GHz P4" and your gnome is still unusable ... your standards must be really high ...


ok , i will have a look at xfce one more time ...


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There's just no way KDE is as quick as Gnome. I have used Kde on many more distros than Gnome,and there are many things I like better(such as individual pictures on each desktop), but they are mostly cosmetic.

I was trying to be objective about it. As noted previously, I've used all of the major DE's fairly extensively at various points in time. For this most recent eval there's no polite way of putting it - Gnome was dog slow compared to Xfce and KDE. KDE was pleasantly faster than I was expecting. Apparently the optimizing that went into 3.5.5 paid off. Note that I'm not particularly fond of the "KDE Look" and have no allegiance to KDE. For example, I prefer the look and layout of Evolution but KOrganizer wins on functionality.

My $0.02 fwiw, your mileage may vary.

I run debian etch, KDE was installed from the repositories, And it really dose work fine, I rarely touch the swap partition. That said debian etch is a very fast distro.

Using that logic, that would mean GNOME is for those who like being Steve Jobs' slaves.

i'm on an AMD 3200+ 2.2 GHz processor and both kde and gnome run fine on it. I do, however, perfer gnome more. It just looks tidier and cleaner to me.