In the Linux world with Ubuntu dominating the market to discuss about the comparison of Desktop Managers available for Linux is of good importance. By default Ubuntu comes with gnome desktop environment and Kubuntu comes with kde as the desktop manager.
Considering the case of someone who is interested in trying out something different xfce might be fun. Xfce is a new desktop environment aimed at unix like operating system, providing nice features at smaller size and resources. Xfce can be installed in many platforms like freebsd, linux, solaris, cygwin and even macos. Xfce is definitely worth a look for users, who is interested in nice look and feel without sacrificing system resources. xfce is based on gtk+ 2 just like gnome. It uses xfwm window manager. The latest available version of XFCE is XFCE 4.6.
Applications like Mousepad text editor, Xfmedia audio player, Orage Calendar and Terminal are available by default for xfce environment. Printing tasks in xfce are managed by Xfprint. Xfburn is the cd/dvd burner program available for xfce. The default media player is Xfmedia player derived from Xine movie player. Thunar is the file manager for xfce. Xfce has almost everything needed by a normal user. Xfce but doesnot offer the flashy and eye-candy appearance of kde or large amount of applications like gnome.
Considering the progress xfce made in the following years, one day xfce may replace kde and gnome from our distros.