Xfce or XFCE (pronounced as four individual letters, ) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and other

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating systems. Xfce aims to be fast and

lightweight Lightweight is a weight class in combat sports and rowing (sport), rowing. Boxing Professional boxing The lightweight division is over 130 pounds (59 kilograms) and up to 135 pounds (61.2 kilograms) boxing weight classes, weight class in the spor ...

while still visually appealing and easy to use. The desktop environment is designed to embody the traditional

Unix philosophy The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to Minimalism (computing), minimalist, Modularity (programming), modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading devel ...

modularity Modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a system into varying ...

and re-usability, as well as adherence to standards; specifically, those defined at freedesktop.org.

Features

User experience

Xfce is a highly modular desktop environment, with many software repositories separating its components into multiple packages. The built-in settings app offers options to customize the

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both Free software, free and ...

theme, the system

icons An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, saints, and angels. Although especially ...

, the cursor, and the

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...

. Additionally, Xfce provides a fully GUI-based system for modifying the desktop's status bar and

system tray The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running computer program, programs. The taskbar and the associated Start menu, Start Menu were ...

Performance

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment which omits many of the visually appealing features (such as animations) present in other desktop environments such as

KDE Plasma KDE Plasma is a Shell (computing), graphical shell developed by the KDE community for Unix-like operating systems. It serves as the interface layer between the user and the operating system, providing a graphical user interface (GUI) and workspa ...

and

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

. These omissions allow Xfce to run much more smoothly on low-end

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

History

Olivier Fourdan started the Xfce project in late 1996 as a

version of the

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif (software), Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98, UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop a ...

(CDE), a

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

that was initially proprietary and later released as

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. The name was originally an abbreviation of XForms Common Environment, which referred to the XForms library, however, Xfce has been transformed and is now based entirely on the Xfce Toolkit (GTK). The first Xfce release was in early 1997. However, over time, Xfce diverged from CDE and now stands on its own. The

Slackware Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distr ...

Linux distribution has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", a loose interpretation of the initialism.

Mascot

Per the FAQ, the logo of Xfce is "a mouse, obviously, for all kinds of reasons like world domination and monsters and such." In the '' SuperTuxKart'' game, in which various open source mascots race against each other, the mouse is said to be a female named "Xue".

Early versions

Xfce began as a simple project created with XForms. Olivier Fourdan released the program, which was just a simple

taskbar The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running computer program, programs. The taskbar and the associated Start menu, Start Menu were ...

, on

SunSITE SunSITE (Sun Software, Information & Technology Exchange) is a network of Internet servers providing archives of information, software and other publicly available resources. The project, started in the early 1990s, is run by a number of universiti ...

. Fourdan continued developing the project and in 1998, Xfce 2 was released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm. He requested the project be included in

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

, but it was refused due to its XForms basis. Red Hat accepted only open-source software released under a GPL- or BSD-compatible license, whereas, at the time, XForms was closed-source and free only for personal use. For the same reason, Xfce was not in

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

before version 3, and Xfce 2 was distributed only in Debian's contrib repository. In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based on

, a non-proprietary toolkit then rising in popularity. The result was Xfce 3.0, licensed under the GPL. As well as being based completely on

, it gained GTK

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

support, native language support, and improved configurability. Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1.

Modern Xfce

In version 4.0.0, released 25 September 2003, Xfce was upgraded to use the

2 libraries. Changes in 4.2.0, released 16 January 2005, included a

compositing manager A compositing manager, or compositor, is software that provides applications with an off-screen data buffer, buffer for each window, then Compositing, composites these window buffers into an image representing the screen and writes the result into ...

for Xfwm which added built-in support for transparency and drop shadows, as well as a new default SVG icon set. In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included the

Thunar Thunar is a file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems, initially written using the GTK+ 2 toolkit and later ported to the GTK+ 3 toolkit. It started to ship with Xfce in version 4.4 RC1 and later. Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meur ...

file manager, a replacement for Xffm. Support for desktop icons was added. Also, various improvements were made to the panel to prevent buggy plugins from crashing the whole panel. In February 2009, Xfce 4.6.0 was released. This version had a new configuration backend, a new settings manager and a new sound mixer, as well as several significant improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce's core components. In January 2011, Xfce 4.8.0 was released. This version included changes such as the replacement of ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO,

udev udev (userspace ) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices ...

, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit, and new utilities for browsing remote network shares using several protocols including SFTP, SMB, and

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

. Window clutter was reduced by merging all Thunar file progress

dialog box In computing, a dialog box (also simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response. Dialog boxes are classified as " modal" or "modeless", dep ...

es into a single dialog. The panel application was also rewritten for better positioning, transparency, and item and launcher management. 4.8 also introduced a new menu plugin to view directories. The 4.8 plugin framework remains compatible with 4.6 plugins. The display configuration dialog in 4.8 supports RandR 1.2, detecting screens automatically and allowing users to pick their preferred

display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor, or other display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resoluti ...

refresh rate The refresh rate, also known as vertical refresh rate, vertical scan rate or vertical frequency in reference to terminology originating with the cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), is the number of times per second that a raster-based display device displa ...

, and display rotation. Multiple displays can be configured to either work in clone mode, or be placed next to each other. Keyboard selection was revamped to be easier and more user-friendly. Also, the manual settings editor was updated to be more functional. The 4.8 development cycle was the first to use the new release strategy formed after the "Xfce Release and Development Model" developed at the

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

Desktop Summit in May 2009. A new web application was employed to make release management easier, and a dedicated Transifex server was set up for Xfce translators. The project's server and mirroring infrastructure was also upgraded, partly to cope with anticipated demand following the release announcement for 4.8. Xfce 4.10, released 28 April 2012, introduced a vertical display mode for the panel and moved much of th
documentation
to an online

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

. The main focus of this release was on improving the user experience. Xfce 4

Xfce 4.12 was released on 28 February 2015, two years and ten months later, contrary to mass Internet speculation about the project being "dead". The target of 4.12 was to improve user experience and take advantage of technologies introduced in the interim. New window manager features include an Alt+Tab dialog, and smart multi-monitor handling. Also, a new power management plugin for the panel's notification area was introduced, as well as a re-written

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

and an enhanced

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

. Xfce 4.12 also started the transition to

3 by porting application and supporting plugins and bookmarks. With 4.12, the project reiterated its commitment to

platforms other than Linux by featuring

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

screenshots. Xfce 4.13 is the development release during the transition of porting components to be fully GTK3-compatible, including xfce-panel and xfce-settings. The planned release of Xfce 4.14 was announced in April 2016 and was officially released on 12 August 2019. The main goals of the release included porting the remaining core components from GTK 2 to GTK 3; replacing the dependency on with GDBus, GNOME's implementation of the D-Bus specification; and removing deprecated widgets. Major features were postponed for a later 4.16 release. The minimum GTK 3 version was bumped from 3.14 to 3.22. Xfce 4.16 was released on 22 December 2020. Some notable changes in this release include new icons with a more consistent color palette; improved interfaces for changing system settings; various panel improvements like animations for hiding, a new notification plugin with support for both legacy SysTray and modern StatusNotifier items, and better support for dark themes; and more information included in the About dialog. Xfce 4.18 was released on 15 December 2022. This release mainly focused on new features and improvements to the Thunar file manager including an image preview sidebar, split view, recursive file searching, better mime type handling, per-file color highlighting, undoing up to 10 actions, a recently opened files location, restoring open tabs on startup, and a customizable toolbar. Other changes include a keyboard shortcut editor and merging the date and time plugins.

