How To Install Xfce Desktop on AlmaLinux 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Xfce Desktop on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. But as we know Gnome and KDE are heavy on hardware resources as compared to XFCE one, thus here we let you know how to install Xfce on AlmaLinux to enjoy GUI without putting much strain on your computer or server resources.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Xfce Desktop environment on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Xfce Desktop on AlmaLinux 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf --enablerepo=epel group

Step 2. Installing Xfce Desktop on AlmaLinux 8.

Now run the following command to install Xfce and Xorg server on CLI running AlmaLinux to provide a graphical user interface:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Xfce" "base-x"

Once ins are done, now set the default target system to graphical using the command below:

echo "exec /usr/bin/xfce4-session" >> ~/.xinitrc
sudo systemctl set-default graphical

Finally, steps, reboot your system with the command below:

reboot

Step 3. Accessing Xfce Desktop Environment on AlmaLinux.

Once successfully installed, Now log off from the current user and login back in once again. On the login screen, you can choose the Xfce Desktop session.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Xfce. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Xfce Desktop environment on your AlmaLinux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Xfce website.