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| Xfce | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Xfce 4.20 with Thunar, Xfce Terminal, and Xfce Task Manager on Linux | |
| Original author | Olivier Fourdan |
| Developer | Free software community[1] |
| Initial release | 1997 |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | gitlab |
| Written in | C (GTK) |
| Middleware | X Window System, Xorg |
| Engine | GTK |
| Operating system | Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and GNU/Hurd |
| Platform | Unix-like |
| Available in | At least 31 languages |
| Type | Desktop environment |
| License | GPL, LGPL, BSD |
| Website | xfce |
Xfce (pronounced as four individual letters, /ɛks ɛf siː iː/)[4] is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.[5]
Xfce aims to be fast and lightweight while still visually appealing and easy to use. The desktop environment is designed to embody the traditional Unix philosophy of modularity and re-usability, as well as adherence to standards; specifically, those defined at freedesktop.org.[6]
Features
[edit]User experience
[edit]Xfce is a highly modular desktop environment,[7] with many software repositories separating its components into multiple packages.[8] The built-in settings app offers options to customize the GTK theme, the system icons, the cursor, and the window manager. Additionally, Xfce provides a fully GUI-based system for modifying the desktop's status bar and system tray.[9]
Performance
[edit]Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment which omits many of the visually appealing features (such as animations) present in other desktop environments such as KDE Plasma and GNOME. These omissions allow Xfce to run much more smoothly on low-end personal computers.[10]
History
[edit]Olivier Fourdan started the Xfce project in late 1996 as a Linux version of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE),[11][12] a Unix desktop environment that was initially proprietary and later released as free software.[13]
The name was originally written as XFce, as an abbreviation of XForms Common Environment, which referred to the XForms library.[4] However, Xfce has been transformed and is now based entirely on the Xfce Toolkit (GTK).[5] The name was kept, now with lowercase f, but the abbreviation no longer means anything.[4]
The first Xfce release was in early 1997.[14][15][16] However, over time, Xfce diverged from CDE and now stands on its own.
The name Xfce originally stood for “XForms Common Environment”, but since then Xfce has been rewritten twice and doesn't use the XForms toolkit anymore. The name survived, but it is no longer capitalized as “XFCE” and is no longer an abbreviation for anything (although suggestions have been made, such as “X Freakin' Cool Environment”).
— Frequently Asked Questions, Xfce Wiki[17]
The Slackware Linux distribution has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", a loose interpretation of the initialism.
Mascot
[edit]Per the FAQ, the logo of Xfce is "a mouse, obviously, for all kinds of reasons like world domination and monsters and such."[17] In the SuperTuxKart game, in which various open source mascots race against each other, the mouse is said to be a female named "Xue".[18]
Early versions
[edit]Xfce began as a simple project created with XForms. Olivier Fourdan released the program, which was just a simple taskbar, on SunSITE.[19]
Fourdan continued developing the project and in 1998, Xfce 2 was released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm. He requested the project be included in Red Hat Linux, but it was refused due to its XForms basis. Red Hat accepted only open-source software released under a GPL- or BSD-compatible license, whereas, at the time, XForms was closed-source and free only for personal use.[19] For the same reason, Xfce was not in Debian before version 3, and Xfce 2 was distributed only in Debian's contrib repository.[20]
In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based on GTK, a non-proprietary toolkit then rising in popularity. The result was Xfce 3.0, licensed under the GPL. As well as being based completely on free software, it gained GTK drag-and-drop support, native language support, and improved configurability. Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1.[21]
Xfce 4.0 - 4.10
[edit] |
In version 4.0.0, released 25 September 2003, Xfce was upgraded to use the GTK 2 libraries.[22]
Changes in 4.2.0, released 16 January 2005, included a compositing manager for Xfwm which added built-in support for transparency and drop shadows, as well as a new default SVG icon set.[23][24]
In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included the Thunar file manager, a replacement for Xffm. Support for desktop icons was added. Also, various improvements were made to the panel to prevent buggy plugins from crashing the whole panel, as well as support for multiple panels; previous versions of Xfce could only support one panel in addition to Xftaskbar4 and Xfce4-iconbox. These tools were made available as panel plugins in this version.[25][26]
In February 2009, Xfce 4.6.0 was released. This version had a new configuration backend, a new settings manager and a new sound mixer, as well as several significant improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce's core components.[27]
In January 2011, Xfce 4.8.0 was released. This version included changes such as the replacement of ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit, and new utilities for browsing remote network shares using several protocols including SFTP, SMB, and FTP. Window clutter was reduced by merging all Thunar file progress dialog boxes into a single dialog. The panel application was also rewritten for better positioning, transparency, and item and launcher management. 4.8 also introduced a new menu plugin to view directories. The 4.8 plugin framework remains compatible with 4.6 plugins. The display configuration dialog in 4.8 supports RandR 1.2, detecting screens automatically and allowing users to pick their preferred display resolution, refresh rate, and display rotation. Multiple displays can be configured to either work in clone mode, or be placed next to each other. Keyboard selection was revamped to be easier and more user-friendly. Also, the manual settings editor was updated to be more functional.[28]
The 4.8 development cycle was the first to use the new release strategy formed after the "Xfce Release and Development Model" developed at the Ubuntu Desktop Summit in May 2009. A new web application was employed to make release management easier, and a dedicated Transifex server was set up for Xfce translators.[29] The project's server and mirroring infrastructure was also upgraded, partly to cope with anticipated demand following the release announcement for 4.8.[citation needed]
Xfce 4.10, released 28 April 2012, introduced a vertical display mode for the panel and moved much of the documentation to an online wiki. The main focus of this release was on improving the user experience.[30]
Modern Xfce
[edit]
Xfce 4.12 was released on 28 February 2015,[31] two years and ten months later, contrary to mass Internet speculation about the project being "dead".[32] The target of 4.12 was to improve user experience and take advantage of technologies introduced in the interim. New window manager features include an Alt+Tab dialog, and smart multi-monitor handling. Also, a new power management plugin for the panel's notification area was introduced, as well as a re-written text editor and an enhanced file manager. Xfce 4.12 also started the transition to GTK 3 by porting application and supporting plugins and bookmarks. With 4.12, the project reiterated its commitment to Unix-like platforms other than Linux by featuring OpenBSD screenshots.[33]
Xfce 4.13 is the development release during the transition of porting components to be fully GTK3-compatible, including xfce-panel[34] and xfce-settings.[35]
The planned release of Xfce 4.14 was announced in April 2016 and was officially released on 12 August 2019.[36] The main goals of the release included porting the remaining core components from GTK 2 to GTK 3; replacing the dependency on dbus-glib with GDBus, GNOME's implementation of the D-Bus specification; and removing deprecated widgets. Major features were postponed for a later 4.16 release.[37] The minimum GTK 3 version was bumped from 3.14 to 3.22.[38]
Xfce 4.16 was released on 22 December 2020.[39] Some notable changes in this release include new icons with a more consistent color palette; improved interfaces for changing system settings; various panel improvements like animations for hiding, a new notification plugin with support for both legacy SysTray and modern StatusNotifier items, and better support for dark themes; and more information included in the About dialog.
