Search for "XFE Linux" and you will find a split result: one set of pages about a standalone file manager called X File Explorer, and another set about Xfce, a full desktop environment. These are two completely different pieces of software. The confusion is common enough that it shows up in forums, Reddit threads, and beginner Linux courses on a regular basis. This article sets that record straight and then goes substantially further — covering what Xfce is, how its components fit together, where it came from, how it compares to heavier alternatives, and what the December 2024 release of Xfce 4.20 changed.

Xfce and Xfe: Two Different Things

Let's clear the naming collision first. Xfce (pronounced as four individual letters: X-F-C-E) is a complete desktop environment. It manages your windows, your taskbar, your wallpaper, your session, and your file browsing. It is the graphical shell that sits between you and the Linux kernel when you log into a system running Xubuntu, MX Linux, or Manjaro's Xfce edition.

Xfe — X File Explorer — is a separate, self-contained file manager written by French developer Roland Baudin since 2002. It uses the FOX C++ toolkit, has no dependency on any desktop environment, and can run equally well inside Xfce, GNOME, KDE, or from a plain window manager. Baudin's stated goal was a file manager that launches in a fraction of a second and keeps its memory footprint small. It draws its visual inspiration from Windows Explorer and the classic file manager Total Commander.

Naming Note

Xfce is the desktop environment. Xfe is the file manager. Xfce has its own built-in file manager called Thunar. You do not need Xfe to use Xfce, and Xfe does not require Xfce to run. The letters overlap by coincidence.

Xfce was originally written as XFce, an abbreviation for XForms Common Environment, because it was built using the XForms GUI library in 1996. When the project switched toolkits, the name stayed — lowercase f and all — but it no longer abbreviates anything. The Xfce FAQ confirms this directly: the acronym is now effectively meaningless, and suggestions like "X Freakin' Cool Environment" have been floated by the community without any of them being officially adopted.

What a Desktop Environment Actually Does

A desktop environment is the layer of software that gives Linux a graphical user interface. It is not the same as the Linux kernel, not the same as the display server (X11 or Wayland), and not the same as a window manager — though it often includes one. A complete desktop environment typically bundles together a window manager, a file manager, a panel or taskbar, a session manager, a settings framework, and a collection of default utilities.

On Windows or macOS, this layer is a single monolithic product. On Linux, it is optional and modular. You can run Linux with no desktop environment at all, using only a terminal. You can run a minimal window manager without a full DE. Or you can install a complete desktop environment like Xfce, GNOME, or KDE Plasma and get a cohesive graphical experience.

Xfce's approach to this stack is deliberately conservative. The project's philosophy, spelled out on its own website, is that a desktop environment should be "fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly." That means Xfce deliberately excludes animated window transitions, desktop search indexing daemons, and other features that contribute to the heavier footprint of GNOME or KDE Plasma.

A Brief History of Xfce

Olivier Fourdan — a French software engineer who had been using Linux since 1994 — started the Xfce project in late 1996. His goal at the time was to create a Linux equivalent of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), a proprietary Unix desktop standard across many commercial workstations of the era. Fourdan released the first version in early 1997: a simple taskbar posted to SunSITE (now ibiblio). The original Xfce used the XForms library, which was free only for personal use. That licensing restriction kept it out of distributions like Red Hat, which required GPL- or BSD-compatible licenses for inclusion — and out of Debian's main repository.

In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project using GTK — the same toolkit that powers GNOME — and released the result as Xfce 3.0 under the GNU GPL. Those distribution barriers fell. The name "Xfce" was retained even though the XForms connection no longer applied. Xfce 3.8.1 was uploaded to SourceForge in February 2001, and version 4.0 in September 2003 upgraded to GTK+ 2 libraries, forming the basis of what users today recognize as the modern Xfce.

