Xfce Desktop Environment

Xfce Desktop Environment

Xfce is a lighter desktop environment that requires less memory and processing power than either GNOME or KDE and is therefore often suggested for use on older machines.  It also works great on current hardware and is often a quality choice for a different reason. Xfce has been developed using the traditional UNIX philosophy of software: do one thing, do it well, and play well with others.

Xfce can be installed on several UNIX platforms. It is known to compile on Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, 

OpenBSD, Solaris, Cygwin and MacOS X, on x86, PPC, Sparc, Alpha

Each part of the Xfce desktop environment is modular, you may add or remove bits at will, substitute other programs that perform the same function, and everything created by or included in Xfce is expected to work according to simple standards that allow other programs to interact with it easily.

Thunar

On one hand this sometimes means that people look at Xfce and think it isn’t as seam-lessly integrated and smooth as the two main desktop environments. On the other hand, it means that if you prefer the GNOME file manager (Nautilus) over the one included with Xfce (Thunar), then just install Nautilus and use it, either side by side with Thunar or remove Thunar completely. This is a huge part of what makes Xfce so lightweight, it has very few dependency requirements and is highly flexible.

Xfce 4.8 Desktop Environment download.


Sources : XFCE