One for XFCE. A reasonble workflow with lots of customizability. Default is a Windows XP workflow, but with extensions you can emulate any desktop, including MATE. The XFCE apps are light and stable with poweruser features, while being reasonably easy to approach.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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I use XFCE for the recent years I love it. It's stable, fast and feature complete. XFCE4 terminal works great as well as other XFCE4 apps. I only wish they implement proper high DPI support!
Xfce4 is my preferred terminal no matter which distro I'm on.
I use xfce on 2 machines, mint on one.
I've used xubuntu, which was my introduction to Linux and xfce.
Xfce is customizable in so many ways. Runs on anything, and is solid.
I'm happy with XFCE and am looking forward to Wayland support.
Xfce. It does what I want it to do and little else.
My vote is with the Rat and I refuse to elaborate.
Nobody ever talks about LxQt, that was my first GNU/Linux experience on Lubuntu 19.10. It had a modern design only using about 300 MB of RAM. LxQt is watching the match outside the ring
Hey I'll sit in that corner.
I'm on lubuntu from 18.04 and by 24.04 it grew in to a swan.
It can share TDE's popcorn.
I've been using XFCE for so long that it feels really awkward when I have to use Gnome or KDE.
XFCE is solid, reliable, stable, unobtrusive, lean, responsive.
It is also the reason I've not used Wayland yet.
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been using xfce4 since it's the default desktop environment for MX Linux and it's really rock solid whilst treading the line between a full-on DE and a WM. To me it's a lot more customizable than mate and has significantly more development behind it (can't wait for 4.20!). With that being said i don't necessarily have a problem with using mate and its app suite, the bottom being a taskbar instead of that just being part of the top bar is something i can get behind but you can achieve that with a panel profile on xfce just fine
I've been using mate, generally happily. I don't remember what if any issues I had with xfce. I hated gnome.
Love how 2/5 comments suggest using KDE (like any sane person) and I totally wasn't going to do the same (like any sane person).
i use xfce, but entirely because it worked well when 16 megabytes of ram was considered average and it literally took almost a half hour to log in and start using a browser on both gnome and kde.
is mate as lightweight as xfce?
MATE is a bit heavier than XFCE.
I'm happy with KDE since 2009. But I'd have a really hard time if I were to choose between those two.
I think I "know" MATE because before KDE I used to use Gnome2 so it feels nostalgic to me. The Applications/Places/System menu was the tits and it beat the shit of whatever start menu you put in front of it, and Gnome's decision to get rid of it was the stupidest idea ever (among many other of their utterly stupid decisions). I'd really miss that menu if it weren't for that I got used to associate some keystrokes to launch my favorite apps so I don't even use a start menu or whatever, rather than Krunner.
On the con side it seems to me MATE is being developed at a slower pace than Xfce's, and it seems less customizable than it - well, at least for me that's a con - thought I'm not really a "ricer" or anything I just got used to a certain way to do things on the desktop and I remember having to fiddle with Gconf2 to do stuff like you did with friggin' Windows Registry editor.
I got to use Xfce back in the day too. It has an Applications/Places menu just so people wouldn't think they blatantly copied Gnome, but it's more than 10 years since Gnome got rid of it so I don't know why they haven't took it. Xfce feels somewhat more customizable, has the veteran badge and seems to have more developers backing it up.
But it's being developed with GTK+3/4 so I guess at some point they'll suffer from the ~~shittification~~Gnome-ization of GTK and, as I said before in some other post, if I were them I'd move all my shit to the E libraries (even more, I'd do a fusion of the Enlightenment desktop and Xfce). Also I happen to be a graphic designer so the lack of care they have onto some things sticks like a sore thumb to me, like those poorly designed settings dialogs on some stuff that even have some dumb horizontal scrolling just because they couldn't care less about that.
