I made a conscious decision a few years ago (after trying yet another distro that went tits up), I was going to stop playing around WITH linux and start playing around ON linux for computers that I needed to get actual work done on. If one wants a classic Linux feel that is fairly stable, XFCE and a Debian base is pretty good for that.

I am a little concerned about the whole Wayland situation, since the XFCE team seems to be taking a fairly anti-Wayland stance at the moment. It has forced me to manually move from Wayland back to X11 on new installs to get a relaible experience, which is not reliably straightforward and seemingly may become more problematic as time progresses.

His points about how they do not feel the need to change does seem correct, and it is amazing. As a windows user you should be able to figure it out pretty easily!

> I stopped writing posts like this for years, out of fear of how people from specific desktop environments would respond.

I personally also quite liked Cinnamon with Linux Mint, which was similarly pleasant out of the box, but I’m also sorry that the author had to deal with people I guess getting kinda heated over their preferences?

Just in case you want an even more vintage experience.

There's also people trying to keep the SGI experience alive, but this one is a clone: https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/

As for as early xfce check out https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/xfce-default.jpg (I'm actually on that site from 25 years ago: https://xteddy.org/xwinman/screenshots/twm-cjmckenzie.gif)

  Desktop Zoom (Xubuntu/Kubuntu): In Xfce (Xubuntu) and KDE (Kubuntu), Alt + Scroll is the default shortcut to zoom in and out of the entire desktop. This is an accessibility feature used to magnify specific parts of the screen.

Admittedly, I use Gnome. I have few requirements for a DE and most existing DEs meet my need[1]. Many in the Linux community hate Gnome (not sure what the short comings are). I use it mainly because it is the default in most cases.

But KDE is extremely ugly out of the box: the panel at the bottom. The window frames, the mouse pointer, the menues. It takes some work to make it reasonable.

What are the features that people actually use on KDE that are missing on Gnome (or require some work to get on Gnome)? I mostly see only the argument that KDE is "extremely customizable" compared to Gnome. I agree, but what is the actual customization that one does that make the difference, which are more work to achieve (or impossible) on Gnome? I am genuinely asking: I can live with ugly DE if I am missing something I don't know.

[1] my needs: ability to switch windows, ability to press super key to search for an app, ability to display time.

Also I enjoyed how easily I could modify it:

- xfwm4: zoom only to multiples of integer, nearest neighbor only

- xfwm4: stop moving zoomed area after the cursor when Scroll Lock is on

- xfce4-screenshooter: supply custom actions with parameters %x %y %w %h of a selected rectangle, allowing me, for example, to select a rectangle and then launch a screen recording script.

Never found the use for multiple desktops, though.

The only part that irritates me is having to interact with the GTK file chooser (file open dialog). Someday I might be annoyed enough to replace it.

They have a visual language that's not changed for decades and just works.

I prefer tiling window managers with no decorations, but whenever I have an app that doesn't play nice with xmonad I open an xfce x server and do my work there.

I have some old chromebooks (flashed with chromebox firmware) that uses xfce too, which works great!

So kde & xfce is the only two desktops I use these days & have patience for.

I used a multitude of UNIX environments since 1994, starting with IBM X Windows terminals connected to DG/UX, and thanks to the way Unity got dropped, the way GNOME 3.0 went down, windowmaker no longer being actively developed, Xfce it was.

It's weird that when using something like Windows, KDE, or Gnome, I notice a delay between clicking and the thing happening on screen. It's maybe 100ms or so, but after using XFCE for years, there's a notable and, for me, infuriating delay in many modern GUIs.

And it's not my computer; I'm sitting here with 32 cores, 128GiB of RAM, and a somewhat fancy AMD video card.

Anyway, I LOVE XFCE. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles in my DE, I just need it to launch applications, bind some hotkeys, and otherwise stay out of my way.

It's great that these projects have not given into "the times" or tried to become things they're not. They're great at what they do and I hope they remain that way.

His setup was almost non existent apart from few customisations.

I remember he told me that xfce was the best one could get, while not being unpolite, he implied the problem was that people liked too much too have bells and blinking lights.

I kept using for a while what I was using, but after giving a try, yeah, that was all I needed.

I'm currently on popos (using GNOME) and enjoy the tilling of its GNOME extension. Actual tilling wms were too hackish for me whenever I tried them.

I first used it on an eeepc because something light was the order of the day. But then Gnome 3 happened and I made the switch on my full-strength machines too.

It works and it works well. It's theme-able. It's not opinionated about how I should use it so I can put bars wherever I want, launchers, menus, systrays wherever I like, and I can do it all with a few clicks and dragging and dropping stuff.

Generally a great DE and one that won't screw you over on update, which is something I've come to value.

Post-2010ish Gnome and kde are like some sort of sick joke. The fact that there are people who actually contribute their precious free time to these, feels to me profoundly sad.

XFCE is when my backup when I break xmonad.

Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window.

The same is true for GNOME, but KDE it is allowed. I expect this is a gtk thing.

I've been doing a couple of these over the years, and the great thing about XFCE is that it doesn't change, while at the same time being fairly intuitive and discoverable to the tech-unsavvy people.

So, with XFCE, I explain things once and I don't have to explain things to that person ever again. It stays as is over the years!

One only have to make sure to disable the virtual desktop (4 screens by default) thing and be sure to only keep one. That's the most confusing thing to non-tech-savvy that ever was. "Where have all my windows gone?! I moved the mouse and poof! they were gone"

Also, it runs great on old hardware. It's mostly what I've been doing. Family and friends tell me how they'll need to buy a new computer because theirs can't go on the internet anymore. I tell them "no you won't!". And then their computer becomes super fast again. Make my Computer Great Again.

If I was more purely looking for something lightweight I think I’d end up with some other choice with a more modern design language.

Even thinking about this subject still makes me a little miffed about the “need” to constantly evolve look and feel of the UI.

Liquid Glass changed looks without innovating on functionality. It added bloat and confusion without providing any innovation to justify it. The whole system is so bad that I followed through on selling my Mac to go with a Linux laptop.

At least with modern KDE/Gnome you can make a user experience argument over XFCE for why you’d upgrade. Okay, it’s not as snappy and lightweight, but you get a lot of functionality out of it.

But these commercial operating systems are changing the UI to satisfy a marketing department rather than users. It has to look different or else there’s nothing new to sell.

In the X11 era, the server arbitrated these components. In the Wayland era (which I must assume is the baseline context), the compositor is the server. Forcing the panel and window manager to communicate via IPC rather than sharing a memory space in a monolithic compositor introduces unavoidable frame-latency and synchronization issues. Issues specifically regarding VBLANK handling and tear-free rendering that integrated environments like plasma or sway solved years ago.

ROTFL. Moksha, the lightweight desktop for Bodhi Linux, has very low RAM requirements, with a default install using under 100MB of RAM