Linux/Xfce

Why Xfce?

In the past, I always liked modern looking feature-rich desktops and I never thought of using a "slim" desktop like Xfce.

I used KDE from KDE 3 to KDE 4, switching only to KDE 4 when it was getting more stable.

When KDE 5 (or Plasma 5) was available in the Gentoo repository, I soon tried it, but I had lots of problems:

• crashes of the lockscreen because of segfault in libqt5sql (lots of bug reports, no solution) and a text written over itself to use some systemd tool to unlock after the crash
• crash of plasma workshell
• window contents suddenly destroyed (with Compositing enabled)
• the return of the problems with ALT-TAB (multi monitor)
• sddm with less features than kdm regarding multiple sessions
• no easy VNC solution

I should mention that I am using 2 local sessions, which are configured in kdm settings to be started immediately and I have 2 monitors with 2 separate X screens (:0.0, :0.1) configured in xorg.conf. Also, I am using the Nvidia binary driver because Nouveau is not running fast and stable for me.

So, I decided to downgrade again and stay with KDE 4 as long as possible and I was not the only one: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1042980-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html

Some months later, it was not possible to keep KDE 4 any longer because the Gentoo maintainers where forced to remove the KDE 4 packages from the tree because of conflicts. From there on, it was too much hassle for me to keep KDE 4.

Since KDE 5 and Qt 5 got some updates in the meantime, I was hoping for more luck this time and upgraded once again.

But I still had lock screen and Plasma crashes and it turns out, this is because of my setup with 2 local sessions: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377031

Besides that, the new recommended display managers sddm and lightdm (kdm is not compatible with KDE 5) make it not comfortable to have 2 local sessions (lightdm lost that ability a while ago). Also, there is still no solution for VNC.

Then I decided to look for alternatives to KDE. Since I do not want systemd, I could not use (unpatched) Gnome 3. Also, some desktops need Pulse Audio, which I also don't like.

A while ago, I installed for fun Linux (Ubuntu) on my Chromebook via Crouton. From that, I already had some contact with Xfce and finally decided to try that as my new desktop.

Installation was easy (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xfce/Guide) and at first, I stayed with lightdm because kdm was not emerging anymore (see workaround below).

Now I have less fancy stuff, but I have once again a desktop running stable and as I want to.