Adventures with running Xfce along with Fedora 15 Gnome 3 Part 1

There's a marked difference between doing a clean install of Fedora 15 Xfce Spin and Fedora 15 Gnome 3 release.  Having had productivity and interface issues with Gnome 3, I decided to install Xfce as an alternative desktop environment.  Xfce has garnered a huge audience and despite my preference for LXDE, I wanted to give the lightweight environment a chance. 

Installing Xfce and an Environment Switcher

A desktop environment is more than just the appearance and window manager.  Gnome 3 has its own applications and LXDE has its own set of applications selected to perform within the environment.  Xfce has its own brand of utilities and because I was running a very frugal Gnome 3 install, I didn't mind the extra applications that Xfce was going to add on to the system.  I thought it wouldn't be too hard to uninstall those I didn't need - a huge assumption as I would later found out.  Xfce fans will be delighted to know, however, that installing Xfce on top of Gnome 3 only adds roughly only 66 MB's worth of packages.

To install Xfce:

Run Terminal as Root

Yum groupinstall Xfce -y

The groupinstall will automatically install all standard Xfce packages.  Yum will helpfully list the packages and though I was surprised as to how small the download size was, I was taken aback by how many application entries were added.  Xfce comes with a huge number of utilities for a "lightweight desktop."

After installing a desktop environment, I wanted to have the ability to switch back and forth from Gnome 3 to Xfce.  For all my complaints about Gnome 3, the environment does have its niceties that trump Xfce.  There are ways to configure desktop environments via the Terminal but I opted for a GUI switcher instead: Switchdesk 

To install Switchdesk:

Yum install switchdesk-gui

Using Switchdesk is a matter of running the utility and selecting the desktop environment.

Customizing Xfce to Taste
After installing and switching to Xfce as the default desk environment, I found myself customizing Xfce, which I didn't find impressive visually at first glance.  I felt like I was using a crude interface from 1998, rather than the slick Linux environment I've come to expect. 

I removed the bottom Panel 2 and the uninspired wallpaper.  To Xfce's credit, there are many ways to change window appearance and desktop theme colors.  For such a small download, users are treated to a huge number of color selections and window themes. 

Xfce helpfully includes plenty of themes.

The "dock" in Xfce is actually just a resized Panel.

One aspect of Xfce I didn't like was having to configure to Pulse Audio manually when audio worked fine on the Gnome 3 interface.  Another was the now cluttered applications menu.  It was not efficient to have so many redundant applications on top of Gnome 3's feature set.  Xfce has a few good choices such as Thunar File Manager - though Thunar unfortunately didn't have the split view of Nautilus.  I resolved never to install another desktop environment on top of the default ever again.  I would later find out there are more reasons for NOT installing environments separately.

There was a brief audio issue after installing Xfce which was easily resolved via Xfce's audio utility.

Since Xfce is a totally different desktop, users will have to remember that whatever configurations were made in Gnome 3, they will have to redo them in Xfce.  For instance, users will have reconfigure Preferred Applications, Session and Startup, and settings for removable hard drive and media.  Xfce does not have as many desktop settings as KDE, but it still took some time to go through all the necessary changes to get the desktop right.

I rebooted.  Xfce, sad to say, didn't offer any speed gains on a netbook.  The appearance of Xfce (after much customization) began to grow on me after the second reboot.  And then, midway through working online, Xfce fell apart. 

Adventures  with running Xfce along with Fedora 15 Gnome 3 Part 2