For some reason or another (or several reasons actually) I do prefer xfce even on a machine that has 2GB RAM and can handle Cinnamon. But, being a newbie to Linux, I am not completely sure if there is not some downside to an awkward way I got XFCE working on my production machine. Is there no difference in xfce installed in a clean installation and one glued up onto Cinnamon? Is the fabled stability of xfce as stable as in clean install without going through Cinnamon? Couldn't I squeeze more power from the machine by deleting everything and going the long way? I would not like to, but I do want to know how these thing work here in Linux-land - so that in a few years I would be as confident with my computer skills as I used to be before switching.o Switch off ''auto login'' and ''timed login'' from the Desktop.
o Use Software Manager to install mint-meta-xfce
o Make a new user just for trying out xfce.
o Log Out
o Select the new user
o Select the session to be xfce
o Log in as new user
If all goes well, you change your normal login to xfce session too.
BTW, I love the 10 °C drop in reported temperatures after I switched to XFCE