Really happy with XFCE on X11

Posted Jan 27, 2026 19:29 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Really happy with XFCE on X11 by NightMonkey
Parent article: Xfwl4: the roadmap for a Xfce Wayland compositor

Yes, I'm also happy with it. I have some non-technical family members running it. I rarely need to have graphical access, but for those occasions when I do, I use x11vnc and a VNC viewer. That way, I get to take control of my relative's desktop and fix whatever they accidentally broke.

Oh, and off-topic, but can desktop app authors please enable a "DON'T MESS WITH ME!" setting that disables all changes to toolbars, settings, etc. unless it's explicitly re-enabled? Many non-technical people, especially elderly ones, click something without realizing it and then a toolbar disappears and they have no idea what happened. My dishwasher has a "Lock Controls" setting. We need that for desktop apps too!

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Really happy with XFCE on X11

Posted Jan 27, 2026 20:50 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

A. O. L.

And not even the non-technical and elderly! There are so many unknown hot keys and shortcuts that even the technically literate can easily click/press one by accident.

Once I've configured my stuff the way I like it, I want to *lock* *it* *down*. The grief from accidentally clicking something I don't know is much greater than the hassle of unlocking the desktop so I can change it.

But that does require buy-in from apps too. This is something I feel with gentoo - every now and then, and app with a single global config file gets that file updated (postfix, anyone), and gentoo wants to overwrite my config with the default! If I can put my config in a separate, LOCAL config override file, then stuff is not going to get accidentally trashed.

Cheers,
Wol