On the other hand, it means that if you prefer the GNOME file manager
(Nautilus) over the one included with Xfce (Thunar), you can just install
Nautilus and use it side-by-side with Thunar or remove Thunar completely.
This is a huge part of what makes Xfce so lightweight that it has very few
dependency requirements and is highly flexible.
Originally, Xubuntu (Figure 7.2) was designed to create a lighter-weight
version of Ubuntu that would run well on older hardware because of the
lighter code dependencies of Xfce. Over time, some people discovered that
they liked the desktop environment for other reasons, and the older hardware
use case became less of a focus. It was the modularity of Xfce combined with
a smoothness of operation that won people over, and the distribution began to
take some of the favored bits from Ubuntu’s customized version of GNOME
and added them to Xfce to replace some of its defaults. What we have today
is a nice amalgamation of Ubuntu GNOME bits, Xfce bits, and a few other
things not included by default in either.
FIGURE 7.2 The Xubuntu desktop.
Xubuntu still uses less memory and fewer CPU cycles than a standard Ubuntu
or Kubuntu install; however, thinking of it only in those terms doesn’t do it
justice. To install Xubuntu with the Xfce desktop environment, install the
xubuntu-desktop package.