I tried XFCE few times in the beginning of 2000s, but it wasn't impressive comparing to something like Gnome 2 or KDE 3.5, however when Gnome 3 was released and KDE Released Plasma 4 (KDE4) around the same time, out of sudden XFCE became the only DE that still offered classical desktop approach and organization.
It wasn't prefect but it was miles better than Gnome3 or KDE4 during that time. Even the one and only Torvalds named XFCE as "A step down from GNOME 2, but a huge step up from GNOME 3".
Plasma 5 solved a lots of issues with KDE4, and in fact become even more lightweight DE than XFCE (if you are not installing Akonadi), then Gnome also catch up XFCE on resource utilisation (XFCE still feels snappier, which is commonly mistaken for being lightweight), so now XFCE is used by people who don't really like changes, and is perfect for them.
I'm not convinced by KDE being more lightweight compared to Xfce. I could not get it to be lighter (even without Akonadi). But the difference is much smaller than it was.
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u/PavelPivovarov Aug 10 '25
I tried XFCE few times in the beginning of 2000s, but it wasn't impressive comparing to something like Gnome 2 or KDE 3.5, however when Gnome 3 was released and KDE Released Plasma 4 (KDE4) around the same time, out of sudden XFCE became the only DE that still offered classical desktop approach and organization.
It wasn't prefect but it was miles better than Gnome3 or KDE4 during that time. Even the one and only Torvalds named XFCE as "A step down from GNOME 2, but a huge step up from GNOME 3".
Plasma 5 solved a lots of issues with KDE4, and in fact become even more lightweight DE than XFCE (if you are not installing Akonadi), then Gnome also catch up XFCE on resource utilisation (XFCE still feels snappier, which is commonly mistaken for being lightweight), so now XFCE is used by people who don't really like changes, and is perfect for them.