Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I get a blank screen after installing and logging to Xfce on Kubuntu (Edgy)?
That's because the GTK-Qt theme is enabled which uses Qt drawing routines to make GTK applications (mostly) look like KDE (Qt) ones. Go to "System Settings" (or "Control Center") > "Appearance". Click on "GTK Styles and Fonts" on the left. In the right pane, select "Use another style" and from the styles menu, pick "Raleigh" (or any style other than Qt).

The left-click to get the menu on the title bar menu button seems a little slow. How do I change that?
The left-button single-click menu button display speed is linked to the double click speed. If one wants the menu to appear quicker, just change the double click speed in the Xfce 4 Settings Manager Mouse properties to be faster. Or, one can right click on the title bar to get the menu displayed almost instantly without adjusting the double-click speed. The menu will display both ways.

I want to use Xfce in a corporate environment and don't want to allow users to modify their menu.
Please see the Xfce online documentation. Most modules support a "Kiosk Mode" that can be used to lock down the environment.

How can I make startx start Xfce 4 in Debian?
Run 'xfce4_setup'.

Where do icons appear in Xfce? How do I change them? Where are icons stored?
Icons in Xfce appear in panel launchers, taskbar buttons, and desktop menu items.

In the panel, the icon associated with a panel item can be changed by right clicking on the item and selecting "properties". This brings up the "Change Item" dialog, and you can change the icon there.

Icons shown in the taskbar are provided directly by the application and cannot be changed.

Icons displayed next to applications listed in the desktop menu can be changed using the Menu Editor, as long as they are not a part of the autogenerated system menu.

Overall, Xfce supports icon theming as described in the Freedesktop Icon Theming Spec.

How lightweight is Xfce?
> What are the minimal memory/disk space requirements? Is it suitable for a PDA with 16 MB RAM, say?

Why don't you try it?

(Why do people always post this useless answer? You ask because you can avoid a lot of work by not trying something that has no chance of success.)

On my 32 bit fedora 17 machine, ps reports a total SZ of all the running xfce processes of about 44000 pages. IIRC, a 386 page is 4k bytes, so I'm way over 100 MB. Even if ps is reporting pages in units of 1k bytes, it is still way more than 16 MB. And I didn't even count the X server that you'll need.

> Is it able to run without XFree86 (See Qt/DirectFB, GtkFB, ...). Is it programmed in C, C++, Java, AL (Another Language)?

Written in C / GTK+, requires X (or XDirectFB).

How flexible is it?
> Does it provide a XUL or such interface? (See Mozilla, MS-Windows Vista)

No.

What are its real goals? Its intrinsic philosophy?
From the website:

"Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for various *NIX systems. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources." - Olivier Fourdan, creator of Xfce

Another priority of Xfce 4 is adhereance to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org.

And that's pretty much it. No world domination, ending hunger, or destroying microsoft. We try to make something that we like and that we can work with; hopefully other people will agree and our work will be useful to them.

What does XFce stand for?
XFce originally stood for XForms Common Environment. Since Xfce no longer uses XForms, the correct spelling/capitalization is "Xfce" or simply "xfce".

Can I put icons on my desktop?
Please see the xfdesktop FAQ for more information.

How do I raise and lower windows with the keyboard?
If you use FocusFollowsMouse, you can use the keyboard to raise and lower windows that have focus. To raise a window, use Shift + Alt + PageUp. To lower a window, use Shift + Alt + PageDown. These shortcuts can be customized if you go to Settings > Window Manager > Keyboard > Window Shortcuts.

Check out Xfwm Documentation: Keyboard Shortcuts as well.

How to edit the auto generated menu with the menu editor?
# cd ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/ # cat menu.xml > menu3.xml # cat menu2.xml >> menu3.xml # mv menu.xml menu.orig.xml # mv menu3.xml menu.xml
 * 1) cp ~/.cache/xfce4/desktop/menu-cache-name-of-the-generated-file.xml ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/menu2.xml

Now, you already have a menu with all the categories in the main tree with some duplicates, but you must first edit menu.xml with your favorite editor and remove the 4 following lines in the middle of the file, otherwise the menu editor will complain about a wrong format:

#  # <!DOCTYPE xfdesktop-menu> #  # 
 * 1) 

That's all. Now you can run the menu editor, remove the few duplicates and edit all as you like.

Settings > Desktop > Menu > Menu Editor

[If that path isn't available, right click on Applications > Properties > Edit Menu]

Notes: by removing the "system" line, you will remove all the duplicates menu entries from the autogenerated file. So, if it is change in this autogenerated file, they want don't appear anymore, but you will get ride of most of the duplicates.

To restore the original menu, just do in a terminal:

roods
 * 1) mv menu.xml menu3.xml; mv menu.orig.xml menu.xml