Hi all,

I've been running Slackware 11 since a few weeks after it was released. It's my first Slackware installation ever, and I like it a lot.

Anyway, I recently tried XFCE, and I find myself using it more often than KDE these days. I've got an old computer -- a Pentium III 800 that I bought in August of 2000 -- and XFCE runs faster on it than KDE. Frankly, I like the interface a little bit better too, though I can't quick say why.

Most importantly, sound works better than in KDE. With XFCE, I can run a ScummVM game or a game in DOSBOX without having the sound problems (echoes, or the sound cutting out) that I get in KDE.

Who else uses XFCE, and why?

Regards,

-Drew

I started using XFCE after my first Linux From Scratch install, mainly because Gnome and KDE looked like WAY too much effort to compile from source....

And, as much as I like KDE and Gnome, I just like that little bit of extra zip you get with XFCE.

And Thunar is a great file manager

Well, there's all those people who use Xubuntu, for starters. . .

Lightweight WM's are still resoundingly popular - for a number of good reasons.

I don't use XCFE myself, but you can configure KDE not to interfere with your sound system if you want to you know from the Sound Administration in the Control Center.

Also KDE is *extremely* configurable so you can get it to look and feel like practically how you want it to and with as much or as little eye-candy as you want.

Apart from that, my other suggestion for an even lighter WM is fluxbox. It's very, very light and very, very simple and unfussy.

I don't have a particular preference for XFCE. It looks ok, though.

I like XFCE because it's a nice middle group between something extremely lightweight (and arguably feature thin) like Fluxbox, and something over the top heavy like KDE (maybe not ram-wise with the recent releases, but still just the sheer number of processes).

The xfce-settings-show "control panel" is nice and handy, the theming is decent, and all the major Linux-y desktop features are there (workspaces, etc.). Plus it's been around for a while, and the developers release fairly regularly.

I use Xfce4 with FreeBSD for all the reasons you'd probably expect. It's lightweight but functional, and it doesn't take two days of compiling when I want to upgrade its port(s). (Before anyone gives helpful advice, I prefer ports over packages.)

I like both Gnome and Kde very much, but they're a little over the top for me. I don't need lots of animations, add-on apps of all variety, or built-in utilities for configuration changes.

edit: Whoops, this is the slackware forum. Hopefully my comments are still generic enough. (A DE is a DE..)

I used XFCE when i started using linux (after 1 month of KDE, eek, neveragain!) but then changed to blackbox and been happy ever since

But I'm probably one of the most minimalistic mofo on the forum

I have a Pentuim 3 800e processor and find kde to be very fast,for my requirements,i also have 640mb of ram,i have never got on with xfce,i have not tried it on slackware 11.0 directly,but on zenwalk i found it to be very slow and awkward...it never ceases to amaze me how many people have different experiences with window mangers,i feel guilty if i leave kde or slackware seems like iam cheating on my wife to be...its that bad lol..... i even comitted the cardinal sin last week of trying mandriva 2007 for some reason lasted an hour and half with it,the guilt was too much for me,my partner even said i was acting differently towards her,she has been checking my texts all week.....:-)

XFCE is a beast. I use it on my notebook and my server.

Fast, flexible and bloat-free. What more can you want from a desktop manager?


M.

Every WM should be out of user's way. And XFCE does it very good. I use it, together with ION, and can't deicide which I like more.

Hey,
I tried my hand in Linux directly from Slackware. Slack 11 installed both KDE and XFCE and 4 other WMs/DE. It looks like XFCE is really powerful, but I could never get it to work.
There are not much tools in it , but you could add all the KDE tools if you have KDE installed. I haven't been able to do that.
Bottomline, I feel XFCE could be really really powerful once you get it working correctly and configured just for you. I haven't been able to do that , if someone who uses XFCE a lot could write a guide or something , I would really really appreciate it . (kinda like Shilo's guide / cwwilson's guide).
Fact is, XFCE seems to be so much more cooler than KDE. KDE is sooo much like Windows and thats something I surely dont want ... Just want something totally different from Windows (guess thats why I took up Slack over Suse).

Just thinkin out loud, my 2c.

nice comments on this thread - I agree with them all. xfce is light, simple, and it just plain works. and of course, lots of good eyecandy if you want it: http://www.xfce-look.org/

I like these two sites about window managers, hope it's not offtopic
penguinpetes
xwinman

I think it's the disjoint task-bar at the top and launchers at the bottom. It just makes more sense as a user will look at the running programs much more often than launching a program. Not sure if it's me, but it's less strenuous on the eyes to look up.

Anyway, it's that and the absence of "stuff" (programs, utils, etc) in the default installation.
O and I love built-in multiple desktops in X! (unlike windows)

I use XFCE because it works faster on old PC (500Mhz - 256Mb) than KDE and it has enough features for me to customize its loook and fell as I need.