TL;DR
If you want the lightest feel with modern Qt 6 underpinnings and multiple ready-to-use Wayland sessions, pick LXQt. If you crave a time-tested workflow, deep panel/plugin customizations, and an ultra-stable X11 experience with cautious steps into Wayland, pick Xfce. Both are fast; your distro, compositor, and apps will decide the final “snappiness.”
At-a-Glance: What Actually Feels Different
| Area | LXQt | Xfce |
|---|---|---|
| Toolkit | Qt 6 stack; slick, crisp widgets | GTK stack; conservative design with tons of polish |
| Wayland today | Ships a first-party Wayland session; runs on several compositors | Experimental across components; runs best on Labwc/Wayfire; native Xfwm4 Wayland isn’t there yet |
| Window manager | Commonly Openbox on X11; KWin/Labwc/Wayfire (etc.) on Wayland | Xfwm4 on X11; external compositor needed on Wayland |
| File manager | PCManFM-Qt: nimble, tabbed, bulk-rename now smarter; great keyboard flow | Thunar: mature, extensible; split view, custom actions, and performance tuned for big folders |
| Panel & plugins | Minimalist panel; essentials covered | Huge plugin ecosystem and granular panel behavior |
| Power & battery | Power profiles surfaced neatly; lean controls | Streamlined locking, power-profiles integration; robust laptop niceties |
| HiDPI & multi-monitor | Solid with Qt 6; Wayland sessions ease scaling | Great on X11; Wayland bits improving but still flagged “experimental” |
| Target user vibe | “Light, modular, Wayland-curious” | “Classic, stable, tweak-friendly” |
What Changed by Late-2025 (and why you should care)
Xfce tightened up the basics—faster browsing in massive folders, a smarter panel, simpler screen locking, power profiles that actually matter on laptops. LXQt kept iterating on Wayland and Qt 6 polish, smoothing multi-monitor quirks and making its tools sharper (PCManFM-Qt’s bulk-rename is finally the Swiss-army option it deserved to be). Result: both desktops feel more modern without losing their trademark restraint.
Performance: It’s Complicated (in a good way)
Benchmarks swing with distro defaults, services, and compositor choice. On a fresh spin, either can idle low and stay responsive under load. The real wins come from clean sessions (trim autostart), zram on 4–8 GB machines, and picking the right compositor (Wayland vs X11) for your GPU. Translation: don’t obsess over 100 MB—optimize your stack.
Wayland Reality Check (2025 edition)
- Need Wayland now? LXQt’s multiple working sessions make it the easier on-ramp—especially for tearing-free 144 Hz setups or pipewire-based screen capture.
- Prefer “battle-tested” X11? Xfce on X11 remains rock-solid. You can run Xfce on Wayland via wlroots compositors, but it’s still labeled experimental.
- Hybrid life is normal. Many users keep X11 as default and boot a Wayland session for HiDPI/multi-monitor trials or remote-presentations. Sensible.
Workflow & Polish
Files and folders
PCManFM-Qt is spartan and quick—tabs, clean keyboard flows, improved bulk rename, handy “Open With” behavior. Thunar counters with split view that actually sticks, customizable toolbars, robust custom actions, and a calm UI even with six-figure file counts. Pick speed-of-gesture (PCManFM-Qt) vs. “I live in my file manager” depth (Thunar).
Panels and habits
LXQt’s panel aims small and tidy. Xfce’s panel is a playground: clock variants, launchers, tasklist tricks, window buttons, and countless plugins. If you script, iterate, and tune… Xfce feels like home.
Power & laptops
LXQt surfaces power profiles cleanly from the panel; Xfce refactored locking and power settings to reduce weird edge cases and better align with modern power-profiles. Either way, laptops benefit.
Theming, Apps, and the “Qt vs GTK” Question
You’ll mix toolkits no matter what—Firefox, LibreOffice, VS Code, and friends cross the aisle daily. Theme bridges are better than ever, so you can make Qt apps look at home on Xfce and GTK apps blend into LXQt. Don’t let toolkit wars choose your desktop; your workflow should.
Who Should Choose What?
-
Pick LXQt if you…
Want a featherweight Qt desktop, you’re Wayland-curious (or already convinced), and you prefer minimal defaults you can extend later. -
Pick Xfce if you…
Want a “set it and forget it” classic that’s highly tweakable, you live in plugins/panels, and you value boring-in-the-best-way stability on X11 with an optional Wayland dabble.
Try Before You Decide
Grab Lubuntu (LXQt) and Xubuntu (Xfce) live ISOs. Boot, add your compositor of choice, open your real workload (browser tabs, IDE, mail, files), and feel the difference. Ten minutes beats ten threads.
Verdict
In 2025, LXQt feels like the lean scout sprinting into Wayland towns with a tidy Qt 6 kit; Xfce is the seasoned trail guide—calm, configurable, and still the safest choice when your day job can’t afford surprises. You can’t go wrong. You can only go faster by matching the desktop to your habits.
keywords: LXQt vs Xfce, lightweight Linux desktop, Wayland vs X11, Thunar vs PCManFM-Qt, best desktop for old laptops, Qt 6 desktop, Xfce 4.20 features, LXQt 2.2 features.
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