Several versions followed in the 2000s, each adding components and refining the architecture. Xfce 4.4, released in January 2007, introduced the Thunar file manager — replacing an older file manager called Xffm — and added proper support for multiple panels. Xfce 4.6 in 2009 brought a new configuration backend and settings manager. Xfce 4.10 in 2012 consolidated the settings daemon. Xfce 4.18 in December 2022 focused heavily on Thunar improvements. And Xfce 4.20, released December 15, 2024, added the first experimental Wayland support after two years of development.

The Xfce development team described the 4.20 release as representing nearly two years of work, during which the team added features, resolved a large volume of bugs, and made numerous smaller refinements across the codebase.

— Paraphrased from the Xfce 4.20 official release announcement, xfce.org, December 2024

The Core Components of Xfce

Xfce is deliberately modular. Rather than one large application, it is a set of cooperating components, each responsible for a specific function. This modularity means you can swap out pieces — for example, using a different file manager instead of Thunar — without the rest of the desktop breaking. Here are the primary components present in a standard Xfce installation.

Xfwm4 — The Window Manager

Xfwm4 manages every window on screen. It draws title bars, handles the minimize and close buttons, controls window focus behavior, and manages the compositing pipeline that enables transparency effects. Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm4 integrated its own compositing manager, giving Xfce desktop-level transparency and shadows without requiring an external compositor like Picom. Xfwm4 also handles window snapping, tiling, and multiple workspaces.

Xfwm4 is X11-only and will remain so. Rather than porting Xfwm4 to Wayland — an approach the team attempted and abandoned as too risky — the Xfce project announced in January 2026 that it is building a separate, purpose-built Wayland compositor called xfwl4. Led by core developer Brian Tarricone and funded by Xfce community donations, xfwl4 is written from scratch in Rust using the smithay library, and is designed to replicate Xfwm4's behavior and configuration interface as closely as possible on Wayland. Work began in early 2026, with a first development release targeted for mid-2026. Future Xfce releases are expected to ship both Xfwm4 (for X11) and xfwl4 (for Wayland), with Xfce 4.22 the earliest anticipated release to include it.

Xfce4-panel — The Panel and Taskbar

The panel is the horizontal (or vertical, or angled) bar that typically sits at the top or bottom of an Xfce desktop. It holds the application menu, the clock, the system tray, workspace switchers, window list, and whatever plugins the user has added. Xfce 4.20 added the ability to configure panel border width, improved icon size handling in the taskbar, and introduced a 24-hour mode for the analog clock plugin.

Thunar — The File Manager

Thunar is the default file manager for Xfce. It replaced the older Xffm in Xfce 4.4. Its design priorities are speed and a small memory footprint, and it is extensible through a plugin API called thunarx. Thunar received significant attention in both Xfce 4.18 and 4.20: the 4.18 release added split-pane view, recursive search, and an image preview sidebar, while 4.20 addressed performance problems with large directories.

Thunar Performance in 4.20

Xfce 4.20 redesigned Thunar's internal container structures and moved more file operations to background threads. Directories containing over 100,000 files no longer freeze the interface. This was a longstanding complaint from users managing large media libraries or code repositories.

Xfdesktop — The Desktop Manager

Xfdesktop handles the desktop canvas itself: wallpaper rendering, desktop icons, and the right-click context menu on the desktop. In Xfce 4.20, it gained support for SVG wallpapers on large screens, custom colors for icon labels and icon backgrounds, a new option to sort folders before files, and enhanced context menus.

Xfce4-session — The Session Manager

The session manager starts Xfce components at login, restores saved sessions, and handles logout, restart, and shutdown sequences. It works in conjunction with the screensaver and power manager to handle lid-close events and lock-screen behavior.

Xfce4-settings — The Settings Framework

This component provides the graphical settings manager — the central control panel for appearance, display configuration, keyboard shortcuts, mouse behavior, and more. Under the hood, settings are stored and synchronized through a daemon called xfconfd, which uses a property-based storage system called xfconf. In Xfce 4.20, settings management was simplified: lock-screen handling was consolidated, eliminating conflicts between Light Locker and the Xfce screensaver. The system now routes all screen-lock settings through xfce4-screensaver.

