Test Drive: Xfce (Xubuntu) on the EEEPC 900

As promised in previous post I continued in my touring about testing lightweight desktop environments on the EEEPC. This time I installed on my netbook the most famous lightweight desktop: Xfce.

I've been using Xfce for many years on my, now dismissed, old Sempron 2400 desktop computer. I never worked with it on the EEEPC. At the time the EEEPC was my “fastest” computer and Gnome used to work fine enough on it.

Installation and first impressions

I installed Xfce from shell by simply typing:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

After the installation process competed I logged off from the Gnome-Shell session and logged back in after selecting Xfce (Xubuntu Session) as desktop environment.

Here is the Xfce just after logging in:

Xfce has improved a lot since the last time I used it, one for all the new “Whisker” menu that offers all the features a modern desktop menu should have.

the upper panel notification icons were a little messed up, this is probably because I already had installed Lxde.

Like I noticed while testing Lxde also with Xfce the EEEPC is working smoothly and responsively. I almost forgot that my using my old netbook could be like this.

Some desktop personalization

One of the good things about Xfce is that it always offered a good degree of personalization. This is even more important in these times of one-fits-all philosophy.

So after a brief configuration-tour I set up the desktop aspect to my preferences:

Conclusions

Xfce is a lightweight, fast, reliable and even good-looking desktop environment. I already knew it but using it on the EEEPC confirmed my opinion. Still I miss some Gnome-Shell features, as i said in my previous post, especially the “hot corner” functionality. I wonder if somewhere on the planet exits a lightweight implementation of these features.