After two years of development xfce 4.20 has been presented, offering a classic desktop that consumes minimal system resources. XFCE consists of interconnected components such as the window manager xfwm4, application launcher panel, display manager, user session manager, power manager, graphic configurator, file manager thunar, calendar orage, media player parole, text editor mousepad, and terminal emulator xfce4-terminal.
The key innovation of the XFCE 4.20 release is the experimental support for the Wayland protocol. While the Wayland session offers many possibilities, it is currently recommended mainly for advanced users due to potential errors and the need for individual improvements for everyday use. To start a Wayland session, users can utilize the command “Startxfce4 –Wayland”.
In XFCE 4.20, a new library called Libxfce4windowing is used to abstract work on both Wayland and X11. This library provides a layer with window control components, allowing for Wayland support across various XFCE components while maintaining compatibility with X11-based systems.
For the Wayland session, the WLROOTS library from the SWAY project is used instead of Libmutter. Recommended composite servers for Wayland include Labwc or Wayfire, while the XFWM4 window manager is used in X11 sessions. Future plans for XFWM4 include adding support for both X11 and Wayland environments.
Although there are certain limitations in the Wayland session, XFCE continues to work on improving its features for a better user experience.