Xfce is still my primary work environment, mostly because it generally works in the way I expect after years of Unix desktop usage. I certainly hope this latest version fixes some of the remaining polish type issues that would make me consider GNOME 3 or even the new Unity in Ubuntu 12.04.
You could try a tiling window manager like wmii. It certainly is different from windows, but I've found that this alone really helped my productivity, especially on older hardware.
Had the same issue on my work netbook, it was getting slower. Then I "cleaned up" Xfce, removed a huge desktop background image, switched to a lighter window decoration and button theme, and that helped a lot. Not Xfce it is fast again. Just saying, sometimes its not the software but the layout/theme that fills up the memory (at least on my small 1GB netbook).
Same here, it has a few bugs and sometimes X will hang and require a restart, that is really annoying. But for the most part it is fast and reduced to an 20px pannel at the bottom of the screen.
I used to like Xfce in its old 4.2 days. It used to be the Cholesterol-Free Desktop Environment.
XFCE seems to turn into KDE 3 - start from design of the old Unix Common Desktop Environment and add an eclectic mix of features from all possible desktop interfaces while catering to users. Not necessarily a bad thing, a lot of people like it.
XFCE itself is still written to be modular and lightweight (although the definition of lightweight has changed over the years). Most of its components can be installed separately with few dependencies. Distributions like Xubuntu and Fedora pile on tons of packages to fill up the CD images and present a nice, full-featured desktop to new users. After the Gnome3/Unity upgrades I switched to Xubuntu and just rip out about 50% of the packages after doing a clean install.
KDE 4 and GNOME 3 happened in the meantime. Which means there's been a lot of demand but a dearth of supply for a conservative but feature-rich desktop environment.
Since XFCE was probably the closest to meeting that demand, it's not surprising that it gained a lot of features. Meanwhile, it looks like LXDE is going to fill the niche that XFCE used to fill.
I have only used XFCE since 4.6 so you could be right. XFCE 4.8 is still way less of a mess than GNOME and KDE 3. Configuring and using XFCE was very straightforward.
It gets a lot of hate right now, but its a really stress-free environment for me. Taking a look at the GNOME 3 cheat-sheet will fix most of the power-user complaints.
I think when GNOME 3 get more features and applications it will quickly regain user share because of its superior design philosophy. Like what happened to GNOME 2 - it got flamed hard in the reviews, Linus blasted it; but its developers kept making it better without changing their design decisions and it was adopted by major distributions and most users stuck with it.
It's funny watching a project like this progress over the years. You inevitably get the "it's slow and bloated now" comments, but if no new features were added you'd end up hearing people write it off as irrelevant.
The new BeOS-style 'deskbar' feature in 4.10 looks awesome. Pity X11 DEs and window managers don't have much of a concept of applications and associated windows in the way that MacOS/BeOS do.
Been an Xfce addict since the 3.x series and I still keep coming back to it.
Indeed, with the b5 window decorations and a little yellowish colour it gets as close to beos as it gets. Xfce is still the only workable desktop that doesn't get in your way.
The latest version of Xubuntu (12.04) is just stellar IMO. It's turned me into an XFCE user. I've been a DE refugee since Unity and Gnome 3 came along. Glad to see some of these new features being added, particularly the tiling support!
I feel the same way about LXDE and Lubuntu, except I didn't do it because of Unity. I actually like Unity- I just don't like how bloated the desktop has become in Ubuntu. People were fine with the UI in Windows 3.1, but they just kept screwing with it for no apparent reason, and I feel the same way about Gnome/Unity, KDE, and new versions of OS X.
I guess I always was. I just want a desktop with an application dock I can pin stuff to, one icon per instance with mouseover / alt tab showing all instances, a system clock and system button on it for all the other jazz, that I can just pin to the left of my screen that can context hide itself.
So I can have my screen real estate for whatever I'm doing and not have it covered in the superfluous glomp like the Unity top bar (I love having the name of my running program in two places!) etc.
I switched to ArchLinux and Xfce a month back from Ubuntu. I really liked Unity and I'm looking forward to trying out Ubunto 12.04 but for all purposes I'm going to stick with Arch and Xfce.
Too bad this didn't get pushed a few months ago; would have been nice to have some of these features in the LTS. Oh well... I have the tiling feature patched in, though.