Xfce 4.18 was released on 15 December 2022.[40] This release mainly focused on new features and improvements to the Thunar file manager including an image preview sidebar, split view, recursive file searching, better mime type handling, per-file color highlighting, undoing up to 10 actions, a recently opened files location, restoring open tabs on startup, and a customizable toolbar. Other changes include a keyboard shortcut editor and merging the date and time plugins.
Xfce 4.20 was released on 15 December 2024.[41] This release mainly focused on restructuring preparing Xfce components for Wayland support.[42] As of this release, almost all Xfce components support Wayland and can be used on Wayland via a compatible compositor such as labwc or Wayfire, as Xfwm 4.20 and Xfdashboard 4.20 do not have complete Wayland support yet. As such, the Wayland session of Xfce 4.20 is considered experimental and only recommended for advanced users.
Software components
[edit]
Applications developed by the Xfce team are based on GTK and self-developed Xfce libraries. Other than Xfce itself, there are third-party programs which use the Xfce libraries.[43]
Development framework
[edit]Xfce provides a development framework which contains the following components:
- exo, an application library for the Xfce desktop environment
- garcon, a Freedesktop.org compliant menu library
- libxfce4ui, a widgets library for the Xfce desktop environment
- libxfce4util, an extension library for Xfce
One of the services provided to applications by the framework is a red banner across the top of the window when the application is running with root privileges, warning the user that they could damage system files.
Xfce Panel
[edit]Xfce Panel is a highly configurable taskbar with a rich collection of plug-ins available for it.[44]
Many aspects of the panel and its plug-ins can be configured easily through graphical dialogs, but also by GTK style properties and hidden Xfconf settings.[45]
Xfce Terminal
[edit]
A terminal emulator is provided as part of the Xfce project, but it can be used in other X Window System environments as well. It supports tabs, customizable key bindings, colors, and window sizes. It was designed to replace GNOME Terminal, which depends on the GNOME libraries. Like GNOME Terminal, though, it is based on the VTE library.[46] Xfce Terminal can be configured to offer a varying background color for each tab.[47] It can also be used as a drop-down terminal emulator, similar to Guake or Tilda.[48]
Xfwm
[edit]Xfwm is a window manager, supporting custom themes.[49] Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm integrates its own compositing manager.[50] Work on porting Xfwm to Wayland is planned for a future release, presumably 4.22.[41][42]
Catfish
[edit]A file searching tool, able to perform in-name and in-text matching, as well searching by file type and last modified time. It is also capable of performing indexing by using an mlocate database.[51]
Thunar
[edit]Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce, replacing Xffm. It resembles GNOME's Nautilus, and is designed for speed and a low memory footprint,[52] as well as being highly customizable through plugins. Xfce also has a lightweight archive manager called Xarchiver, but this is not part of the core Xfce 4.4.0.[53] More recently, Squeeze has been started as an archive manager designed to integrate better into the Xfce desktop, and though no releases have been made since 2008,[54] the git repository of squeeze has been active and this version is more feature-rich than the last stable release.
Orage
[edit]Starting with version 4.4, Xfcalendar was renamed to Orage (French for "thunderstorm") and several features were added. Orage has alarms and uses the iCalendar format, making it compatible with many other calendar applications, e.g. vdirsyncer to sync via CalDAV.[55] It also includes a panel clock plugin and an international clock application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different time zones. With Xfce 4.16, and the dropping of GTK2 support for panel plugins, orage was replaced with DateTime plugin.[56][57]
Mousepad
[edit]Mousepad is the default text editor for Xfce in some Linux distributions, including Xubuntu.[58] Mousepad aims to be an easy-to-use and fast editor, meant for quickly editing text files, not a software development environment or an editor with a large plugin ecosystem. It does offer tabbed files, syntax highlighting, parentheses matching and indentation features commonly found in software editors.[59] It closely follows the GTK-system release cycle. It originated as a fork of Leafpad,[60] was developed by Erik Harrison and Nick Schermer, but has since been rewritten from scratch.[61]
Parole
[edit].png)
Parole is a simple media player based on the GStreamer framework. It is designed with simplicity, speed and resource usage in mind, and is part of the Xfce Goodies[63] and uses at least three libraries from the Xfce project (libxfce4ui, libxfce4util, and libxfconf).[64]
It is similar to GNOME Videos, but it has some advantages and disadvantages compared to it:
- Advantages
- It has (X11/XShm/Xv) video output that provides a much higher frame rate than Clutter-based video output of GNOME Videos which relies upon OpenGL or OpenGL ES for rendering
- Traditional text-based playlist on the main window for both audio and video files which provides an easy and fast switch between the files and shows their time
- Audio visualization
- Showing a banner upon the videos that have multiple audio or subtitle files
- Disadvantages
- Lacks a mechanism to speed up or slow down the media playback[65]
- Lacks many advanced features of GNOME Videos
- As of version 1.0.5 (2019–11) it cannot run under Wayland
Ristretto
[edit]An image viewer (supporting slideshow mode). Ristretto can operate on folders of images, and display their thumbnails in addition to the active image.[66]
Xfburn
[edit]A CD/DVD optical disc authoring software. Starting with the 4.12 release of Xfce, Xfburn is also able to burn Blu-ray discs.
Xfce Screensaver
[edit]A screen saver and session-locking program first packaged with the 4.14 release of Xfce. It uses screensaver themes compatible with Xscreensaver.[67] Although forked from MATE Screensaver, it depends only on Xfce libraries.
Table of Xfce 4 components
[edit]| Components | Descriptions | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Catfish | Desktop search | |
| Clipman | Clipboard manager | |
| Mousepad | Text editor | |
| Orage | Graphical calendar | With XFCE 4.16 Orage was replaced by new DateTime plugin |
| Parole | A front-end for the GStreamer framework | |
| Thunar | File manager | |
| Xfburn | Optical disc authoring supports CD/DVD/BRD | |
| Xfce4-appfinder | Application finder for Xfce4 | |
| Xfce4-mixer | A volume control plugin for the Xfce Panel and a standalone sound mixer application | Uses GStreamer as a backend |
| xfce4-notifyd | A simple, visually-appealing notification daemon for Xfce that implements the Freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification | |
| Xfce4-Panel | Desktop taskbar | |
| Xfce4-power-manager | PC power management program | |
| Xfce4-session | Xfce4 Session Manager | |
| Xfce Screensaver | Screensaver | |
| Xfce-terminal | Terminal emulator | |
| Xfwm | X window manager | With optional compositing |
Products and distributions using Xfce
[edit] | This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2022) |
Xfce is included as one of the graphical user interfaces on the Pandora handheld gaming system.
