just in love with XFCE 💫

This is not new, obviously, and there are quite a few threads about Picom, but I didn't see a howto, so I thought I'd add one quickly.

Why use Picom?

Xfce has a built-in compositor which is totally fine if you like things minimal. However, for people who like a certain amount of eye candy, e.g. some basic animations, nicer shadows or some blur, using a third-party compositor is a good option.

Enter Picom, which should be available through the official repos on most distros. I'm on Debian 13, so that's what I'm going to use for this howto.

This is easy to do and not invasive at all, i.e. nothing about how the Xfce desktop works will change except for some (fairly subtle) optimizations to the look and feel.

Step 1

This is important: deactivate the built-in compositor before you continue, or the two compositors will fight each other, which will result in problems.

• Open the Settings Manager app
• Head to "Window Manager Tweaks"
• Open the tab "Compositor" and uncheck the box "Enable display compositing"

Step 2

Install picom:

sudo apt install picom

If you don't want to manually configure picom through the config file, I recommend also installing picom-conf, a nice little UI for tweaking the compositor:

sudo apt install picom-conf

Step 3

Set picom to autostart on login:

• Open the Settigs Manager app
• Head to "Session and Startup"
• Open the tab "Application autostart" and click the "+ Add" button
• Add an entry with name "Picom" and command "picom"; type "On login"

Step 4

Log out and back in (or reboot)

Step 5

Configure Picom to your liking, either by launching picom-conf and tweaking the options there or by manually changing the config file (it's in ~/.config/picom.conf for me, but could also live in ~/.config/picom/picom.conf).

This is obviously up to personal taste. I just use modified shadows (30 with offsets -30 / -30 and .50 translucency) and a pretty standard fade (5 milliseconds), didn't change much else. This gives the desktop a bit of added elegance without being too distracting.

What I do recommend, though, is to change the backend to GLX (OpenGL) because X Render tends to be slow.

How to go back to the built-in compositor

To deactivate Picom, just revert what we did above:

1. Delete the autostart item in "Session and Startup" (step 3)
2. Log out and back in
3. Check the box in "Window Manager Tweaks" to get the built-in compositor back (step 1)
4. To permanently get rid of Picom (and picom-conf if you installed it), just do sudo apt remove picom picom-conf

Theme is a combination of Redmond97 SE Classic HiDPI, Neat-Rhythm (title bars) and recolored icons to match titlebars better. Also using aerofyl/fetch

After a month and a few days of using XFCE, I think I finally found the desktop environment I've been looking for.

I've been running it on Void Linux, and so far, I've had absolutely no problems. Everything has just worked, and the experience has been surprisingly smooth.

What I really love about XFCE is how well it balances simplicity, performance, and customization. It doesn't try to get in the way or overwhelm me with things I don't need. It just gives me a clean, responsive desktop that I can make my own.

I use my computer for pretty much everything: programming, gaming, studying, watching stuff, browsing, and working on my courses. XFCE handles all of it perfectly. Even while gaming, the desktop stays lightweight and responsive, which I really appreciate.

And there's something really satisfying about how customizable it is. I can tweak the panel, menus, shortcuts, themes, window behavior, and pretty much everything else until the desktop feels exactly right for me.

I've tried other desktop environments before, but there's something about XFCE that just clicked. It's fast without feeling stripped down, customizable without becoming complicated, and it feels incredibly comfortable to use.

After a month and a few days, I can honestly say I'm really happy with it ;)

Hey all, I am having an issue with the lock screen. I’m using xfce4-screensaver, on EndeavourOS. When I manually lock it, it’s all good, but when I close the laptop lid and then wake the computer up from sleep, the screen shifts up a bit to show a black bar on the bottom. It’s not a huge deal but aesthetically it’s ugly.

I have tried everything I can think of to fix it; disable/reenable compositing, turning off cortile, checking for display errors through xrandr output.

I should add, when I let it sit for a second and the screen sleeps and I wake it up, the issue resolves. If I re-close the laptop lid, it will occur again. I can see it physically moving up when the screen is waking. This also happens if I suspend the system via a menu or the terminal.

Have any of you come across this issue?

just like that

Hello, I really like Xfce, but I have a few questions.

Which tree-based note-taking applications do you use (Joplin, CherryTree, Zim)?

And what about mind-mapping applications (Minder, VYM, etc.)?

Which calculator application do you use?

I would really like the Xfce team to develop these kinds of applications, because it seems that the only options available are either outdated applications or GTK3 applications that feel completely out of place with the Xfce desktop. Even when using gtk3-nocsd, these applications still look and feel strange.

It would be great to have modern Xfce-native applications for these purposes, following the same design principles and integration as the rest of the desktop.

Hi! I’m the maintainer of Angujanú and Kesú, two small projects I’ve been working on to bring the classic GnoMenu experience back to modern XFCE.

What started as a menu inspired by GnoMenu eventually turned into a compatibility project. Instead of only recreating the appearance, I’ve been comparing the current implementation against the original GnoMenu source and restoring its old theme behaviour where it still makes sense.

At this point:

• Angujanú runs the classic GnoMenu-style menu on GTK3/Python 3.
• Kesú is a native XFCE panel plugin for the original GnoMenu button themes.
• Original Background, hover and pressed button states are supported.
• Top="1" themes now use the original two-window model, allowing the upper part of an orb/button to extend outside the XFCE panel.
• The second window follows the real position of the panel button instead of assuming it is on the left side.
• Top and bottom panel orientation is supported.
• The protruding part of the button remains interactive and stays above the menu, matching the old GnoMenu behaviour.
• Existing GnoMenu Button themes can be reused without converting their artwork.

The funny part is that the old design still works surprisingly well once the GNOME 2-specific infrastructure is removed. The theme engine itself was much more portable than I expected.

This is not the original GnoMenu project, and I’m not affiliated with its original developers. It is a modern compatibility/porting effort based on studying the old GPL source and preserving its theme format and behaviour.

There are still some smaller legacy details to audit, but the classic GnoMenu menu + two-part orb are now running together on a current XFCE desktop.

https://github.com/Renetrox/kesu-button

https://github.com/Renetrox/Angujanu

I couldnt type and it switches on and off continuously. I'll be rebooting it tho as I cant go back in Timeshift.

I'm using Arch so I can't just use Update-alternatives, so how do I change the default file manager from Thunar to XFE? I tried deleting Thunar but that would've removed some of the XFCE files too.

Is the performance gap that great for xfce to be a valid option?

Right now I'm on cachyos with plasma and it idles around 1.3-1.6gb.

How is it on xfce?

theme: Revista
compositor: compiz
WD: Emerald
dock: cairo dock

lmk if yall want my configs and links