Peterborough Linux User Group (Canada) Forum

Linux & Android => Articles, Tutorials and Tips => Topic started by: Jason on July 11, 2021, 02:27:20 PM

Title: Different looks for Xfce
Post by: Jason on July 11, 2021, 02:27:20 PM
I don't know how I missed it before but Xfce lets you adjust the look of the desktop interface with a quick click.

You can find the option for changing profiles under Panel Profiles inside the Settings option. I know that other desktop managers have this ability but I was surprised to find that Xfce has it, too. I'm showing off a few below. Keep in mind that I'm using Xubuntu 20.10 with Xfce 4.14 so your choices might be different in a newer version.

As always, click on the thumbnails to see the full screenshots. Look closely and see if you can see the differences. Some stand out, some are subtle.

The first, which I'm using right now (but not the default), is 'Gnome 2'.

The second I'm showing is 'openSUSE 15.1'.

The third one is 'Redmond' which has a familiar look to many.

The last one in this post is Xfce 4.14. Perhaps surprisingly, it's not the default look. I can't show the default look because I didn't follow my next warning.

Be careful when switching. You're offered the chance to save your current configuration before changing profiles. I really recommend you do this as there isn't any profile called 'Default' much to my surprise!

There are other profiles but they are related to old versions of Xubuntu and Xfce so I won't post them here unless somebody is interested.

Title: Re: Different looks for Xfce
Post by: ssfc72 on July 12, 2021, 01:16:27 AM
Very nice, thanks for the info, Jason.
Title: Re: Different looks for Xfce
Post by: fox on July 12, 2021, 09:37:45 AM
Nice that they do that. It seems that a number of distros are setting one-click desktop appearance alternatives. I think Zorin might have been the first. On the Raspberry Pi, it's Twister OS, which I have yet to try.
Title: Re: Different looks for Xfce
Post by: Jason on July 12, 2021, 04:07:08 PM
I feel like KDE (it was called that then officially) had a few themes back then to make it look like other OSes but I may be wrong. Certainly, Zorin is probably the most well-known. Distros at one time came with multiple window managers (before they had desktop environments). They duplicated other OSes, mostly other Unixes or Jobs' NextStep, I think it was called? Not really the same thing though.