Switch from GNOME to xfce?

I installed Manjaro on a rather small laptop. After first installing GNOME (because I had the installation media ready) I tried to switch to xfce but failed. In the end, I reinstalled everything from scratch, using the Manjaro-xfce installer. To my delight, xfce is actually perfectly usable. So I’m wondering - could I properly switch my main machine to xfce, without breaking it?

I’m aware this has been asked before, but the answers did not help me much. There’s the Install Desktop Environments documentation but it doesn’t mention how to switch from one DE to another. Any suggestions?

Regards

Christian

What failed?

It perfectly does. Install XFCE and remove Gnome.

What failed?

I followed the instructions to install xfce but after boot Manjaro did not start up the X session. I wasn’t able to resolve this within a reasonable time frame, so I decided to simply reinstall everything. (because I had not started to actually use that machine in any way)

… and remove Gnome.

Thats it. While the docs are decent in order to install one DE or another, they do not answer

  • what do I need to uninstall, eg to go from GNOME to another DE?
  • which files do I need to edit for the display manager to start up properly?
  • how do I modify an existing user (instead of creating a new one)?
  • which settings files et al. might be safely removed after changing the DE?

The packages are listed there. Especially gnome is s group of packages:

pamac list --groups gnome 

Just remove it, instead installing it. Easy?

For lightdm it is mentioned. Only 1 file. Keep in mind that only one display-manager can be run (obviously), therefore you need to disable one and enable the other.

It can work, but must not. You need to check every config at ~/.config. Therefore it is said that you need to create a new user to be safe.

Since XFCE and Gnome share the same GTK Framework, that is not really predictable.

If you don’t have an idea how to solve conflicts here, which really depends on what has been installed, you are better off with a new installation or a creating a new user.