 Okay, so in my channel, I tried a lot of different desktop environments, but I actually don't remember ever trying out XFCE, which is terrible considering that I think it's one of the most commonly used desktops, but also one of the most interesting ones. What am I looking forward in particular when trying out XFCE? Well, I do know that it's quite customizable, as an example in the concept of panels and widgets, and I'd like to compare that kind of functionality to what a carry offers, to see if there's anything to learn from. So I booted up Xubuntu with the latest XFCE version as something .18, as I usually do let me start with a completely useless remarks. The default wallpaper looks pretty damn nice. No idea if it's a wallpaper from the XFCE project itself or Xubuntu, but actually I do think that they are an important part of making something feel modern, and this stylish minimalistic wallpaper does the trick. I also see, by default, icons on the desktop. To be fully honest, I really love Keri's approach on the whole icons on the desktop thing. We do not disallow them by default, like GNOME does, however, we don't really include any by default to keep things simple by default, yet powerful when needed. Personally, I would take off the few default icons that XFCE includes, so how easy are them to remove? Okay, fair enough that wasn't too hard, and it's nice that you can just tick check boxes to customize which icons you'd like to see. So let's keep looking at the desktop settings for a bit more, because maybe there's something interesting. The wallpaper selection wise this window looks very similar to Keri's, though I will say that I'm proud that Keri displays also the name of the author, along with the name of the wallpaper, both of which are missing in XFCE. You can do solid color, has light shell, but that's about it. It seems like XFCE is lacking any kind of third-party plugin for more complex wallpaper types, like picture of the day. However, there is a functionality that Keri does not have, and that is often requested, which is the ability to only apply the changing wallpaper to the current virtual desktops. And now that I finally stopped bashing XFCE to praise Keri, let me also say that the window list menu that XFCE exposes on middle-click is pretty darn cool. It's quite customizable from the menus section, and it shows the various workspaces and the windows open in all of them. This makes it a bit easier to switch between open windows, and though I would probably never use it, I really appreciate the feature. So let's get looking at the default application launcher. I'm actually easily placed here. Whatever app launcher allows me to just press meta and start typing for an app name, I'm happy with it. And I'm happy with XFCE. Putting that aside, it looks like a completely normal application launcher with no particular additional functionality, though it does like stuff that Keri Plasma has, like recent files and frequently used applications. Actually forget about that, it does have them, I'm just blind. I actually never use those options anyway in Keri, so maybe it makes sense for XFCE not to spend time of them. One thing I found interesting is that the settings section in the application launcher instead of opening the settings application directly shows you all the settings sections within the application launcher itself, even including some like text editor settings. I'm not sure if I prefer this approach over having a system settings application, which they do have, but it is surely worth considering. Note though that technically Keri Plasma also exposes all the system settings sections in the app launcher if you, as an example, search for them. The top panel is slightly transparent, which makes me happy, but it does not seem to be blurry, which makes me less happy. Overall, I'm positively surprised by the look of the desktop itself, so the wallpaper, the panel, but as soon as you open a window or a dialogue, the style still feels too outdated for me to like it, sorry. Keri Plasma used to feel extremely outdated to me as well when they first started using it, but since then, it has improved a lot. I move to the system train now. The calendar it uses is quite minimalistic and I do prefer the one included in Keri Plasma, which does also show events, however the month and the year selection elements seem to be a bit more intuitive compared to Keri Plasma's. I highly appreciate how XFC managed to give the volume, battery and notification applets extremely simple and yet hasn't sacrificed on features like other desktops have. You can still control the playback of applications per application and switch between audio inputs and outputs. And I do see the battery of my linked devices, so thumbs up on those. I do not, instead, like the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applets. They provide a lot of options and elements with no visual hierarchy at all and they just feel too confusing to parse visually. I would have preferred something that looks like less a menu and something that looks more like an applet, however, going with a brief look it does seem like they might be slightly more powerful in features compared to Keri Plasma applets. So let's get to the things that interest me the most, panel settings. So what's in there? Firstly, right-clicking any applet, we immediately get a context menu option to remove that item. In Keri Plasma, instead, you have to get to the panel's edit mode and then, however, not right-click on the applet, you want to take off, which is not as easy. But at the same time, you could argue that you really don't want to make it too easy to accidentally remove widgets. A similar discussion applies for the move button. It's exposed directly in the context menu in XFC, whereas in Keri, you first have to get into edit mode and then you have to drag and drop things around. Also, is this a bug? When I'm moving