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Xfce

Page created: 2024-04-16

Updated: 2025-08-23

For a main software development machine, I use the dwm window manager (My visual guide to DWM, How I use DWM). But when I’m going to be using a Linux computer for things like games (steam, arch-gaming) or a lot of image editing, or other gui-heavy stuff, the Xfce desktop environment is always my go-to.

Xfce rocks because it is:

Fast and lightweight
Completely modular (I use a bunch of xfce4-* tools like xfce4-terminal even when I’m using dwm)
Uses GUI applications for configuration for casual use
Has a menu system that will be familiar and intuitive to most desktop computer users
Has keyboard-driven window tiling features
Has a mouse mascot/logo that my whole family thinks is cute :-)

So I owe a big THANK YOU to the Xfce developers for making such an awesome collection of tools. I really love them.

See xfce4-terminal-automation for a fun thing.

Tiling shortcuts

The default Xfce keyboard shortcuts for window tiling use the numpad. I tend towards "tenkeyless" keyboards these days, so I change these to the regular arrow keys. (All I really need are "tile to right" and "tile to left" for casual use.)

To view or change the keyboard shortcuts in Xfce (these are actually settings for the Xfwm window manager - again, it’s a modular system):

Open the Applications menu
Then Settings
Then Window Manager

The keyboard shortcuts are under the Keyboard tab at the top. All settings take effect immediately, which is cool because you can test them out right away while the settings dialog is still open.

As a dwm user, I also switch the window focus to Focus follows mouse under the Focus tab and shorten the delay as far as it will let me on the slider.

Works great and gives me 80% of what I want for casual development and terminal usage on an otherwise very GUI-driven "normie" setup.

Here’s the Xfce preferences page:

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/preferences

Xfce keyboard media keys for audio volume control (ALSA)

I use plain old ALSA for audio on both my Slackware and Arch installs. (I haven’t found a need for whatever it is that Pulse Audio does.)

I’ve mapped my master audio volume up/down to the keyboard media keys. Here’s how:

First, figure out what the command will be:

$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 87
  Mono: Playback 61 [70%] [-19.50dB] [on]
...

$ amixer sset Master 5%+
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
...
(And, yes, the volume went up by 5%!)

$ amixer sset Master 5%-
...
(Same, but down!)

Then bind the commands to the keyboard key sequences:

Open xfce4-keyboard-settings (Applications → Settings → Keyboard)
Click the "+ Add" button.
Enter a volume command confirmed to work at the command line (e.g. amixer sset Master 5%+)
Type the media key (on my keyboard, Fn + F10 for volume down, Fn + F11 for volume up).
The shortcuts work immediately after setting them, so try it out!

Note that you might be able to control Pulse Audio by adding the -D (device) setting (untested by me!):

amixer -D pulse sset Master 5%+