Xfce4-terminal — The Terminal Emulator

Xfce includes a terminal emulator that supports tabs, customizable key bindings, per-tab background colors, and drop-down mode (similar to Guake or Tilda). It is built on the VTE library, the same foundation used by GNOME Terminal, but it does not require the GNOME libraries to run.

Xfce4-appfinder — The Application Finder

The application finder provides a keyboard-driven launcher for installed applications. Xfce 4.20 added the ability to close the window automatically when it loses focus, single-click item launching, improved keyboard navigation, and support for running it as a persistent background daemon.

Xfce 4.20 and the Wayland Transition

Xfce 4.20, released on December 15, 2024, is the most significant Xfce release in recent memory because it marks the project's first serious step toward Wayland — the display server protocol designed to replace the aging X11 system.

The centerpiece of this transition is a new library called libxfce4windowing. This is an abstraction layer that presents windowing concepts — windows, workspaces, monitors — in a way that does not depend on whether the underlying display system is X11 or Wayland. By porting Xfce components to use this library rather than talking to X11 directly, the team has made it possible for many Xfce applications to run natively on Wayland without requiring XWayland as a compatibility shim.

To start an Xfce session on Wayland, the command is:

bash
$ startxfce4 --wayland

However, the Wayland session in 4.20 is officially marked experimental and is recommended only for advanced users. Several components do not yet run natively on Wayland. Xfwm4 is X11-only and requires a third-party compositor such as Labwc or Wayfire on Wayland — though this will change when xfwl4, a new native Wayland compositor announced in January 2026 and written in Rust, reaches a stable release (targeting Xfce 4.22). Xfdashboard — which provides the GNOME-style window overview — is also absent. Xfce4-windowck-plugin and Xfce4-xkb-plugin (which handles multiple keyboard layouts via XKB) are not functional because keyboard handling is internal to the Wayland compositor rather than managed by Xfce. The situation with Xfce4-screensaver is nuanced: the Wayland port was completed but has not been merged into the main codebase because it depends on the experimental libwlembed library. Workspace management is also missing, and system tray icons are absent for applications that still use the older, deprecated GtkStatusIcon protocol rather than the modern StatusNotifier protocol — an API that was deprecated in GTK 3.14, a decade ago.

Wayland Compositors Required

Xfce 4.20 does not ship its own native Wayland compositor. Users need a third-party compositor — Labwc and Wayfire are the recommended options. A new native Wayland compositor called xfwl4 was announced in January 2026 and is actively in development, with a first development release targeted for mid-2026 and a stable release targeting Xfce 4.22. In the meantime, several components remain non-functional on Wayland in 4.20: Xfdashboard, Xfce4-xkb-plugin, and Xfce4-windowck-plugin. Xfce4-screensaver's port to Wayland was completed but not merged, pending stabilization of the libwlembed library it requires.

Working Around the Gaps in Xfce 4.20 on Wayland

The standard advice — "use Labwc or Wayfire and wait for xfwl4" — is accurate but leaves out the specifics of each limitation and the options available right now. Here is a more complete picture of what each gap means in practice and how to address it.

No native window manager (Xfwm4 is X11-only). On Wayland, you must choose a third-party compositor. Labwc is the more conservative choice: it follows the openbox configuration model, uses an XML-based rc.xml for keybindings and window rules, and has a smaller footprint. Wayfire is more feature-rich, supporting a plugin architecture that adds workspaces, animations, and gesture-driven interactions — but it introduces more configuration complexity. For users wanting behavior closest to Xfwm4, Labwc is the better match. For users who want tiling, gestures, or compositing effects, Wayfire is worth the extra setup. Both can be configured to start automatically when the Xfce Wayland session launches.

No keyboard layout switching (Xfce4-xkb-plugin). On Wayland, input method and layout switching is handled by the compositor, not the desktop environment. With Labwc, keyboard layouts are set in the environment file using XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT and XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT variables. With Wayfire, they are configured under the [input] section of wayfire.ini. Neither gives you a graphical panel indicator for the current layout, but layout switching remains functional through compositor-level keybindings. An alternative is to use a Wayland-native status bar like Waybar, which can display the current layout and respond to clicks.

