What makes Xfce so good?

[Yan Seiner]

Chris Brault wrote:
> Why is Xfce better than Enlightenment, WindowMaker or
> IceWM, since they too are small and modular and fast? 
> 
> I think that this is a pertinent question, and besides
> that, it is really bothering me.

OK, my take (after reading all of the responses).

I *really, really, really* like Ximian Gnome.  I like the app 
integration, the look and feel, the configurability.

I don't like the bloat.  It's slow.  Even on my Athlon XP 2600 it's not 
eye popping.

On my kid's 533 Celeron, it's painful.  So I searched near and far for a 
simple, easy, kid-friendly desktop.  I eventually found xfce.  It didn't 
quite make a 533 Celeron snappy, but it's OK.  I tried blackbox, 
fluxbox, a bunch of them.  Some didn't install, some didn't configure 
right, some just sucked.  Some worked but I didn't like them. 
WindowMaker falls into that category.  It works fine, but I just don't 
like it.

So I got xfce running on my kid's Celeron, and decided to try it on the 
main home computer (an Athlon 2000+).  Boy was it fast.  So I put it on 
the one at work (the 2600+).  The first time I clicked a button, the app 
  was up in amazing time.  I was converted.

Now for the problems.  I work in a multi-lingual environment.  I have to 
say that Ximian Gnome has it all over xfce when you have to change 
languages (and keyboards, and input systems) frequently.  I'd like the 
ability to slide things in the panel.  I think the xfce term window 
sucks (it doesn't do Czech fonts at all, and I haven't tried Japanese.) 
  My wife is sticking with Ximian Gnome because of the inegrated 
Japanese support.  My kids don't care, as long as they can play their 
movies.

That's about it.  I'm now in a forced upgrade at work (a hard disk crash 
took out the /etc directory) and I'm playing with fedora + xfce.

--Yan

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