How To Install Xfce Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Xfce Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Xfce is a lightweight, open-source desktop environment that is based on the GTK+ toolkit. It was designed to be fast, stable, and easy to use, making it a popular choice among Linux users. While the default desktop environment for Ubuntu is GNOME, users may want to use a different desktop environment.

Benefits of Xfce Desktop Environment:

• Xfce is a free and open-source desktop environment that’s known for its speed, stability, and customizability. Some of the key benefits of Xfce include:
• Lightweight: Xfce is designed to be lightweight and fast, making it a great choice for older or less powerful computers.
• Customizable: Xfce is highly customizable, with a wide range of themes and plugins available to help you personalize your desktop environment to your liking.
• Stable: Xfce is known for its stability and reliability, making it a great choice for users who need a desktop environment that won’t crash or cause problems.
• User-friendly: Xfce is easy to use and navigate, with a simple and intuitive interface that’s great for new users.

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 the step-by-step installation of the Xfce desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for Xfce Desktop.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo useror 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 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install apt-transport-https gnupg2 software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Xfce Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 22.04

By default, Xfce is available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to  install the Xfce desktop environment on the Ubuntu system:

sudo apt install xfce4

During the installation process, you will be prompted to choose the default display manager. Select ‘lightdm‘ and press Enter.

After installation has been completed, reboot your system for the changes to take effect and load into your Xfce desktop environment:

reboot

Step 3. Accessing Xfce Desktop Environment on Ubuntu.

Once you have restarted your desktop, you will arrive at your login screen. Now click on the gear icon in the right corner of the screen and select ‘Xfce’ from the dropdown menu. Enter your username and password, and click on ‘Login’.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Xfce. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Xfce desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Xfce website.