Missing system tray icons (GtkStatusIcon applications). Applications that still use the deprecated GtkStatusIcon protocol — including older versions of some VPN clients, audio tray utilities, and cloud sync tools — will not appear in the Xfce system tray on Wayland. The underlying cause is that GtkStatusIcon was deprecated in GTK 3.14 and has no Wayland equivalent. The fix is to install xembedsni-proxy (sometimes packaged as snixembed), which bridges the old protocol to the modern StatusNotifier interface that Wayland compositors can expose. This resolves the majority of missing tray icons without requiring any changes to the applications themselves.

No screen locker (Xfce4-screensaver not merged). Since the Wayland port of xfce4-screensaver has not been merged, you need a replacement. Swaylock is the standard option and is available in most distribution repositories. To integrate it with the Xfce session, configure your compositor's idle timeout to call swaylock -f rather than xfce4-screensaver. With Labwc, this is done via the idle section of the configuration; with Wayfire, the idle plugin handles it. Swaylock accepts GTK CSS stylesheets for theming, so it can be styled to match your Xfce theme.

No workspace management UI. Xfce's workspace switcher does not function on Wayland in 4.20 because workspace management protocol support in the experimental Wayland layer is not yet complete. Labwc exposes workspaces through the ext-workspace Wayland protocol, which Waybar can read and display. Wayfire's built-in workspace management is more complete and includes visual switching. For users who rely on named workspaces and per-application workspace rules, Wayfire is the more capable option at this stage.

No region or window-specific screenshots. Xfce's screenshot tool does not support region or window selection on Wayland because it relies on X11's screen capture API. The practical replacement is Grim combined with Slurp: running grim -g "$(slurp)" lets the user draw a selection region and saves it to a file. This pair can be bound to a keyboard shortcut in the compositor's keybinding configuration, replacing the Xfce4-screensaver shortcut. Both tools are available in major distribution repositories and handle HiDPI correctly.

Beyond Wayland, Xfce 4.20 resolved a longstanding set of HiDPI display problems. Icon and thumbnail scaling had been a persistent issue on 4K monitors and high-resolution laptop screens, causing blurry rendering. The 4.20 release addressed these across core components, with the team stating that blurriness when running Xfce on a HiDPI display should now be fully resolved.

Power management in 4.20 gained support for power-profiles-daemon, adding integration with hardware power profiles (balanced, performance, power-saver) on systems where this daemon is running. It also added support for hybrid sleep mode, fixed lid-close handling, and added "Shutdown" and "Do nothing" as explicit options for what happens when a laptop lid closes.

How Xfce Compares on System Resources

Xfce's reputation as a "lightweight" desktop comes with a nuance worth examining. The word lightweight is always relative, and the Linux desktop landscape has shifted considerably over the past decade.

On a fresh Xfce 4 session running on a minimal Ubuntu or Debian base, RAM usage at idle typically lands between 300MB and 500MB depending on which background services and panel plugins are active. GNOME on the same hardware tends to consume 800MB to 1.2GB at boot, according to comparative tests published across several independent benchmarking sites. KDE Plasma, which has substantially improved its memory efficiency in recent versions, now sits closer to Xfce in raw RAM numbers than it did five years ago — a shift that prompted some discussion in the Linux community about whether Xfce's lightweight reputation still holds against a modern Plasma install.

The Xfce project's own documentation notes a minimum of 512MB RAM for comfortable desktop operation, with 1GB or more recommended. For a point of comparison, GNOME's official recommendations call for 4GB of RAM.

Where Xfce still holds a clear advantage is in its lack of mandatory compositing hardware requirements. GNOME requires capable GPU acceleration for smooth operation. Xfce runs acceptably on older integrated graphics, virtualized environments, and low-power ARM hardware where GNOME's compositor demands cause visible stuttering. This makes Xfce a practical default for VPS remote desktop setups, Raspberry Pi deployments, and revived older laptops.

