The vanilla flavor of Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish sports the GNOME desktop environment, or no GUI at all in the case of a server install. If you would like to change things up and install Xfce instead, the GUI can be downloaded and installed directly from Ubuntu’s package repositories.
This can be done whether you are switching from GNOME to Xfce, or you currently are running command line interface only and wish to install a graphical desktop environment. Xfce is a great choice that comes with a minimal design to keep your Ubuntu 22.04 system running fast.
We have two choices for installation, either the normal Xfce desktop environment, or the Xubuntu desktop, which is just Xfce with a custom theme and curated applications handpicked by the Xubuntu team.
In this tutorial, we will go through the step by step instructions to install the Xfce GUI desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install tasksel
- How to install Xfce or Xubuntu desktop
- How to switch to LightDM display manager
- How to login to Xfce desktop
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish |
| Software | Xfce, Xubuntu, tasksel |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install Xfce or Xubuntu desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish step by step instructions
- We will be using the
taskselcommand to install Xfce or Xubuntu desktop, because this tool downloads all the necessary packages for us and saves us some time. In case thetaskselcommand is not available on your system, you can install it by opening a command line terminal and entering the two followingaptcommands:$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install tasksel
- Execute the following command to begin the Xubuntu desktop installation. We recommend installing this version instead of just Xfce itself, but the choice is up to you. The
xubuntu-corepackage is a lighter install but may not come with all of the tools you are expecting.xubuntu-desktopcomes with more applications but obviously takes up more room too.$ sudo tasksel install xubuntu-desktop OR $ sudo tasksel install xubuntu-core
Xfce / Xubuntu desktop installation command on Ubuntu 22.04 The above commands will install the Ubuntu version of the Xfce desktop environment. If you need a vanilla version of Xfce desktop environment then execute the below command and select the lightdm display manager during the installation:
$ sudo apt install xfce4
- When you get a prompt about which default display manager to use, be sure to select the
lightdmoption and then proceed with the installation.
Select lightdm as default display manager on Ubuntu 22.04 - After installation has completed, reboot your system for the changes to take effect and load into your Xfce desktop environment.
$ reboot
- Open Desktop session selection menu, select
Xubuntu sessionorXfce session, then enter your password and log in.
Selecting option to load into Xubuntu desktop environment
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, you learned how to install Xubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. Xfce is a speedy and responsive desktop environment, which comes loaded with a lot of its own applications, and integrates well with Ubuntu especially if you chose the Xubuntu install.