It is the default desktop environment in the following Linux distributions:
- BackBox
- Black Lab Linux
- Devuan[68]
- Dragora GNU/Linux-libre[69]
- Emmabuntüs[70]
- GalliumOS[71]
- Guix
- Kali Linux
- The Linux Schools Project
- Linux Lite
- Manjaro
- MX Linux
- Mythbuntu
- Pentoo
- Peppermint OS
- QubesOS
- Salix OS
- SolydXK (SolydX)
- SystemRescueCD
- UberStudent
- Ubuntu Studio (until 20.04)
- Void Linux
- Whonix
- Xubuntu
It is also included as a standard desktop option on FreeBSD and derivatives such as GhostBSD, and in many other Linux distributions not listed above, including Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Linux Mint, Slackware, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Solus OS, and Zorin OS. Kali Linux also uses Xfce as the desktop environment when running on the ARM platform. Debian makes a separate netinstall CD available that installs Xfce as the default desktop environment. In 2013, Debian briefly made it the default environment, replacing GNOME.[72][73]
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ "Credits". Xfce. 28 April 2012. Archived from the original on 19 September 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
- ^ "Xfce 4.20 released". 15 December 2024. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ^ "News – Xfce 4.20 released". Retrieved 16 December 2024.
- ^ a b c "faq [Xfce Docs] - How to pronounce Xfce?". docs.xfce.org. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
- ^ a b "XFCE". linuxportal.
- ^ "About – general information about the Xfce desktop". Xfce. Archived from the original on 3 January 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ King, Bertel (14 January 2022). "6 Reasons Why You Should Try the Lightweight Xfce Desktop". MUO. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
- ^ "Arch Linux - xfce4-goodies". Arch Linux package repository. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
- ^ Oh, Damien (15 August 2013). "The User Guide to Customize XFCE Desktop". Make Tech Easier. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
- ^ Perkins, John (21 July 2020). "Xfce Review: A Lean, Mean Linux Machine". Make Tech Easier. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
- ^ Then, Ewdison (6 February 2009). "Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source". SlashGear. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
- ^ Kereki, Federico (March 2009). "Xfce: the third man". Linux Journal (179). Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2022 – via ACM Digital Library.
- ^ Holwerda, Thom (6 August 2012). "CDE released as open source". OSNews. Archived from the original on 8 August 2012. Retrieved 6 October 2015.
- ^ "Linux – Desktops - Window Managers". Archived from the original on 5 September 2022.
- ^ "May I create a toolbar like CDE ?". Archived from the original on 10 April 2022.
- ^ "GitHub - jmontleon/xfce-historical". GitHub. Archived from the original on 7 September 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
- ^ a b "FAQ". wiki.xfce.org. 11 March 2017. Archived from the original on 6 October 2015. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
- ^ SuperTuxKart Team (15 March 2017). "Discover - SuperTuxKart". supertuxkart.net. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
- ^ a b Jacobowitz, Norman (1 July 1999). "Interview with Olivier Fourdan". Linux Gazette. No. 43. Archived from the original on 16 January 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2007.
- ^ Debian xfce source package 3.4.0.20000513-1 changelog
- ^ "Project Page". SourceForge.net. Archived from the original on 11 February 2007. Retrieved 31 January 2007.
- ^ "XFce 4.0 release". UNIX Resources Network. 25 September 2003. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- ^ "Xfce 4.2.0 released!". 16 January 2005. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2021.
- ^ "Xfce 4.2.0 Changelog". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 31 January 2007.
- ^ Meurer, Benedikt (21 January 2007). "A Visual Tour of Xfce 4.4.0". foo-projects.org. Archived from the original on 21 February 2007. Retrieved 31 January 2007.
- ^ "Xfce 4.4 tour – Xfce". www.xfce.org. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
- ^ Xfce Development Team. "Xfce 4.6.0 Changelog". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 22 January 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
- ^ Xfce Development Team. "Xfce 4.6.0 Changelog". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 20 January 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
- ^ "The little mouse told me…". Blog.xfce.org. 16 January 2011. Archived from the original on 22 December 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
- ^ "Xfce 4.10 released". xfce.org. 28 April 2012. Archived from the original on 7 March 2015. Retrieved 19 September 2012.
- ^ "Xfce 4.12 released". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 8 March 2015. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
- ^ "Is XFCe still in development? (Page 1)". Xfce Forums. Archived from the original on 30 October 2015. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
- ^ "Xfce 4.12 tour". xfce.org. Retrieved 20 June 2024.
All but one of those screenshots were taken on machines running OpenBSD -current, a good proof that Xfce is still portable and friendly to all Unix systems.
- ^ "The first Gtk+3 release of xfce4-panel is out! – Simon's Secret". shimmerproject.org. 24 May 2017. Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
- ^ "Xfce Settings 4.13.0 Released". smdavis.us. 9 November 2016. Archived from the original on 20 November 2016. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
- ^ "News - Xfce 4.14 released". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 12 August 2019. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
- ^ "Road to Xfce 4.14". alteroot.org. 12 April 2016. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
- ^ "Road to Xfce 4.14, part 2". blog.alteroot.org. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
- ^ "News – Xfce 4.16 released – Xfce". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 23 December 2020. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
- ^ "Xfce 4.18 released". xfce.org. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
- ^ a b "Xfce 4.20 tour – Xfce". www.xfce.org. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
- ^ a b Brodie Robertson (19 December 2024). XFCE Wayland Support Is Closer Than Ever. Retrieved 18 July 2025 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Projects:applications:start [Xfce Goodies]". Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
- ^ "panel-plugins [Xfce Goodies]". Archived from the original on 24 September 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
- ^ "xfce:xfce4-panel:preferences [Xfce Docs]". Archived from the original on 24 September 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
- ^ "xfce4-terminal - A modern terminal emulator". Git.xfce.org. Archived from the original on 28 June 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
- ^ "apps:xfce4-terminal:preferences [Xfce Docs]". Xfce.org. 26 February 2021. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- ^ "apps:xfce4-terminal:dropdown [Xfce Docs]". Xfce.org. 13 April 2022. Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- ^ "howto:xfwm4_theme [Xfce Wiki]". wiki.xfce.org. Archived from the original on 25 March 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2019.
- ^ "Xfce window manager now includes its own compositing manager". Xfce Blog. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
- ^ "apps:catfish:start [Xfce Docs]". docs.xfce.org. Archived from the original on 24 February 2019. Retrieved 23 February 2019.
- ^ "Thunar in comparison to Nautilus, ROX, Konqueror and Xffm". ThunarWiki. Archived from the original on 18 April 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
- ^ "4.4.0 release status so far". foo-projects.org. 20 January 2007. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.
- ^ "Squeeze - news". xfce.org. Archived from the original on 12 May 2012. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
- ^ "pimutils/vdirsyncer". GitHub. 28 October 2021. Archived from the original on 24 October 2017. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
- ^ "Xfce 4.16 Released! / Announcements / Xfce Forums". Archived from the original on 11 January 2023. Retrieved 17 January 2021.
