I liked Xfce a lot, and used it for more than a few years, until it migrated to Gtk 3. (Modern Gtk breaks things that I use, and forces UI decisions that constantly get in my way. It's just not for me.) It has also become more memory-hungry over the years, so is no longer quite the lightweight desktop that it once was, although that's not why I switched.

LXQt was first on my list when looking for a replacement, but I used it only briefly, because there were too many rough edges and little integration problems. It didn't feel like a cohesive desktop compared to (old) Xfce. I imagine some of that was a side effect of ongoing work to transition away from Gtk. It was a couple years ago, so it might be better now. I still love the idea of it.

I feel the same, though having more options for lightweight DEs is better. I came from gnome 2 after Ubuntu switched to Unity DE back in the day. Xubuntu ran nice on all of my kids low power devices and it became my desktop as well ever since. It's just as happy on my work laptop as well as Ryzen thread ripper with 3 rtx4000s and 3 magewell hdmi capture cards we use for visualization at work too. It really feels like a solid DE with less fuss than most.

XFCE would be my go-to if I used a DE. I tried LXQT briefly in a VM but I found it a little unpolished.

In my experience, lxqt is lighter, but xfxe has more features and is more friendly to people with low tech skills, so I usually recommend xfce.

I've lived in XFCe for years, awhile ago, now use LXQT.

XFCe had this goddamn thing where windows had a 1-pixel thick window-grabber.

There was no means of fixing it, that I could find.

UbuntuStudio.org used XFCe, too, btw..

Eventually I got sooo fed-up with the broken UX that I just committed to never using XFCe ever again.

That was sometime in the last few years..

I also went from xfce to lxqt.