In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the Xfce desktop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, XFCE is one of the most popular desktop environments for Linux desktops. XFCE is a free lightweight, fast, and easy-to-use software desktop environment for Unix/Linux-like operating systems. It is designed for productivity and aims to be fast and low on system resources. Unlike GNOME and KDE desktops which are heavier, XFCE uses fewer system resources. Furthermore, it offers better modularity and fewer dependencies to install and takes less time and low disk space on your hard drive.
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 a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-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 16.04 LTS
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing Xfce Desktop Environment.
Run the following command to install the XFCE desktop environment:
apt-get install xfce4
After installation, there is no need to restart the system you can get the XFCE desktop. Now log off from the current user and login back in once again but click on the ubuntu logo which is in the right corner at the user login box. On clicking the ubuntu logo, a menu will appear to select the XFCE one.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed XFCE Desktop. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Xfce Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official XFCE website.
