The Linux desktop stack is steadily moving to Wayland, and Xfce is keeping pace with that shift. I say this because Xfce’s Wayland transition has reached a new milestone with the first preview release of xfwl4, the desktop environment’s Wayland compositor.
Longtime Xfce developer Brian Tarricone announced the release, stating it is ready for wider testing after nearly six months of development. However, the project remains in its early stages, and Tarricone emphasizes that this alpha release will have bugs and missing features.
The primary goal of xfwl4 is to deliver a Wayland-based Xfce experience that closely corresponds to the current Xfce desktop on X11. The project aims to guarantee the transition from X11 to Wayland is familiar and minimally disruptive for users who prefer Xfce’s traditional lightweight workflow.
However, this goal has not yet been fully achieved. The preview is intended primarily for testers and early adopters to help identify issues, confirm bugs, and track development.
Several features remain incomplete or nonfunctional. More specifically, the Mouse and Touchpad settings dialog does not work in xfwl4, though existing X11 settings are applied. Additionally, the Workspaces settings dialog is unavailable, and screen margins are not yet implemented.
There are also limitations with xfdesktop and panel behavior. Minimized window icons and the middle-click window menu do not work, pager thumbnails are unavailable, and taskbar applications can only change maximize, minimize, and fullscreen states.
Keyboard shortcuts are also limited. Regular window cycling is supported, but shortcuts for application and application-window switching are not yet available. Most applications will not restore previous window positions or workspaces at startup.
Despite these limitations, given that Xfce has so far conventionally relied on X11, a testable Wayland compositor is a big step forward, allowing users and contributors to evaluate the desktop’s future beyond the X server model.
For additional details, refer to Tarricone’s announcement.
The preview release is available as a source tarball, with build and installation instructions in the project’s README. Bug reports should be submitted through the project’s issue tracker, and users are encouraged to check for existing reports before filing new ones.
