You know, I was thinking about this. When I see information about KDE come out to the public, and lists have all these bug fixes and change overs, etc. Now lets say we apply the same KDE effects to Garuda here for a moment…
Couldn’t anyone just cosmetically change XFCE to look like KDE, and what ever unique functions that make KDE look great just add a 3rd party program of some kind to XFCE and call it a day? You can see all kinds of art details out there to make XFCE look like Dragonized Garuda, and you get all the stability to go with it. In fact, I’m sure you can make XFCE look perfectly identical to Dragonized Garuda to the point where nobody could tell unless you did a garuda-inxi just like how some people can make Linux look like Windows 10 at face value. So knowing all of this, what would KDE give you that XFCE couldn’t? Assuming, someone would want to go through all the trouble of making XFCE look like KDE to begin with
I would love to if I had the time and resources to do it. I just don’t have the time to fix bugs, I need a windowsless system that works 100% of the time, everytime till I get my life back on track or else I would.
All I can see between the 2 is:
One has lots of support and frequent changes
The other is as old as the hills and never changes
Now this I didn’t know, I always thought it was the other way around
You don’t have time, so you feel just like the developers in the team, Yorper will only intervene as a maintainer if there are problems. But change nothing on the outfit.
XFCE and KDE are on near opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to feature development. Heck, even Wayland isn’t really working on XFCE. There is no way you will be able to achieve feature parity by hacking together some third-party extensions or whatever.
It could be argued that what makes XFCE stable is the lack of fancy new features. If you want to add a bunch of extra software and features to any DE you will invariably add additional bugs and instability as well. As they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Interesting way of putting it. So basically Xfce is like a car from the 60ies vs KDE being a car from 2025…they were easy to work on and had were more relyable simply because they were simple and had nothing electronic in it to fail. Remove all the accessories in the dealership package and you would have nothing to break on you in the first place.
For a long time other desktop environments beat Plasma for lower memory usage, but in recent years depending on your Plasma configuration it will use less or just over what XFCE and other use.
As a footnote, when I did my Xfce guide I suggested a simple way to make the Xfce version resemble its KDE brother. Have a look at Suggestions for setting up Xfce Garuda and search for Addendum - everything below this explains what I did.
I’m with BluishHumility. The biggest selling point about Xfce is its stability.
that’s interesting I didn’t know and had been told it was the other way around. I did consider switching personally but I like all the customization I’m able to do with notification sounds and things. Xfce simply doesn’t offer all that to my knowledge even though I can get my wobbly windows through compiz
The big thing is as well one is gtk an one is qt. You can theme gtk3 an 2 but gtk2 is on its way out of the repos an while you can do gtk3 the best you normally end up with is kde 3 ish which looks fine in its own right.
Kde is fine an stable like all the others if you don’t do any crazy tweaks. A lot of the bug pop up cause something that may have been a bug for years or couldn’t be changed, users made work arounds. Then they get fixed by kde and the workaround breaks so then its finding a middle ground or keeping the change and moving.
If i had to theme xfce i would go for windows xp or 7 it seems to handle those well an they are light. though if I remember blur is a bit of a pain. Most themes though i’ve seen are made for both xfce and cinnamon
Maybe a simple way to them it is just get all kde and qt apps an make the xfce panel a bit taller an change your icons to breeze. since you are on x11 you might be able to add kwin but dont quote me on that one. At that point though I would just use kde on a non rolling release. Like slowroll Once a month patches
Some people like the look of KDE with the stability with the stability of XFCE. It’s like decaffeinated coffee, some people like the taste of coffee without all the caffeinated effects.
What I don’t get is, why does everything in the world have to make sense in peoples mind all the time? Especially when it doesn’t affect anyone else but the person doing what ever doesn’t make sense. Why can’t some people just be left to do creative things for the sake of being creative? Haven’t you ever just woke up one day with creativity and invention on your mind just to see what happens? Maybe in the process of doing these things that don’t make sense, you might learn or discover things that others haven’t seen or considered before.
Why would any sane person consider making a comment like this in the first place? Are we living in a world were we are all suppose to conform to someones set standards? The only thing I see stupid is putting down someone’s desire for creativity. Part of what makes Linux so great is how it allows creativity to come to the surface with people’s variations in different philosophies. Why should this be any different?
It’s like fashion or cars …
You don’t have to play the game, but many people submit to the “compulsion”. There were things like this back in the '70s (?).
The same with suits, 2 buttons, 3, 4, too wide, too tight (LOL).
When I’m “working” on my PC, I only have the relevant programs open and can’t see the rest anyway, regardless of whether I’m using i3wm or KDE, Hyprland …
I also think it’s silly to imitate M$ or Mac, but whoever enjoys it and likes it.
It’s mimic the LOOK and FEEL of Windows. I can’t speak to XFCE, but with Plasma it’s possible to mimic the look and feel of any number of the Windows versions. As for why one would do it it’s simple for familiarity and ease of use. Take the Cinnamon desktop designed just for that purpose, and still today a great starter distro for those just starting out on linux from Windows.
If you want Windows install it its that simple nothing no matter how you try will give the windows feel and usability KDE i do not use it never will Xfce is a great desktop but its not KDE its XFCE in fact its more than customizable where has the user gone wrong and lost the ability to do their own thing they all want some else to do it for them its sheer lazyness on the part of the user no will to learn or even try
and likes it.
