[There are] two major [desktop environment] projects [...] on Linux, both trying to reproduce the look and feel of Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh environments on UNIX/Linux. KDE and GNOME, as they are known, are doing very well in this, and the developers have done a terrific good job, writing many applications to be embedded in the desktop.

Although these environments work very well on a standalone workstation, they are slow [on some circumstances] [...]. [Thus, m]y feeling is that there is a strong need for a lightweight (but still powerful) environment [...].

[The motivation to start coding Xfce, in early 1997,] came first from the simple fact that when I was running one of these environments, there were few system resources left available to run the applications I needed. It was clear to me that the goal was not to run the desktop (as nice as it could be), but to get the job done with the application. [...] Xfce’s [...] memory footprint is much lower than other desktop environments.

XFCE is a Gtk-based desktop environment [...].

• Many desktops are designed to be lightweight such as XFCE and LXQt (optimised for use on older machines);

• Other desktops such as GNOME are notoriously resource heavy (GNOME uses JavaScript to create many graphical elements and menus);

• Other more 'middle of the road' desktops exist such as Cinnamon and MATE (both forks of GNOME) and KDE although these are still not as light as desktops such as XFCE and LXQt.

No se podría decir que la rapidez es uno de los objetivos de KDE. En comparación con otros entornos de escritorio, como Xfce o LXDE, KDE consume bastantes recursos.