I have not been shy talking about my love of Xfce over the years here. The desktop environment has been a trusted friend ever since I first loved it on the late Cobind Desktop (still the high water mark of desktop Linux, as far as I’m concerned).
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one. David Gerard of Pivot to AI fame recently shared this post he wrote in 2012:
The question with minimal desktops is the fine line between as simple as possible and just a bit too simple. How much basic stuff do you have to add back? 4.8 took it slightly far, 4.10 is almost Just Right. XFCE is so far a case study in Not Fucking It Up; I hope they never go to version 5, and just update 4 forever.
This (a) longevity and (2) getting the balance right cannot be overstated. Here’s my current Xfce desktop, for example:
Except, no it isn’t. That’s a screenshot of my FreeBSD desktop from 2008, with the bright and clear Tango Iconset (speaking of high-water marks). Remember when iconography was discernable at a glance? Aka, functional as icons? But I digress.
Xfce in 2025 (no, 2026, damn it!) is just as easy to understand, light, and fast as it first was booting Cobind on my HP Brio when I was in school, or when building it from source in FreeBSD ports. Though unlike a barebones window manager or other “light” DEs, Xfce feels usable, feature complete, and designed by someone who understands why people use desktop computers (cough GNOME).
I do use KDE on my primary desktop. Version 4 was a mess, but they’ve made massive improvements, especially within the last year. I’m not sure how much this had to do with the Steam Deck, and a new generation of people realising that… wait… I can run stuff on this box other than games? There’s a desktop here!? But my laptops all run Xfce, and I’m half-tempted to move back to it on the desktop.
I’m with David here. I hope they never feel the need to “innovate” with “disruption” for “UX”. The switch to the Thunar file manager was the last major user-facing change I can remember, and it was great.
I’m not suggesting we reached peak UI with Xfce, but no desktop since has made a compelling case (for me) for its replacement. I love, love, love that Xfce is maintained this way in spite of all the industry pressures to turn it into something else.
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