Xfce on Ubuntu 24.04: Upgrade, Panel Tweaks, and Troubleshooting

Xfce remains the go-to desktop for anyone who wants a traditional, keyboard-driven Linux experience without the RAM overhead of GNOME or KDE Plasma — and on Ubuntu 24.04, the Xfce 4.18 series delivers genuine quality-of-life improvements that make the upgrade worthwhile even if your current setup works fine. This guide covers installing Xfce on a stock Ubuntu 24.04 system, upgrading an existing Xubuntu install, tuning panels for a productive workflow, and fixing the handful of issues that reliably trip people up: screen tearing, session conflicts, and disappearing systray icons. Having run Xfce as a primary desktop on Ubuntu since the 12.04 days, every recommendation here comes from daily use, not a quick test drive.

Installing Xfce on Ubuntu 24.04

If you are running stock Ubuntu with GNOME and want to add Xfce as an alternative session:

sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies

The xfce4 metapackage pulls in the core desktop, panel, window manager (xfwm4), file manager (Thunar), and session manager. The xfce4-goodies package adds useful extras: the Whisker Menu, screen saver, task manager, terminal, and additional panel plugins.

After installation, log out, click the gear icon on the login screen, select “Xfce Session,” and log in.

Avoiding Session Conflicts

Installing Xfce alongside GNOME can cause minor conflicts — duplicate notification daemons, competing polkit agents, or GNOME’s settings daemon overriding Xfce’s. If you notice odd behaviour (double notifications, unexpected theme changes), check which services are running:

ps aux | grep -E 'gsd-|xfsettingsd'

The fix is usually to disable GNOME’s settings daemon autostart within the Xfce session:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cp /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop ~/.config/autostart/
echo "Hidden=true" >> ~/.config/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop

Upgrading Xubuntu to 24.04

If you are already running Xubuntu 22.04, the upgrade path is standard:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
sudo do-release-upgrade

Xfce 4.18 on Noble brings several improvements over the 4.16 that shipped on Jammy:

• Thunar: Split-pane view, image preview in the sidebar, recursive search, and custom highlight colours
• Panel: Improved multi-monitor support, better plugin spacing controls, and a refined clock/calendar widget
• xfwm4: Initial Wayland exploration (though Xfce on 24.04 still defaults to Xorg)
• Settings: Redesigned display settings with better scaling options

After the upgrade, check your panel layout — occasionally, panel configurations migrate with minor spacing issues that a quick right-click → Panel Preferences fixes.

Panel Configuration for Productivity

The default Xfce panel is a single bar at the top. Here is a more productive layout we have refined over years:

Top Panel (Informational)

• Whisker Menu (far left) — faster and more searchable than the default Applications Menu
• Window Buttons (centre, expanding) — shows open windows like a traditional taskbar
• Separator (expanding, transparent)
• System Tray (right) — network, sound, battery
• PulseAudio Plugin — volume control with per-app volume
• Clock — %a %d %b, %H:%M format

Bottom Panel (Quick Launch + Workspaces)

Create a second panel at the bottom, set to auto-hide:

• Launcher buttons for terminal, file manager, browser, text editor
• Workspace Switcher — four workspaces in a 2×2 grid
• Show Desktop button

To create a second panel: right-click the existing panel → Panel → Panel Preferences → click the “+” button.

Useful Panel Plugins

Install these if they are not already present:

sudo apt install xfce4-weather-plugin xfce4-cpugraph-plugin xfce4-netload-plugin

• Weather plugin — local forecast in the panel
• CPU Graph — real-time CPU usage graph, invaluable for spotting runaway processes
• Netload — network throughput monitor

Fixing Screen Tearing

Screen tearing on Xfce with Xorg is a common complaint, especially with Intel and AMD graphics. The issue is that xfwm4’s compositor does not enable vsync aggressively enough by default.

Option A: Enable xfwm4 Compositor VSync

Settings → Window Manager Tweaks → Compositor tab:

• Enable “Synchronize drawing to the vertical blank”

Option B: Use a Standalone Compositor

If xfwm4’s compositor is not sufficient, replace it with picom:

sudo apt install picom

Disable xfwm4’s compositor (uncheck “Enable display compositing” in Window Manager Tweaks), then add picom to your session autostart:

echo -e "[Desktop Entry]\nType=Application\nName=Picom\nExec=picom --vsync" > ~/.config/autostart/picom.desktop

Option C: Nvidia-Specific Fix

If you are using Nvidia proprietary drivers, add this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Default Screen"
    Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On}"
EndSection

This forces the Nvidia driver to handle vsync, eliminating tearing entirely.

Fixing Disappearing Systray Icons

Some applications (Dropbox, Discord, Slack) use legacy StatusNotifierItem or XEmbed tray protocols. If their icons disappear from the systray:

1. Right-click the systray → Properties
2. Ensure both “Show known hidden items” checkboxes are enabled
3. If using a Flatpak or Snap version of the app, check that it has the proper D-Bus permissions

For Electron apps specifically, launching with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform can fix tray icon issues under Xorg.

Xfce vs GNOME vs KDE: Resource Comparison

On a clean Ubuntu 24.04 install, idle RAM usage:

Xfce’s efficiency advantage is real and meaningful on machines with 4–8 GB of RAM. On a 32 GB workstation, the difference is academic — but the snappiness of xfwm4 compared to GNOME’s Mutter is noticeable regardless of RAM.

Related Reading

• LXQt on Ubuntu 24.04 — an even lighter alternative
• KDE Plasma HiDPI and Multi-Monitor — if you need better scaling support
• Wayland vs Xorg — why Xfce still defaults to Xorg