Product Code Database
Xfce (pronounced as four individual letters, ) is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
Xfce aims to be fast and lightweight while still visually appealing and easy to use. The desktop environment is designed to embody the traditional Unix philosophy of modularity and re-usability, as well as adherence to standards; specifically, those defined at freedesktop.org.
The name was originally written as XFce, as an abbreviation of XForms Common Environment, which referred to the XForms library. However, Xfce has been transformed and is now based entirely on the GTK toolkit. The name was kept, now with lowercase f, but the abbreviation no longer means anything.
The first Xfce release was in early 1997. However, over time, Xfce diverged from CDE and now stands on its own. The Slackware Linux distribution has nicknamed Xfce the "Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment", a loose interpretation of the initialism.
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, 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 before version 3, and Xfce 2 was distributed only in Debian's contrib repository.Debian xfce source package 3.4.0.20000513-1 changelog
In March 1999, Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based on GTK, 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 free software, it gained GTK drag-and-drop support, native language support, and improved configurability. Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with version 3.8.1.
Changes in 4.2.0, released 16 January 2005, included a compositing manager 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 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, as well as support for multiple panels; previous versions of Xfce could only support one panel in addition to Xftaskbar4 and Xfce4-iconbox. These tools were made available as panel plugins in this version.
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, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit, and new utilities for browsing remote using several protocols including SFTP, SMB, and FTP. Window clutter was reduced by merging all Thunar file progress 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, refresh rate, 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 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 the documentation to an online wiki. The main focus of this release was on improving the user experience.
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.
Xfce 4.20 was released on 15 December 2024. This release mainly focused on restructuring preparing Xfce components for Wayland support. As of this release, almost all Xfce components support Wayland and can be used on Wayland via a compatible compositor such as labwc or Wayfire, as Xfwm 4.20 and Xfdashboard 4.20 do not have complete Wayland support yet. As such, the Wayland session of Xfce 4.20 is considered experimental and only recommended for advanced users.
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.
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.
It is similar to GNOME Videos, but it has some advantages and disadvantages compared to it:
| Catfish | Desktop search | |
| Clipman | Clipboard manager | |
| Mousepad | Text editor | |
| Orage | Graphical calendar | With XFCE 4.16 Orage was replaced by new DateTime plugin |
| Parole | A front-end for the GStreamer framework | |
| Thunar | File manager | |
| Xfburn | Optical disc authoring supports CD/DVD/Blu-ray Disc | |
| Xfce4-appfinder | Application finder for Xfce4 | |
| Xfce4-mixer | A volume control plugin for the Xfce Panel and a standalone sound mixer application | Uses GStreamer as a backend |
| xfce4-notifyd | A simple, visually-appealing notification daemon for Xfce that implements the Freedesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification | |
| Xfce4-Panel | Desktop taskbar | |
| Xfce4-power-manager | PC power management program | |
| Xfce4-session | Xfce4 Session Manager | |
| Xfce Screensaver | Screensaver | |
| Xfce-terminal | Terminal emulator | |
| Xfwm | X window manager | With optional compositing |
It is the default desktop environment in the following Linux distributions:
It is also included as a standard desktop option on FreeBSD and derivatives such as GhostBSD, and in many other Linux distributions not listed above, including Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo Linux, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Linux Mint, Slackware, Mageia, OpenMandriva Lx, Solus OS, and Zorin OS. Kali Linux 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.
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