- ^ "[SOLVED] Please, where is Orage Panel Clock? / Desktop / Xfce Forums". Archived from the original on 16 January 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2021.
- ^ "Xubuntu 14.10 Documentation". xubuntu.org. 29 October 2014. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 28 March 2015.
- ^ Nestor, Marius (2 May 2022). "Roundup of Xfce's Apps Update for April 2022: New Releases of Mousepad, Xfce Terminal, and Thunar". Linux Today. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
- ^ Wallen, Jack (5 May 2010). "Mousepad: A variation on the Leafpad theme". Ghacks. Archived from the original on 24 August 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
- ^ "mousepad/News". Xfce. Archived from the original on 9 January 2022. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
- ^ "ANNOUNCE: parole 1.0.5 released". Mail.xfce.org. 15 November 2019. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2022.
- ^ "apps:parole:start [Xfce Docs]". docs.xfce.org. Archived from the original on 14 February 2019. Retrieved 23 February 2019.
- ^ "Debian -- Details of package parole in bullseye". Archived from the original on 18 March 2022. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- ^ "13550 – No way to speed up or slow down video playback". Archived from the original on 15 June 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- ^ Nesbitt, Scott. "4 lightweight image viewers for the Linux desktop". Opensource.com. Archived from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
- ^ "apps:screensaver:start". Xfce.org. Archived from the original on 10 November 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
- ^ "Operating System - Devuan GNU+Linux Free Operating System". Devuan.org. Archived from the original on 3 May 2022. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
- ^ "[Dragora-users] Dragora 3.0-beta1 released". lists.nongnu.org. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
- ^ "A propos – Emmabuntüs". emmabuntus.org. Archived from the original on 30 October 2022. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
- ^ "GalliumOS – A fast and lightweight Linux distro for ChromeOS devices". galliumos.org. Archived from the original on 23 December 2020. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
- ^ Zwetsloot, Rob (5 November 2013). "Debian changes to xfce desktop". linuxuser.co.uk. Archived from the original on 24 November 2013.
- ^ Hoffman, Chris (2 October 2014). "How GNOME 3.14 is winning back disillusioned Linux users". PCWorld.com. Archived from the original on 29 March 2015. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
External links
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Xfce.
from Grokipedia
Xfce is a free and open-source desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems, emphasizing lightweight performance, low resource consumption, and visual appeal while maintaining ease of use and customization.[1] It is built on a modular architecture that adheres to freedesktop.org standards, allowing users to select and configure components independently to suit their needs.[1]
Development of Xfce began in late 1996, initiated by Olivier Fourdan as a project initially named "XForms Common Environment" using the XForms toolkit, before being rewritten to utilize the GTK+ widget toolkit in subsequent versions.[2] The environment has evolved through multiple major releases, with the current stable version, Xfce 4.20, released on December 15, 2024, introducing experimental support for the Wayland display server protocol alongside numerous bug fixes and enhancements.[3] This version marks nearly two years of development since Xfce 4.18, focusing on modernizing the codebase for future compatibility.[4]
At its core, Xfce comprises essential modules such as the Xfwm4 window manager for handling window decorations and compositing, the Xfdesktop desktop manager for managing the workspace background and icons, the Xfce4-panel for customizable taskbars and applets, the Xfce4-session manager for saving and restoring sessions, Thunar as the default file manager, and the Xfce4-settings manager for centralized configuration.[5] Additional applications include a terminal emulator (Terminal), text editor (Mousepad), image viewer (Ristretto), and sound mixer (Xfce4-mixer), all designed to integrate seamlessly while keeping the overall footprint minimal. Xfce supports a wide range of architectures, including x86, PowerPC, SPARC, and Alpha, and is compatible with various operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and macOS.[1]
Xfce is particularly popular in lightweight Linux distributions like Xubuntu, where it serves as the default desktop, as well as spins of Fedora and MX Linux, appealing to users seeking stability and efficiency on older hardware or resource-constrained environments without sacrificing functionality.[6] Its design philosophy prioritizes speed and simplicity, making it a reliable choice for both everyday computing and embedded systems.[4]
Overview
Definition and purpose
Xfce is a free and open-source desktop environment designed for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, emphasizing speed and minimal system resource consumption.[1] It provides a graphical user interface that enables users to interact with the underlying operating system through windows, icons, menus, and other visual elements typical of modern computing environments.[1] The primary purpose of Xfce is to offer a modular and customizable interface that achieves a balance between simplicity, efficiency, and practical functionality for routine computing activities, such as file management, application launching, and system configuration.[1] By adhering to the Unix philosophy of modularity and reusability, Xfce allows individual components to be packaged separately, enabling users to tailor the environment to their specific needs without unnecessary overhead.[1] This approach ensures it remains visually appealing and user-friendly while prioritizing performance on diverse hardware setups.[1] Xfce is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other free software licenses, including the BSD Software License (BSDL) for applications and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or BSDL for libraries.[7] It is particularly well-suited for users preferring a lighter alternative to more resource-intensive desktop environments like GNOME or KDE, making it ideal for older hardware or systems with limited resources.[8] In the broader context of desktop environments for Unix-like systems, Xfce emerged as a solution focused on lightweight operation to complement the traditional command-line interfaces.[1]Key characteristics
Xfce is characterized by its modular architecture, which follows the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and reusability. The desktop environment is constructed as a collection of independent components—such as the window manager, panel, and file manager—that can be deployed separately or integrated to form a cohesive system, allowing users to create highly flexible configurations without redundancy.[1] A defining trait of Xfce is its lightweight design, engineered for speed and minimal resource consumption to ensure efficient performance on a wide range of hardware. This approach contrasts with heavier environments by avoiding unnecessary features that inflate overhead, while maintaining full desktop functionality.[1] Xfce excels in customizability, providing straightforward tools for personalizing appearances and behaviors. Users can apply extensive theming to panels, icons, and windows through accessible settings interfaces, often without requiring deep technical knowledge, and incorporate plugins or supplementary utilities like sound mixers to enhance the desktop as needed.[1] The environment's commitment to standards compliance is evident in its adherence to freedesktop.org specifications, promoting interoperability with diverse software ecosystems in Unix-like operating systems.[1] Complementing this, Xfce places a strong emphasis on stability, prioritizing robust, error-free performance over rapid iterations of major updates to deliver a reliable experience for long-term use.[8]History
Origins and early development