some applets around, the widgets that I'm hovering keep blinking with blue colors. At first, I thought it was some kind of grouping feature, but it seems like that's just a hover indicator for applets that either turns on accidentally or that should always be on but turns off accidentally. Weird. You also get a button to add new items. Yeah, I keep seeing applets and widgets, but XFC calls them items to the panel. And when I do that, the whole panel gains a red outline that changes over time to kindly remind me what panel I'm editing, which makes sense. The various items I can add are listed within an application and I can select one and just click add. I actually do prefer this approach of having a normal window compared to the sometimes a bit shaky KD sidebar. And you can even just drag and drop the new items from the window to the panel itself. This is very nicely implemented. Finally, we get to actual panel settings. So we're able to create new panels and delete them. And for each panel, we have horizontal, vertical and desk bar modes. The distinction between vertical and desk bar is actually quite interesting. So vertical preserves text and just draws it sideways, whereas desk bar switches to icons only both for task manager and for the system tray, unless you have a very wide panel. And in that case, you do get the text clear enough. However, I do not see any way to move the panel on the right on bottom side, which is quite weird. I don't know if I'm blind, but we'll get though. There is a lock panel button. OK, hear me out. Let me make a criticism of the desktop here. Lock panel doesn't really tell you what's going to happen. What that option used to do in KD is that it stops you from being able to move items around or remove them and locks all panel panel properties. And I think that makes sense here. However, the panel is locked by default, even though I just changed lots of stuff and unlocking it makes it makes a draggable thingy appear on the sides of the panel. And if I drag those, I can indeed move it, move the panel to the bottom or anywhere on the screen. I'm impressed by this ability of having floating panels. Though to be fully honest, I don't see the use case, but the basic functionality of moving the panel from a side to another side is, as a result, extremely confusing, I think. We have auto hide of the panel, which is nice. And you do have intelligent hide, which is yet another feature that KD Plasma is missing and that is often requested by users. So thumbs up for that. And given how not optimal KD's auto hiding is, I'm sure that accepts is how to hang it, how to hiding is better. You also get the option not to reserve a space on the borders. And then you change, you can change the size of the panel. And then you can change the number of rows. Very interesting, since KD doesn't have that, I've actually done a proof of concept implementation of multiple rows in the KD Plasma panel. But upon further discussion with the PDG, we decided it was not worth it. Finally, you can change the length of the panel, along with a quite confusing, automatically increased the length option. Overall, I think it's clear that XFC panels are actually slightly more powerful compared to KD Plasma's. But personally, I did find their settings to be a bit too confusing for me. After playing with it a bit, I could understand what the various options did, but many weren't intuitive as they, in my very humble opinion, should be. I will admit, though, that it's quite fun to play with floating panels like this. Finally, let me look at Windows. Windows within XFC, not Windows. I've already mentioned that I'm not a super big fan of the style, though I guess there are third-party themes and such. I don't quite have the time to go through that today, though. Along the normal button to minimize, maximize and close Windows, we also have a drop-down button that opens a menu of the window manager. Inside of it, there are various options, some completely standard, some worthy of note. Minimize other windows is a nice feature that I never thought I would need, but I actually do. And we also do get roll window up and roll window down, called shade in KD, and you can move the window to different work spaces. There is no such thing here as KD window rules, a neat feature, if I may. I went on to check some other stuff, like the actual settings and the appearance section, but I didn't see anything else that I think was particularly worth discussing. However, I'm surely wrong, and I think lots of you people watching the video could tell me other XFC stuff that you think I, as a KD dev and such, should be looking at. So, I leave XFC with some mixed opinions. They do implement many nice features that KD Plasma does not have, and we're talking about KD Plasma, so it's a big deal. But at the same time, I did find some places of the UI confusing, and again, I'm saying that as a KD developer, so I still feel like the look is too outdated for my test list, although that's surely subjective. To make a more specific example, I just cannot live with colorful icons in application toolbars and context menus. I just can't, I'm sorry. Not bad, not bad overall, really. Of course, I mainly focus on the desktop and the panel, because that's where I actually do most of my development work, and how about that? All of this, the channel, the KD involvement and such, is really thanks to your support. I have memberships with tires on Ko-Fi and PayPal, and you can donate through PayPal or LibraPay as well. All of that, and lots of you do, so thank you so much. And the same goes for Malibu, who's also sponsoring the channel, and all of this makes sure that I can actually pay my bills regularly, and I have big plans for the future of this channel, and all of your support is making that possible. So thanks everybody, and see you tomorrow with yet another video. Not actually tomorrow, a couple of days.