Story

Glad I had a chance to edit the summary and make sure everyone recognizes the intro was a tongue-in-cheek slam at some other DE. Seriously, the new XFCE looks great, and I love the idea you can configure Alt-Tab to do things other than the traditional way - I like the vertical list of full title apps (there was another DE that did it this way but I can't remember which anymore). At this point in the evolution of desktop environments, we don't need radical changes in metaphor, just refinements in usability and convenience. That seems to be exactly what the XFCE team is doing.

Check out the language in their press release, too. It's clear they're making a huge effort to listen to their users and find out where the pain points are: it's a radical concept in software development (listening to the users and applying fixes as relevant). I wish others did it too.

Looks like a good looking desktop experience. I'm looking forward to checking it out - might even encourage me to give LXDE a rest for a while (until LXQT comes out, anyway). At this point, I'd say XFCE is leading the race in traditional desktop environment usability, and it's not clear to me what "extra" you get by installing something like a full-on Gnome3 or Unity install. For all that extra storage and all the additional memory required, it's not clear to me what you gain by way of usability or convenience. This is what was forgotten like a year ago. More is not better, dorkwad developers!