I am not sure how I feel about it but there seems to be some resistance in the GTK world. Desktops like Cinnamon,MATE, and XFCE have said they are going to stick with GTK3. Mint has proposed a common suite of GTK3 apps called Xapps that would maintain GTK3 versions of some of the applications that GNOME has pulled to GTK4.
https://linuxmint-developer-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/xapps.html
One of the best things about the GTK world was that you had a choice of DEs but got the same universe of “native” applications with any of them. Sadly, it seems that there may now be GNOME and “other GTK” DE universes. On the plus side, there will be a haven for those that want off the GNOME train without as much “left behind” feel as MATE users have had.
Just on your Enlightenment point there, I tried Bodhi Linux a few years ago because the Enlightenment desktop looked really good, but over time they (Bodhi) had to create their own desktop because Enlightenment appeared to have almost stopped work.
Might be something for you to check out...?
Of course not - if Xfce has too few people working on it, MATE has even less than them, and Enlightenment has even less than MATE. And note that Enlightenment is not only the desktop environment per se but the E libraries (and those are no regurgitated shit - for example, some car makers have used them on their infotainment systems). I'd think it'd be amazing if those two (or those three) could do a Dragon-ball-z kind of fusion, I think those three have really similar goals. Hell, if that was actually a thing most probably I'd move to that.
I know Xfce folks have submitted patches to GTK over the years, but it's just that GNOME's enshittification has pregnated GTK to a point of no return and Xfce devs are very well aware of that (for example, the libadwaita thing).
XFCE for the aforementioned reasons and not depending on gnome. Xmonad otherwise.
I have used both as Ubuntu flavours when I needed a lighter desktop on older hardware. XFCE was absolutely solid, worked and brought new life to the hardware. But, I wanted just a little more pizazz so, I moved to Mate. It was just as quick, felt a bit more modern but it wasn't as rock solid as XFCE. XFCE is perfect for stability. Mate is more modern but younger so maybe not as solid. It's been a while since I took either out for a spin though. Time to fire up the VirtualBox I suppose.
One for xfce. I have installed it too many times, very rarely crashes, very friedly, reliable, fast. However, it is a matter of taste / habit really.
KDE because I have 64GB and I don't care about memory usage and I like using a computer that looks like it's from the 2010s at least.
KDE's menus upon menus upon menus makes it look and work like W95 for me, just made of shiny plastic instead of something beige.
Also, I feel XFCE's default looked awful about ten years ago, it looks modern and slick now, esp. with a theme like Arc installed! And it's incredibly customisable and riceable!
I don’t love the default XFCE look but the default in distros like EndevourOS or CachyOS are awesome. It is like a totally different DE.
XFCE or LxQT > MATE in my opinion, but if I was trying to make a lean system I would just use a tiling wm, probably sway.
Xfce works nicely with Bspwm window manager. I dont need polybar or other hard to configure status bars. Xfce panels are easier and you can make them looking like a typical polybar if you want 😉. Maybe Mate can do the same, idon't know.
I have used both in the past, but now use neither of them, have been exclusively a KDE Plasma user for several years by now and no longer feel like trying much different.
GNOME 2 was the first DE I ever used on GNU/Linux, so MATE has a nostalgic feel to me. I do not think Xfce is very radically different from it in its functionality, although the default configuration is somewhat different. This is really mostly a matter of personal taste.
I’ve never used MATE - almost always been an XFCE guy since I got serious about Linux.
It was sort of an accident. After a while of using Ubuntu in a VM (including a weird IceWM stint), I tried installing Debian on an old laptop I had sitting around. The first attempt, where I tried KDE, something went wrong with the Network Manager install. At this point, I can never know what went wrong - it’s been years All I know is that I chose XFCE on the second attempt and didn’t have the problems, likely due to coincidence. Still, I stick with XFCE out of satisfaction.
With that little ram, you're better off with jwm, lxqt, lxde, or icewm. Not xfce or mate, that require over 600-800 MB of ram just to start up. In fact, with so low ram, you're better off with something like Haiku.
I believe they mentioned the ram used by xfce, not the total system ram, but thank you for the recommendations, I'm really interested in software able to run in very low end hardware.
