Hi! I’m currently using XFCE on my laptop, I was previously using Compify as my compositor (XFWM is quite rough), but stopped when I noticed I could no longer get through the day on one charge. My battery life doubled when switching back to XFWM. So I was wondering if anyone knows of any X compositors that have a focus on energy efficiency?
To declare the elephant in the room, I would use Wayland if the only two desktops that properly support it weren’t trying to be entire operating systems themselves. I can’t use standalone compositors like Sway or River because I need this laptop for school, I can’t be configuring it constantly, I simply don’t have the time.
I’m aware that XFCE is working on Wayland support, and I’m patient enough to wait if there are no compositors like I’m describing. XFWM isn’t the end of the world.
Thanks for your time :)
It’s rather slow, for example the window decorations appear before the window content. I also like just some simple animatons to make the desktop feel more modern and fluid.
If you’re after fluid yet lightweight animations then you should definitely check out Wayfire. Yes it’s Wayland and a WM not a DE, but you can get a distro/spin with Wayfire and all the stuff you need for a DE all pre-installed and pre-configured. Wayblue (based on Fedora uBlue) is one such option you can try. And because Wayblue is immutable and has reliable atomic updates, it’d make a great option for you as a school-goer as stuff rarely breaks and you can always rollback to a previous image before the update.