Over the years, Xfce gained a reputation of being a lightweight alternative for the two major desktop environments on Linux, KDE and GNOME. In this article I will overview 7 essential applications for the Xfce desktop environment, including screenshots, most popular features, strong and weak points.

Zenwalk 7.0 is released, This release brings several major changes at user level and system level. At user level, the Xfce desktop environment has been updated to major version 4.8.1, coming with a new VFS, Xfce 4.8 allows CIFS and SFTP shares browsing through the file manager,

KDE and GNOME pile on the eye candy and grow ever-larger and hungrier of system resources. Thankfully, Linux users who prefer a lightweight desktop environment have a number of great choices. Today Juliet Kemp takes us on a tour of the attractive, nimble, and functional Xfce desktop.

Linux Mint 7 Gloria XFCE was just released featuring the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, Xorg 7.4 and XFCE 4.6 desktop. Linux Mint 7 has introduced us to some exciting improvements to mintInstall, mintUpdate, mintWelcome, and mintUpload along with several artwork enhancements.

Xfce 4 is a fine example of how a full-blown Desktop Environment can be both feature rich as well as light weight. Xfce 4 is based on the GTK+ toolkit which immediately puts in in the same category as GNOME.

I have been experimenting with making my own custom netbook desktop using the Xfce Desktop Environment. Xfce is supposed to be small and fast, which fits the bill nicely for a netbook; if I can work out a layout that looks good.

A few years ago, Xfce had a reputation as a lightweight desktop that made few concessions to inexperienced users. However, the Xfce 4 series of releases have shown steady improvements in usability, and version 4.6 is no exception.

Last year's DesktopLinux.com's survey showed Xfce was the third most popular desktop environment. Granted, it was a distant third to KDE's second place and GNOME's first place, but Xfce does seem to be gaining in popularity in the last few years.

For the past week to two weeks I’ve done something I had’t done in years - I switched my default desktop environment in my GDM login screen. I’ve been logging into Xfce instead of my usual Gnome. There are basically three reasons why I’m loving Xfce over Gnome.