If you do try Haiku, use Falkon as the web browser. You will have a much better experience than the other Haiku browser options.
About haiku, isn't it still too experimental? Like for using websites, when it comes to security?
If you are a low-end Linux enthusiast, I would also recommend the Trinity desktop. Just as MATE is a continuation of GNOME 2, Trinity is a modern version of KDE 3. I was quite surprised how light and functional it is.
If you want to give it a shot in a VM, the Q4OS distro includes it as a default DE option. If you really want to be impressed what can be done with little RAM, try the 32 bit version of Q4OS.
Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm not exactly a low end enthusiast, like doing it for fun, but I find myself around low end devices daily, from lack of alternatives, so I've been experimenting with software, trying to make the experience a bit better. To give a bit more of context, here's what I use:
I have a somewhat decent main computer (although it has some hardware issue that makes it unstable, but it's another topic), that I use with fedora and gnome, but I have a small 2 in 1 laptop that I use for writing and light web usage, shared with my gf. It has 2gb of ram and an atom z something cpu. It's currently running mx linux with 32-bit firefox, and runs better than one would expect, but still a bit slow. My mom has a mini pc with 4gb of ram and a celeron n30 something. It's running debian with xfce. The ram is fine, but I find it really slow. My sister has a laptop with the same ram and a very similar cpu, same situation, but it's currently running fedora with lxde (it had fedora with gnome before and was very very slow, so I suggested a change, but my sister insisted on keeping fedora, because she liked it. Surprisingly, the lxde version is much lighter than I expected). The worst machine is from my gf's brother. He enrolled in an online course and needed a pc for the classes, so he took one they had sitting in a corner. It has a pentium cpu (don't remember the model), 2gb of ram and came with windows 7, so I replaced with mx linux and it's running worse than before.
I do the same for my friends and family, installing linux for them while their laptops only have 2 or 4 gb of ram. XFce with debian on slow hardware, mint on 4 gb laptops with medium speed. However, for something really low end, do consider Haiku, as I wrote earlier.
About haiku, isn’t it still too experimental? Like for using websites, when it comes to security?
For me it's MATE.
For some reason I've never really gotten on with XFCE. Tried it in earnest many years ago, and have dipped into it a few more times over the years, and for whatever reason it just doesn't gel with me. Always feels like I'm fighting it to get it to do what I want it to do.
MATE has the familiarity and comfort for anyone who spent serious years running GNOME 2. It's pretty much as lightweight as XFCE these days, but feels more polished and intuitive for it.
Ubuntu MATE is still one of my go-to distros for limited hardware (even though that project specifically seems to have stagnated somewhat in recent years).
I've been using MATE since Gnome 3. I really liked the simplicity of Gnome 2 and was unable to adapt to their "new" way so I switched to MATE and it just clicked. I tried Gnome 3 a few times again but I just can't.
As for why MATE instead of XFCE or others? Because I already used and tried XFCE in the past and prefered Gnome 2's look and feel. In fact, I have been going out of my way for years to keep every app using GTK2 and my favourite theme because I like how it looks and feel, and Gnome 3 and GTK3 broke this. So MATE it was. They switched to GTK3 too eventually but it gave my time to adjust.
My only "complaints" about it are the file manager Caja, and the way you can list windows, which both feel very basic. I would like those two to get better.
I try and use different DE from time to time, from Fluxbox to E17, but I just go back to MATE. My favorite DE of all time was E16 but it took waaay too long for E17 to be functional and I ended up keeping MATE.
What do you think of Thunar? I know it is part of XFCE but I think it would fit in well on MATE.
I use Xfce, as do most of my Linux friends, it's lightweight and simple yet also very customizable.
Afaik the most stable DEs on Linux are GNOME and Xfce. I don't see many advantages of MATE so Xfce is my preferred option. MATE has a better app selection though.
Neither. Cinnamon on Debian. Has just enough bling to be pretty and still manages not to be fat, and pretty similar to both your choices.