For VPS deployments, Xfce tends to be the practical choice because its low overhead leaves more RAM and CPU headroom for the applications and services running on the server.

— Paraphrased from vpsserver.com, KDE vs GNOME vs Xfce comparison, 2023

Where Xfce Ships by Default

Xfce is the default desktop environment for a significant number of Linux distributions, particularly those targeting older hardware, privacy-focused users, or people who prefer a traditional desktop metaphor over the workflow paradigms introduced by GNOME 3 and later.

Distributions that ship Xfce by default or as a primary flavor include Xubuntu (the official Ubuntu Xfce flavor), MX Linux (one of the consistently top-ranked distributions on Distrowatch), Manjaro Xfce edition, Fedora Xfce Spin, and Kali Linux. Slackware has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment" — a loose reading of the initialism that appears in some of Slackware's own man pages. Several security-focused live distributions, including older Pentoo releases, have also used Xfce as their default environment due to its low overhead.

As of 2026, MX Linux and Xubuntu together account for an estimated 2.8 million active Xfce installations, according to data compiled by commandlinux.com (a third-party estimate, not an official count). Xfce 4.20 shipped in Xubuntu 25.04, released April 17, 2025, and was immediately available to Arch Linux users through the standard rolling repository.

Customization and the Unix Philosophy

One of Xfce's design commitments is adherence to what the project describes as the traditional Unix philosophy of modularity and re-usability. In practice, this means Xfce does not force its components on you. You can run Xfce's window manager with a different file manager. You can use Thunar without running the rest of Xfce. You can swap the panel for a different taskbar application. Components communicate through standard desktop protocols defined at freedesktop.org rather than through proprietary internal APIs.

Visually, Xfce uses GTK for its interface toolkit — the same toolkit as GNOME. This means GTK themes apply across both environments, and many GNOME applications look consistent inside an Xfce session. The built-in settings application handles GTK theme selection, icon themes, cursor themes, and window manager decoration themes independently. In Xfce 4.18, an option was added to automatically select a matching Xfwm4 decoration theme when a GTK theme is chosen, eliminating the common visual mismatch where the window borders looked different from the application interiors.

The panel is one of Xfce's most practically flexible components. It supports multiple independent panels on the same or different monitors, and each panel can be populated with plugins — some official, many third-party — covering clocks, network monitors, audio controls, notification areas, weather applets, and more. The panel plugin API is stable enough that community-maintained plugins written years ago continue to function across major Xfce releases.

Installing Xfce

On a Debian or Ubuntu-based system, sudo apt install xfce4 installs the core desktop. Adding xfce4-goodies includes the extended set of panel plugins and utilities. After installation, log out and select the Xfce session at your display manager's login screen.

Getting Started with Xfce

If you are on a Debian or Ubuntu-based system and want to try Xfce without reinstalling:

bash — Debian/Ubuntu
# Install core Xfce desktop
$ sudo apt install xfce4

# Optional: extended set of panel plugins and utilities
$ sudo apt install xfce4-goodies

# Log out and select Xfce at the login screen

On Fedora:

bash — Fedora
$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Xfce Desktop"

On Arch Linux:

bash — Arch Linux
$ sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies

To try the experimental Wayland session in Xfce 4.20, you will need a compatible compositor. Labwc is available in most distribution repositories:

bash — Wayland session (experimental)
# Install labwc compositor (Debian/Ubuntu)
$ sudo apt install labwc

# Start Xfce on Wayland
$ startxfce4 --wayland

If you are still deciding which distribution to run Xfce on, the Linux distribution decision framework covers the trade-offs between Xubuntu, MX Linux, Arch, Fedora, and others in detail — including how desktop environment choice factors into the decision.

Common Questions

Is Xfce the same as Xfe?

No. Xfce is a full desktop environment. Xfe (X File Explorer) is a standalone file manager built with the FOX C++ toolkit and developed by Roland Baudin since 2002. The two projects are completely unrelated. Xfce has its own file manager called Thunar. Running xfe from the terminal launches X File Explorer regardless of which desktop environment you are using.