Xfce was founded in late 1996 by French developer Olivier Fourdan as a personal project to create a lightweight desktop environment for Unix-like systems, serving as a free and open-source alternative to the proprietary Common Desktop Environment (CDE) used on the X Window System.[9][10] Fourdan, motivated by the need for a simpler interface that could run efficiently on hardware with constrained resources, drew inspiration from the XForms toolkit, a graphical library known for its minimalism.[11] The project's original name, "XForms Common Environment," reflected this foundation, emphasizing ease of use and reduced complexity compared to heavier contemporaries like CDE.[7] The early goals of Xfce centered on achieving low resource consumption to suit the limitations of contemporary systems, such as early Linux personal computers with modest processors and limited RAM, often under 64 MB.[9] Fourdan aimed to balance speed, low memory footprint, and essential functionality without unnecessary features, aligning with the Unix philosophy of modularity and simplicity.[11] This focus made Xfce particularly appealing for users on resource-poor setups, where heavier environments would strain performance. The first public release, Xfce 1.0, arrived in 1997, introducing core elements like a basic panel for task management and rudimentary window handling via the XForms toolkit.[12] In 1998, Xfce 2.x was released, marking a major rewrite from XForms to the open-source GTK toolkit and introducing the Xfwm window manager for better window handling. By the early 2000s, the Xfce 3.x series further evolved with a more modular architecture based on GTK 1, enhancing customization and integration in early Linux distributions. By the late 1990s, the project transitioned into a fully community-driven open-source effort, with additional developers contributing to its evolution and distribution through early Linux distributions.[9] This shift fostered broader adoption among Unix enthusiasts seeking customizable, efficient desktops.Major version releases
Xfce's major version releases in the 4.x series marked a significant evolution from its earlier iterations, establishing a stable, modular foundation that emphasized lightweight performance and user customization. Beginning with version 4.0, the project shifted to the GTK+ 2 toolkit, which provided enhanced graphical capabilities and cross-platform consistency while introducing a modular component architecture that allowed for independent development and maintenance of core elements like the panel, window manager, and utilities. This architectural change, released on September 25, 2003, enabled Xfce to scale efficiently on resource-constrained systems without sacrificing functionality, setting the stage for subsequent refinements.[13] Subsequent releases from 4.2 to 4.6, spanning 2005 to 2009, focused on polishing the modular framework and expanding customization options. Xfce 4.2.0, announced on January 16, 2005, introduced improved plugin support for the panel and better integration with GTK+ 2 for smoother rendering and theming. By Xfce 4.4.0 in January 2007, the environment debuted Thunar, a new lightweight file manager designed for speed and extensibility, replacing the older Xffm while enhancing overall panel configurability with features like dynamic applets and multi-monitor support. The 4.6 series, culminating in the stable 4.6.0 release on February 27, 2009, further optimized panel behaviors, added a new settings manager for centralized configuration, and introduced a modern sound mixer, all while maintaining the GTK+ 2 backend for compatibility. These updates collectively improved usability and stability, making Xfce a preferred choice for users seeking a balance between features and minimal resource use.[14][15][16] The 4.8 and 4.10 releases, from 2011 to 2012, advanced desktop management and visual effects. Xfce 4.8, released on January 16, 2011, overhauled the desktop handler (xfdesktop) for better icon management and multi-monitor handling, alongside a new configuration backend that streamlined settings persistence across sessions. Building on this, Xfce 4.10, announced on April 28, 2012, enhanced the window manager (xfwm4) with improved compositing support, including better shadow rendering and transparency effects, which had been initially introduced in prior versions but were now more robust and performant. These changes improved the overall desktop experience, particularly for users with diverse hardware setups.[17][18] From 4.12 to 4.16, released between 2015 and 2020, Xfce refined power efficiency, display scaling, and user notifications. The 4.12 version, launched on February 28, 2015, included updates to the power manager for finer-grained battery optimization and sleep handling, alongside initial HiDPI awareness in components like the panel and file manager. Xfce 4.14 in August 2019 expanded HiDPI support across the board, ensuring crisp scaling on high-resolution displays without performance hits. The 4.16 release on December 22, 2020, introduced a revamped notification system with customizable daemon integration and better handling of urgency levels, further streamlining power management through integration with modern hardware APIs. These iterations prioritized long-term stability and adaptation to contemporary hardware trends.[19][20][21] Xfce 4.18, released on December 15, 2022, delivered substantial enhancements to core interface elements after nearly two years of development. Key updates included a redesigned panel with improved launcher behaviors and plugin extensibility, a more intuitive settings manager that consolidated preferences into a single application, and expanded accessibility features such as high-contrast themes and screen reader compatibility. These improvements maintained Xfce's lightweight ethos while addressing user feedback on usability and integration with modern applications.[22]Recent advancements
In December 2024, the Xfce project released version 4.20 after approximately two years of development, marking a significant step toward modernizing the desktop environment while preserving its lightweight ethos.[3] This release introduced experimental Wayland support for most core components through the new libxfce4windowing library, which abstracts windowing system calls and enables compatibility with wlroots-based compositors such as Labwc and Wayfire, without relying on XWayland.[23] Building on the stability of the 4.18 release from 2022, Xfce 4.20 also included core upgrades to libxfce4ui, enhancing the shortcut editor to support multiple actions and adding GPU and windowing system information to the about dialog, alongside xfconf improvements like systemd user unit integration and better handling of array contents in settings.[23][24] Key features in Xfce 4.20 emphasized usability and performance enhancements tailored to contemporary needs. Thunar, the file manager, received updates for improved search functionality with context menu access during operations, extended tagging support for symbolic links on remote locations, and new toolbar buttons for view switching, menus, and tab/window creation, enabling smoother handling of directories with over 100,000 files without interface freezes.[23] Panel plugins saw refinements, including configurable border widths, better icon sizing in the tasklist via libxfce4windowing, and clock plugin updates such as LCD-style inactive segment display and 24-hour analog mode support.[23][25] Integration with modern hardware was bolstered through HiDPI scaling fixes, addition of missing high-resolution icons, power profile daemon support, hybrid sleep options, and keyboard-driven brightness controls in xfce4-power-manager.[23] As of November 2025, ongoing projects in the Xfce community center on advancing Wayland integration toward a full native session, with development efforts documented in the project's Wayland roadmap updated in October 2025.[26] This includes porting remaining components like xfce4-panel, xfdesktop, and xfce4-settings to achieve greater feature parity, while prioritizing wlroots for compositing to avoid dependencies on other protocols like xsettings or XWayland.[26] Preparations for a potential GTK4 migration remain in early discussion stages, though Xfce maintains its GTK3 base for stability in the interim. Accessibility improvements remain a focus, aligned with upstream GTK enhancements such as the AccessKit backend for cross-platform support, though specific Xfce implementations are still evolving.[27] Community contributions have intensified via the official GitLab instance at gitlab.xfce.org, with active merge requests and issue tracking driving post-4.20 sustainability through targeted bug fixes and maintenance.[28] Efforts emphasize long-term viability, including testing on development branches with recommended compositors to refine Wayland stability and address regressions.[29] A core challenge addressed in recent advancements is adapting to the post-X11 landscape without sacrificing backward compatibility, particularly for legacy hardware and drivers like Nvidia's proprietary ones, which continue to pose integration hurdles under Wayland.[26] Xfce 4.20 and subsequent work retain full X11 support as a fallback, ensuring seamless operation on existing installations while incrementally building Wayland capabilities.[24]Architecture
