Hi, I soon plan on switching to Linux Mint Xfce and a lot of people are telling me that I should try using Cinnamon. I've tried it, but I wanted a lightweight OS and Xfce is customizable enough. Why does everyone stay away from Xfce? Is there something wrong with it? Am I missing out on something if I choose it?

I use XFCE regularly, and I'm not aware of anything 'big' being wrong with it - it has bugs like any other software, and they tend to get fixed fairly quickly (like some other software). But DEs tend to evoke a very 'tribal' mentality for some folks, I don't know why, but basically there's no reason to not try out whatever DE(s) you want and pick whatever works best for you. "Lightweight OS" is kind of a relative term (that is: meaningless) - unless your computer is extremely old/awful you shouldn't expect changing DEs to be some sort of panacea for performance.

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That is just their personal preference.
There is nothing wrong with Xfce.

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Xfce to be avoided? Hmm... news to me. It is lightweight but I found it not quite customizable enough for my tastes. (I guess I'm too used to KDE.)

Now Cinnamon? I tried that out once (quite some time ago) and couldn't get it to let me gracefully exit the desktop---it required going to a virtual terminal and killing it as root. YMMV, though.

Cheers...

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How funny. I like using Xfce, so I guess not "everyone" stays away from it. I've spent time with Cinnamon but never quite warmed up to it -- I actually prefer GNOME over Cinnamon (go figure).

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I can't think of any reason to advise people away from Xfce.

It appears to have long release cycles, but this is actually deceptive, because the components of Xfce are updated quite regularly. Plus, it's had a recent major release anyway.

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I've been using Xfce for many years now, no problems

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I'll take Xfce over Cinnamon any day. People recommend Cinnamon because that's what they're familiar with through Ubuntu. I'm not a fan of either. I use KDE on one system, Xfce on the others. They're different, but they both work fine once you get used to the customization options and quirks. I would never consider either Gnome or Cinnamon on my systems, but that's personal preference, and my preferences are fortunately not the same as anyone else's.

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Xfce is great, I am using Linux Mint Xfce right now, love it. I set it up so it works for me, it is all about choice. If you like it use it.

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I've seen many suggest Cinnamon is close to a Windows experience. I don't see that personally. Xfce works great for me via Xubuntu.

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Thank you all, I'm a beginner and I don't know much so I'm asking dumb questions

Not dumb, just questions asked out of ignorance. That's one way to cure ignorance. You can ask questions in forums, or you can ask them of your favorite search engine.

Clem, proprietor of Mint and author of Cinnamon, actually recommends the Mate version over the Cinnamon one for beginners. The point is that he creates Cinnamon by hacking Gnome, and he knows that he can never guarantee that something hidden in the depths of Gnome won't suddenly react badly to one of his alterations.

Xfce is is oldest full desktop for Linux and the policy has always been conservative. As one of the developers once said, it's to "just do the job without getting in you face or under your feet" — little eye-candy and compact, robust code. You can learn more about its features from the web-site: https://www.xfce.org/

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