Software components

Applications developed by the Xfce team are based on

and self-developed Xfce libraries. Other than Xfce itself, there are third-party programs which use the Xfce

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

Development framework

Xfce provides a development framework which contains the following components: * exo, an application library for the Xfce desktop environment * garcon, a Freedesktop.org compliant menu library * libxfce4ui, a widgets library for the Xfce desktop environment * libxfce4util, an extension library for Xfce One of the services provided to applications by the framework is a red banner across the top of the window when the application is running with root privileges, warning the user that they could damage system files.

Xfce Panel

Xfce Panel is a highly configurable

with a rich collection of plug-ins available for it. Many aspects of the panel and its plug-ins can be configured easily through graphical dialogs, but also by GTK style properties and hidden Xfconf settings.

Xfce Terminal

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

is provided as part of the Xfce project, but it can be used in other X Window System environments as well. It supports tabs, customizable key bindings, colors, and window sizes. It was designed to replace GNOME Terminal, which depends on the GNOME libraries. Like GNOME Terminal, though, it is based on the VTE library. Xfce Terminal can be configured to offer a varying background color for each tab. It can also be used as a drop-down terminal emulator, similar to Guake or Tilda.

Xfwm

Xfwm is a window manager, supporting custom themes. Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm integrates its own

Catfish

A file searching tool, able to perform in-name and in-text matching, as well searching by file type and last modified time. It is also capable of performing indexing by using an mlocate database.

Thunar

Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce, replacing Xffm. It resembles GNOME's

Nautilus A nautilus (; ) is any of the various species within the cephalopod family Nautilidae. This is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and the suborder Nautilina. It comprises nine living species in two genera, the type genus, ty ...

, and is designed for speed and a low memory footprint, as well as being highly customizable through plugins. Xfce also has a lightweight archive manager called Xarchiver, but this is not part of the core Xfce 4.4.0. More recently, ''Squeeze'' has been started as an archive manager designed to integrate better into the Xfce desktop, and though no releases have been made since 2008, the git repository of squeeze has been active and this version is more feature-rich than the last stable release.

Orage

Starting with version 4.4, Xfcalendar was renamed to ''Orage'' (French for "thunderstorm") and several features were added. Orage has alarms and uses the

iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, ...

format, making it compatible with many other calendar applications, e.g. vdirsyncer to sync via CalDAV. It also includes a panel clock plugin and an international clock application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different time zones. With Xfce 4.16, and the dropping of GTK2 support for panel plugins, orage was replaced with DateTime plugin.

Mousepad

Mousepad is the default

for Xfce in some Linux distributions, including Xubuntu. Mousepad aims to be an easy-to-use and fast editor, meant for quickly editing text files, not a software development environment or an editor with a large plugin ecosystem. It does offer tabbed files, syntax highlighting, parentheses matching and indentation features commonly found in software editors. It closely follows the

-system release cycle. It originated as a fork of Leafpad, was developed by Erik Harrison and Nick Schermer, but has since been rewritten from scratch.

Parole

''Parole'' is a simple media player based on the

GStreamer GStreamer is a Pipeline (computing), pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one f ...

framework. It is designed with simplicity, speed and resource usage in mind, and is part of the Xfce Goodies and uses at least three libraries from the Xfce project (libxfce4ui, libxfce4util, and libxfconf). It is similar to '' GNOME Videos'', but it has some advantages and disadvantages compared to it: ;Advantages * It has (X11/ XShm/ Xv) video output that provides a much higher frame rate than Clutter-based video output of GNOME Videos which relies upon OpenGL or OpenGL ES for rendering * Traditional text-based playlist on the main window for both audio and video files which provides an easy and fast switch between the files and shows their time * Audio visualization * Showing a banner upon the videos that have multiple audio or subtitle files ;Disadvantages * Lacks a mechanism to speed up or slow down the media playback * Lacks many advanced features of GNOME Videos * As of version 1.0.5 (2019–11) it cannot run under Wayland

Ristretto

An image viewer (supporting slideshow mode). Ristretto can operate on folders of images, and display their thumbnails in addition to the active image.