Development framework
Xfce is constructed using the GTK toolkit as its primary graphical user interface framework, with version 3.24 or later required for the 4.20 release series. Earlier versions, up to 4.14, supported GTK 2, with partial support in 4.16 before full transition to GTK 3 in 4.18 and later, to leverage its enhanced theming, performance, and accessibility features. While there are discussions within the development community about future adoption of GTK 4 for better hardware acceleration and modern rendering, no concrete timeline has been established as of late 2025.[30][31] The configuration management in Xfce relies on xfconf, a flexible, hierarchical system that stores settings in channels organized as a tree-like structure. This database is accessible over D-Bus, permitting real-time updates to preferences and enabling components to react dynamically to changes without necessitating application restarts or session reloads. Xfconf supports multiple backends, including XML files for persistence, ensuring robust handling of user and system-wide configurations across diverse environments.[32][33] Development of Xfce components occurs predominantly in the C programming language, chosen for its efficiency, low-level control, and compatibility with the GTK ecosystem. For select newer modules and bindings, Vala is employed, offering a more concise syntax similar to C# while generating efficient C code, thus facilitating easier integration with GObject-based libraries without introducing additional runtime dependencies.[34][35] Xfce traditionally operates over the X11 display protocol, providing reliable compositing and window management through its core libraries. However, to align with evolving display server standards, Xfce 4.20 incorporates experimental Wayland interoperability via the libxfce4windowing abstraction layer, which utilizes wlroots for protocol implementation, allowing select components to function under Wayland compositors like Labwc or Wayfire while maintaining X11 fallback support. This layered approach ensures backward compatibility and gradual migration without disrupting existing deployments.[26][36] The build process for Xfce employs the Autotools suite (including Autoconf and Automake) as its foundational system, facilitating straightforward compilation from source on various Unix-like platforms. Recent developments have introduced Meson support in key modules like libxfce4util and xfdesktop, promoting faster configuration and cross-compilation while preserving portability; developers can choose between systems based on project needs, with scripts like autogen.sh streamlining setup for both. This dual-build capability enhances adaptability across distributions and architectures, from standard x86_64 to embedded systems.[30]Core components
The core components of Xfce form the foundational infrastructure that enables the desktop environment's session management, configuration, and essential services, ensuring a lightweight and modular operation. These components are primarily implemented using the GTK toolkit, allowing for efficient rendering and integration with the X Window System.[1] The session manager, xfce4-session, is responsible for initializing the Xfce desktop session upon login, restoring previously saved application states, and handling shutdown or logout processes. It supports multiple session profiles that users can select at startup, saving details such as open applications and their window positions to enable seamless session restoration. Additionally, it integrates with power management options during logout, providing dialogs for actions like shutdown, reboot, or suspend.[37] The settings manager, xfce4-settings, serves as a centralized daemon and graphical interface for configuring various desktop elements, including appearance, keyboard shortcuts, display settings, and input devices. It consists of a background daemon that applies changes in real-time, an editor for modifying configuration channels, and a manager that launches specific dialogs such as those for accessibility, color schemes, and preferred applications. This unified approach simplifies system-wide customization without requiring manual editing of configuration files.[38] The desktop manager, xfdesktop, oversees the root window of the desktop, managing elements like the background image, desktop icons for files and folders, minimized window representations, and the right-click menu for quick access to actions. It integrates with the file manager to display icons directly on the desktop and supports theming for visual consistency across the environment.[1] The notification daemon, xfce4-notifyd, implements the server-side functionality of the Freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification, displaying non-intrusive alerts from applications and the system in a visually appealing manner. It handles notification queuing, theming, and positioning, ensuring notifications do not overlap with active windows while supporting features like urgency levels and action buttons.[39] The power manager, xfce4-power-manager, monitors and controls power-related aspects such as battery levels, display brightness, and sleep states, providing DBus interfaces for applications to query power status or inhibit automatic sleep during critical tasks. It includes a panel plugin for real-time battery information and customizable settings for power-saving modes, critical low-battery warnings, and lid-close actions on laptops.[40]Desktop Environment Components
Window manager and panel
Xfwm, the default window manager for Xfce, is a re-parenting window manager that handles the placement, decoration, and manipulation of windows on the screen. It provides standard window decorations including title bars and borders, allowing users to move, resize, or close windows through mouse interactions or keyboard commands. Xfwm adheres to the Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH) specifications from freedesktop.org, ensuring compatibility with modern applications that rely on these standards for features like borderless windows and desktop icons. As of Xfce 4.20, Xfwm includes enhancements such as stretch theme variants and improved focus handling, alongside experimental support for the Wayland protocol through the libxfce4windowing library (though no dedicated Wayland compositor is available yet).[41][41][42] A key capability of Xfwm is its built-in compositing manager, which utilizes X.org extensions to enable visual effects such as window transparency, shadows, and fading animations. These effects can be toggled or configured via the compositor settings, with options to disable compositing entirely for better performance on older hardware. Xfwm also includes focus stealing prevention, accessible through the Window Manager Tweaks dialog under the Focus tab, which helps maintain user workflow by delaying or blocking unsolicited focus changes from newly opened windows. This feature can be activated to prioritize the currently active window, reducing interruptions from background applications.[41][43] Xfwm supports extensive keyboard shortcuts for efficient window management, configurable via the Window Manager settings. Common defaults include Alt+Tab for cycling through open windows, Alt+F4 to close the active window, and Alt+F11 to maximize or restore a window. Additional shortcuts allow for resizing (Shift+Alt+arrow keys), moving windows between workspaces (Alt+Ctrl+End for next workspace), and other operations like shading or sticking windows. Multi-monitor setups are supported through Xinerama and native multi-screen modes, enabling seamless window placement and task switching across displays.[44][44][41] Xfdesktop serves as the desktop manager in Xfce, responsible for rendering the workspace background, displaying desktop icons, and providing the root window menu. It supports setting backgrounds as images or solid colors, with options for multi-monitor configurations and automatic cycling through image collections. Desktop icons, managed via Thunar libraries, allow drag-and-drop file operations and right-click context menus for launching applications or opening files. As of Xfce 4.20, Xfdesktop features improved icon positioning that saves layouts independently of grid settings and customizable colors for icon labels and backgrounds.[45][42] The Xfce Panel serves as the customizable taskbar and primary interface for task management in the desktop environment. It functions as a dock-like bar that can be positioned at the top, bottom, or sides of the screen, with support for multiple panels to accommodate different monitor configurations or user preferences. Users can adjust panel size, orientation, and appearance through the Panel Preferences dialog, including options for transparency, icons, and auto-hide behavior. As of Xfce 4.20, the panel supports configurable border widths and enhanced "show desktop" functionality on hover.