How much RAM does Xfce use?

A fresh Xfce session on a minimal base typically idles between 300MB and 500MB of RAM. That compares favorably to GNOME's typical 800MB–1.2GB at boot, though modern KDE Plasma has narrowed the gap considerably. The official Xfce minimum system recommendation is 512MB RAM for comfortable use, with 1GB recommended for running applications alongside the desktop.

Does Xfce support Wayland?

As of Xfce 4.20 (December 2024), many Xfce components can run natively on Wayland through the new libxfce4windowing abstraction library, and XWayland is not required for those ported components. The Wayland session is still marked experimental and recommended only for advanced users. Xfwm4 is X11-only and requires a third-party compositor such as Labwc or Wayfire on Wayland. Xfdashboard, Xfce4-windowck-plugin, and Xfce4-xkb-plugin also do not run on Wayland. Xfce4-screensaver's Wayland port was completed but not merged because it depends on the experimental libwlembed library. Workspace management and many system tray icons are also absent under Wayland in this release.

What does not work in Xfce 4.20 on Wayland?

As of Xfce 4.20, the following components do not run natively on Wayland: Xfwm4 (the window manager, which requires a third-party compositor such as Labwc or Wayfire), Xfdashboard (the GNOME-style overview), Xfce4-windowck-plugin, and Xfce4-xkb-plugin. Xfce4-screensaver's Wayland port was completed but not merged because it depends on the experimental libwlembed library. Workspace management is absent, and many system tray icons are missing for applications that still use the deprecated GtkStatusIcon protocol. Power-related keyboard handling (brightness keys, suspend, etc.) is internal to the Wayland compositor and not yet accessible from Xfce components. Rectangle and window-specific screenshots are also not yet supported under Wayland.

What is xfwl4 and when will it be ready?

Xfwl4 is a brand-new Wayland compositor being built from scratch for Xfce, written in Rust using the smithay library. It is designed to provide the same window management behavior and configuration experience as Xfwm4 on X11 — reusing existing configuration dialogs and xfconf settings where possible — but for native Wayland sessions. The project was announced in January 2026, is led by longtime Xfce core developer Brian Tarricone, and is funded by community donations. Work began in early 2026, with a first development release targeted for mid-2026. Xfce plans to ship both Xfwm4 (for X11) and xfwl4 (for Wayland) side by side, with Xfce 4.22 the earliest release expected to include it.

Sources

$ man xfce
A free, open-source desktop environment for Linux and Unix-like systems. Pronounced as four letters (X-F-C-E). Aims to be fast and lightweight while remaining visually functional. Current stable release: 4.20 (December 2024).
$ man desktop-environment
A collection of software that provides a complete graphical user interface on a Linux or Unix system. Typically includes a window manager, file manager, panel, settings system, and default utilities.
$ man thunar
The default file manager bundled with the Xfce desktop environment. Designed for speed and low memory use. Extensible via the thunarx plugin API. Significantly updated in Xfce 4.18 and 4.20.
$ man wayland
A modern display server protocol for Linux, designed to replace the aging X11 (X Window System). Promises better security, smoother rendering, and improved support for HiDPI and multi-monitor setups. Xfce's Wayland support is experimental as of 4.20.
$ man gtk
The GIMP Toolkit — a cross-platform GUI toolkit used by Xfce, GNOME, and many Linux applications. GTK themes apply across all GTK-based applications regardless of which desktop environment is running.
$ man xfwm4
The window manager component of Xfce. Handles window decorations, focus management, compositing, tiling, and workspace switching. X11 only; Wayland support will be provided by a separate compositor called xfwl4, targeting Xfce 4.22.
$ man x11
The X Window System, version 11. The display server protocol that has underpinned graphical Linux desktops since the 1980s. Being gradually replaced by Wayland, though still widely used and supported.
$ man lightweight-linux
A loose category of Linux distributions and desktop environments optimized for low RAM and CPU usage, making them practical on older hardware, embedded systems, VPS environments, or anywhere resources are constrained.
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