Xfburn

A CD/DVD

optical disc authoring software Optical disc authoring, including CD, DVD, and Blu-ray Disc authoring, is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded ("burned") onto an optical di ...

. Starting with the 4.12 release of Xfce, Xfburn is also able to burn Blu-ray discs.

Xfce Screensaver

A screen saver and session-locking program first packaged with the 4.14 release of Xfce. It uses screensaver themes compatible with Xscreensaver. Although forked from MATE Screensaver, it depends only on Xfce libraries.

Table of Xfce 4 components

Products and distributions using Xfce

Xfce is included as one of the

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

s on the

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

handheld gaming system. It is the default desktop environment in the following

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s: * BackBox * Black Lab Linux *

Devuan Devuan is an open source, Debian-based Linux distribution that aims to maintain compatibility with other init systems and avoid lock-in by systemd. Devuan offers sysvinit, runit or OpenRC as alternatives to systemd. History With the relea ...

* Dragora GNU/Linux-libre * Emmabuntüs * GalliumOS *

Kali Linux Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. The software is based on the Debian''Testing'' branch: most packages Kali uses are imported from the De ...

* The Linux Schools Project * Linux Lite * Manjaro * MX Linux *

Mythbuntu Mythbuntu is a discontinued media center operating system based on Ubuntu, which integrated the MythTV media center software as its main function, and did not install with all of the programs included with Ubuntu. Following the principles of fe ...

* Pentoo * Peppermint OS *

QubesOS Qubes OS is a security-focused operating system, security-focused desktop operating system that aims to provide computer security, security through isolation. Isolation is provided through the use of virtualization technology. This allows the s ...

Salix OS Salix OS is a multi-purpose Linux distribution based on Slackware. Goals Salix OS retains full backwards compatibility with Slackware. This enables Slackware users to benefit from Salix repositories, which they can use as an "extra" sourc ...

* SolydXK (SolydX) * SystemRescueCD *

UberStudent UberStudent was a highly-reviewed and popular free and open-source software, free and open-source computer operating system and collection of programs aimed toward higher education and secondary students and their teachers and schools. By the time ...

Ubuntu Studio Ubuntu Studio is a recognized flavor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is geared to general multimedia production. The original version, based on Ubuntu 7.04, was released on 10 May 2007. Features Real-time kernel The real-time ke ...

(until 20.04) *

Void Linux Void Linux is an independent Linux distribution that uses the X Binary Package System (XBPS) package manager, which was designed and implemented from scratch, and the runit init system. Excluding binary kernel blobs, a base install is composed e ...

* Whonix * Xubuntu It is also included as a standard desktop option on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and derivatives such as

GhostBSD GhostBSD is a Unix-like operating system based on FreeBSD for x86-64, with MATE (previously GNOME) as its default desktop environment and an Xfce-desktop community based edition. It aims to be easy to install, ready-to-use and easy to use. The ...

, and in many other Linux distributions not listed above, including

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

, Gentoo,

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

Kali Kali (; , ), also called Kalika, is a major goddess in Hinduism, primarily associated with time, death and destruction. Kali is also connected with transcendental knowledge and is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of goddesses who p ...

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...

Mageia Mageia is a Linux-based operating system, distributed as free and open-source software. It was forked from the Mandriva Linux distribution. The Greek term () means enchantment, fascination, glamour, wizardry. The first release of the software ...

OpenMandriva OpenMandriva Lx is a general-purpose Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribu ...

and Zorin OS.

also uses Xfce as the desktop environment when running on the ARM platform. Debian makes a separate netinstall CD available that installs Xfce as the default desktop environment. In 2013, Debian briefly made it the default environment, replacing GNOME.

References

External links

* * {{X desktop environments and window managers 1997 software Compositing window managers Desktop environments based on GTK Free desktop environments X Window System