[46][47][47][42] The panel integrates a variety of applets to enhance usability, such as the Whisker Menu for accessing applications and favorites, the Clock applet for displaying time and calendars, launcher icons for quick program starts, and system monitors for real-time resource tracking. These applets populate the panel dynamically, providing at-a-glance information like current tasks in the tasklist or workspace switcher for navigating virtual desktops. As of Xfce 4.20, the Clock applet includes LCD-style inactive segments, 24-hour analog formats, and week number display. Xfce Panel's plugin system allows for extensive extensions, with official and third-party plugins available for specialized functions; for example, the CPU Graph plugin visualizes processor usage, while the Weather plugin fetches and displays local conditions. This modular approach enables users to tailor the panel without modifying core components.[46][46][46][42] Xfwm integrates with the Xfce session manager to ensure consistent window handling during login and logout processes. The Xfce4-session manager handles saving and restoring user sessions, including application states and window positions, and supports multiple named sessions selectable at login. It provides a logout dialog for session termination, power options, and integration with display managers. Configuration options include automatic saving of sessions and handling of client failures. As of Xfce 4.20, it includes preliminary Wayland session support via thestartxfce4 --wayland command.[41][37][42]
File manager and utilities
Thunar serves as the default file manager in the Xfce desktop environment, designed for speed and simplicity in handling files and folders. It features a clean interface with a side pane for navigation, a main area for file viewing in various modes such as icon, compact, or detailed list, and support for thumbnails to preview images and documents efficiently. Thunar's lightweight architecture ensures quick startup and responsive performance, making it suitable for resource-constrained systems, while its plugin system via the ThunarX API allows extensions for additional functionalities like custom actions in context menus. As of Xfce 4.20, Thunar adds new toolbar buttons for view switching, menus, and tabs, along with symbolic icons and improved drag-and-drop.[48][49][42] Catfish is the integrated file search utility in Xfce, providing a lightweight and intuitive tool for locating files across the system using pattern matching and filters. Built with GTK+3 and Python, it relies on tools likelocate or mlocate for efficient indexing, enabling quick queries by name, content, or metadata without heavy resource usage. As a companion to Thunar, Catfish can be accessed via custom actions within the file manager for seamless searching from the current directory.[50][51]
Mousepad functions as the standard text editor in Xfce, emphasizing ease of use for editing configuration files and simple documents. It supports syntax highlighting through GtkSourceView integration, allowing users to work with code in languages like C, Python, and HTML, and offers multi-document tabs for handling multiple files simultaneously. The editor's minimalistic design prioritizes speed, with features like search-and-replace and print support, but avoids advanced IDE capabilities to remain lightweight.[52]
The Xfce4-settings manager provides a centralized interface for configuring the desktop environment, encompassing dialogs for accessibility, appearance, display, keyboard, mouse, and preferred applications. It includes a settings daemon that applies changes in real-time and an editor for modifying underlying xfconf channels. This tool streamlines customization without requiring manual edits to configuration files.[38]
Xfce includes several core utilities to enhance file handling and system monitoring. The xfce4-appfinder tool enables rapid application launching by searching .desktop files and command history, displaying matches in a popup for quick selection or execution, and supports adding custom launchers to the panel for customized workflows. As of Xfce 4.20, it features improved navigation with Ctrl+N/P keys, auto-close on focus loss, and right-click actions. Meanwhile, xfce4-taskmanager provides an straightforward interface for process oversight, monitoring CPU and memory usage in a reorderable tree view, with filtering options and compatibility across Unix-like systems including Linux and BSD variants. Additionally, xfce4-terminal serves as the default terminal emulator, offering tabbed sessions, unlimited scrolling, customizable fonts and colors, and drop-down mode for quick access, built on the VTE library.[53][54][55][42]
Multimedia and productivity tools
Xfce provides a suite of lightweight applications tailored for multimedia handling and basic productivity tasks, ensuring seamless integration within its resource-efficient desktop environment. These tools emphasize simplicity and compatibility with common formats, leveraging underlying libraries like GStreamer for media processing.[56] Parole serves as the default media player in Xfce, designed as a straightforward application based on the GStreamer framework to support playback of various video and audio formats. It handles local media files, Audio CDs, DVDs, and live streams, with built-in support for subtitles and playlist management to facilitate organized viewing sessions.[57] Parole's interface allows users to adjust playback settings and extend functionality through plugins, maintaining low resource usage suitable for the Xfce ecosystem.[58] For image management, Ristretto functions as a dedicated viewer optimized for quick navigation through image collections. It enables rapid browsing of supported formats such as JPEG, PNG, and TIFF via the gdk-pixbuf library, while offering slideshow playback and the ability to open images in external editors for minor adjustments.[59] Ristretto also supports setting images as desktop wallpapers directly from the application, enhancing its utility for everyday visual tasks.[60] Orage acts as the integrated calendar and task manager, providing a graphical interface for scheduling appointments and reminders in a single-user environment. It employs the iCalendar (iCal) format for importing and exporting events, allowing users to set alarms with popup notifications and view daily or weekly agendas.[61] The application runs unobtrusively from the notification area and supports archiving of past events to keep calendars organized.[61] Xfburn offers a user-friendly tool for optical media operations, supporting the creation and burning of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs using libburnia libraries. Its drag-and-drop interface simplifies assembling data compositions or audio tracks, with options to burn ISO images, blank rewritable media, and transcode audio via GStreamer for CD creation.[62] Xfburn includes modes like TAO and SAO for flexible burning processes, though it lacks multi-session support.[62] Xfce4-mixer provides volume control for the desktop, supporting sound systems like OSS, ALSA, PulseAudio, and Sndio via GStreamer. It includes a panel plugin with a speaker icon for quick adjustments and a standalone application for detailed mixing, with optional keyboard shortcuts for volume changes.[63] The Xfce Screensaver manages idle screen protection and session locking with a focus on security and desktop harmony. It features configurable activation timers, theme selection from XScreensaver-compatible modules, and options for locking the screen alongside screensaver activation or system sleep. As of Xfce 4.20, it integrates more closely with the Power Manager for power-saving coordination.[64][64][42]Features
User interface and customization
