xfce(1F) xfce(1F)
Olivier Fourdan
NAME
xfce - The Cholesterol Free Desktop Environment
SYNOPSYS
xfce [--display host:dpy] [-nowm]
--display host:dpy
specifies the server to connect to.
-nowm disable detection of window manager when used as XFwm module.
DESCRIPTION
xfce is an easy-to-use and easy-to-configure toolbar for X11. Features
pulldown menus with color icons, 3D widgets, etc. It's designed to
work with XFwm, (window manager shipped with xfce)
xfce requires an X-based workstation or X-Terminal. If you have used
telnet or rlogin to access the host system, set the Unix environment
variable for your display:
% export DISPLAY devicename:0
When you first start xfce, it creates an empty configuration file
(.xfce3rc) in your home directory.
Of course, nothing is defined, so, menus are empty. To add a new file
in a menu, first open it by clicking on the little arrow. then choose
"Add icon...", and fill out all fields (command, pixmap and label).
You can also drag programs onto the "Add icon..." button to easily add
entries to the corresponding menu.
Modification and removal of existing items in menus can be performed
with the right mouse button.
To define programs associated with the icons on the panel, use the
right mouse button. Enter the command line and press "enter" to
validate. Press "escape" to cancel. You can also choose the icon to
be displayed on the front panel. Click on the down arrow and choose a
category (Files related, Terminal connections, Writting/text tools,
etc.)
Drag and Drop is also supported. You can drag files from XFTree (file
manager shipped with xfce) or any other GTK+ based filemanager (GNOME
included) and drop it onto the panel to start the corresponding
application with the files dragged.
To change the name of screens, just click on button with right mouse
button.
- 1 - Formatted: November 1, 2025
xfce(1F) xfce(1F)
Olivier Fourdan
PREDEFINED KEYWORDS
A number of applications shipped with xfce/XFwm must cooperate closely
with the window manager. Those applications are called "modules" and
must be started from xfwm itself or from xfce. In order to start
XFwm's modules, xfce has to be started as a module itself (This is the
default unless you've started xfce from the command line).
Use the keyword Module to indicate that your command has to be
considered as a module. Then enter your command, just like you would
do in XFwm's configuration file.
Example : To start the module xfpager, use
Module xfpager
Some other applications, basically console text based applications
cannot be started as an X application directly (this may cause the X
server to hang)
For this, xfce provides the keyword Term to indicate that xfce has to
start a terminal first to be able to execute the command.
Example : To start the program vi, use
Term vi
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE
XFCE_DATA: By default, xfce looks for its data in the directory
specified at compile time. This directory can be overridden with the
environment variable XFCE_DATA.
DISABLE_XFCE_USER_CONFIG: When set to 1 or yes, xfce won't allow any
user specific configuration, it will not even read user's
configuration. This is for people using xfce on "set top boxes" or for
making a terminal publicly available.
FILES
~/.xfce3rc contains the user preferences for xfce.
This file is not supposed to be edited by hand.
SEE ALSO
xfce, xftree, xfwm, xfpager, xfsound, xfmouse, xfbd, xfclock
AUTHOR
Olivier Fourdan (fourdan@xfce.org)
- 2 - Formatted: November 1, 2025