Xfce employs a traditional desktop metaphor, featuring a taskbar panel, application menus, desktop icons, and support for drag-and-drop operations to facilitate intuitive user interaction with files, applications, and windows.[65] The interface emphasizes simplicity and familiarity, allowing users to launch programs via the Whisker menu, manage windows through the Xfwm4 window manager, and organize files on the desktop or within the Thunar file manager.[46] The theming system in Xfce is centered on the Appearance settings dialog, which supports GTK themes for controlling the visual style of controls like buttons and menus, selectable from a list with preview options.[66] Users can install additional themes by extracting tarballs into the appropriate directories or via package managers, with popular sources including xfce-look.org for community-contributed GTK themes, icon sets, and cursor styles.[66] Icon themes are managed separately in the Icons tab, affecting appearances in panels, desktops, and menus, while cursor themes can be selected and applied system-wide, often requiring a session restart for full effect.[66] Fonts are customizable in the Fonts tab, including default font selection, size adjustments, anti-aliasing, and DPI settings to ensure readability across different displays.[66] Keyboard and mouse customization is handled through dedicated settings dialogs, enabling users to remap shortcuts for window management, application launching, and system actions.[67] In the Keyboard settings, layouts can be configured by selecting models and variants after disabling system defaults, with global shortcuts assignable via an add dialog for commands like volume control or workspace switching.[67] Key repeat rates are adjustable for delay and speed, tested directly in the interface.[67] For mice, the Mouse and Touchpad settings allow theme selection for cursors, button action remapping (e.g., double-click to middle-click), and sensitivity adjustments, with logout recommended after cursor changes.[68] Accessibility features in Xfce include support for screen readers like Orca, enabled by activating Assistive Technologies in the session manager, which loads necessary GNOME accessibility modules.[69] Keyboard aids such as sticky keys (for sequential modifier presses), slow keys (requiring held presses for acceptance), and bounce keys (ignoring rapid repeated presses) are configurable with adjustable timeouts.[69] High-contrast themes are available through the GTK theming system, with options like GNOME's High Contrast theme installable for better visibility.[66] Mouse emulation via numeric keypad arrows is provided for users with motor impairments, alongside acceleration profile tweaks.[69] Panel and desktop tweaks are accessible via right-click context menus for quick modifications, such as adding or removing widgets in the panel or editing desktop icons.[46] The Xfce Panel supports widget placements like launchers, clocks, and system monitors, configurable through its preferences for size, orientation, and opacity.[47] On the desktop, right-clicking allows toggling menus (applications or window lists), customizing icon layouts, sizes, and backgrounds with options for images, colors, or gradients across workspaces.[65] These modular components enable extensive personalization without altering core functionality.[38]Performance and compatibility
Xfce is renowned for its resource efficiency, maintaining a low CPU and memory footprint that makes it particularly suitable for resource-constrained environments such as embedded systems, older hardware, and virtualized setups.[70] This lightweight design stems from its modular architecture, which avoids unnecessary background processes and optimizes core components for minimal overhead. For instance, on Ubuntu 19.10, the Xfce 4.14 session consumed approximately 394 MiB of RAM at idle, though more recent implementations on modern distributions typically report usage in the 200-400 MiB range for the desktop environment alone, depending on configuration and enabled plugins.[70] Such efficiency ensures responsive performance even on systems with limited RAM, often outperforming heavier alternatives like GNOME or KDE in low-resource scenarios. In terms of display server compatibility, Xfce provides full, mature support for the X11 protocol, ensuring seamless integration with legacy applications and hardware.[71] With the release of Xfce 4.20 in December 2024, experimental Wayland support was introduced via the new libxfce4windowing library, allowing most core components—such as the panel, desktop, and file manager—to run under Wayland compositors like Labwc or Wayfire without relying on XWayland.[24] However, this support remains preliminary and is recommended only for advanced users, as it lacks features like native session management, full workspace handling, system tray icons, and certain input configurations; a complete Wayland-native session is not yet available, with ongoing development targeted for future releases.[26] Xfce demonstrates broad hardware compatibility, supporting diverse architectures including x86, x86_64, and ARM (aarch64), which enables its deployment on everything from traditional PCs to single-board computers and servers.[70] It integrates effectively with proprietary and open-source graphics drivers, such as NVIDIA's proprietary suite and AMD's open-source drivers, leveraging X11's robust acceleration for smooth rendering on varied GPUs.[72] Recent enhancements in Xfce 4.20 also address HiDPI scaling issues, eliminating blurriness on high-resolution displays without compromising performance.[71] Within the broader software ecosystem, Xfce, being primarily GTK-based, natively themes and integrates GTK applications while supporting Qt-based software through configuration tools like qt5ct and style plugins for visual consistency.[73] Containerized formats such as Flatpaks and Snaps are fully compatible, running without modifications due to their sandboxed nature and portal integrations, allowing users to access a wide range of applications from diverse toolkits.[74] Benchmarks highlight Xfce's efficiency: typical idle RAM usage falls between 150-250 MiB on minimal setups with modern hardware, scaling modestly with added features, while session startup times often complete in under 5 seconds on systems with SSDs and multi-core CPUs. These metrics underscore its suitability for performance-sensitive use cases, with optimizations in Xfce 4.20 further improving file handling for large directories—such as viewing over 100,000 files without interface freezes—via throttled updates and efficient job queuing in Thunar.[71]Adoption
Linux distributions
Xfce serves as the default desktop environment in numerous Linux distributions, particularly those emphasizing lightweight performance, stability, and ease of use on varied hardware. These distributions leverage Xfce's modular design to provide efficient, customizable interfaces suitable for both everyday users and resource-constrained systems. Official spins and editions integrate Xfce seamlessly, often with tailored themes and tools to enhance usability. Prominent official spins include Xubuntu, a community-maintained variant of Ubuntu that defaults to Xfce for a balance of familiarity and low resource demands. For users of standard Ubuntu seeking to install Xfce as a lighter alternative to the default GNOME desktop, the process involves runningsudo apt update && sudo apt install xubuntu-desktop in the terminal. After installation, users can log out, select the Xfce session at the login screen via the gear icon, and log in to activate it, thereby reducing resource overhead compared to GNOME.[75][76] The Fedora Xfce Spin delivers a streamlined Fedora experience with Xfce, focusing on speed and integration with Fedora's package ecosystem. Similarly, the Manjaro Xfce Edition combines Arch Linux's rolling-release model with Xfce's efficiency, appealing to users seeking up-to-date software without heavy overhead.
Lightweight distributions favor Xfce for its minimal footprint, making it ideal for older or low-spec hardware. MX Linux, based on Debian Stable, uses Xfce by default and ranks highly in popularity for its anti-bloat approach and reliable performance; its latest release, MX Linux 25 "Infinity" (November 2025), incorporates Xfce 4.20.[77] The Linux Mint Xfce Edition provides a user-friendly Xfce setup with Mint's proprietary tools for multimedia and system management, ensuring a smooth transition for Windows users. antiX, designed specifically for legacy systems, supports Xfce through variants like XF-antiX, allowing installation alongside its default window managers for enhanced functionality on dated processors and limited RAM.[78]
In enterprise and stable environments, Xfce finds adoption for its reliability and low maintenance needs. Debian includes Xfce as a selectable desktop during installation, enabling administrators to deploy it in server-to-desktop conversions or stable workstations. openSUSE Tumbleweed provides an official Xfce live ISO and YaST pattern for installation, pairing Xfce's stability with Tumbleweed's continuous updates for development and testing scenarios.[79]
Customizations in distributions like Asmi Linux further adapt Xfce for broader accessibility; its 2025 releases, such as Asmi Linux 13 Debian Edition, include pre-configured themes, simplified layouts, and beginner-oriented defaults to reduce setup complexity while retaining Xfce's core flexibility.[80]
As of 2025, Xfce accounts for approximately 5-12% of Linux desktop usage, based on user surveys from platforms like GamingOnLinux (6.4% in February 2025) and hardware trend analyses (4.7% in May 2025).[81]