If the Mac has a Retina display then I actually found XFCE runs worst of the various DEs at native resolution. Not in terms of resources but very choppy scrolling, video playback etc. Gnome and KDE Plasma actually ran better than XFCE for me on my 15” 2012 retina.
Presume it’s some kind of graphics acceleration thing, not 100% sure.
yes, model is a MacBook Pro, Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60GHz, model A1502 (EMC 2875), Retina Mid-2014 13"
Incidentally, I got the notebook as a present, got rid of mac OS and installed xubuntu 23.10 on it. Some mac OS users mean this company deliberately slows down old computers so users feel compelled to buy something newer. Can it be that's why this notebook is so slow? I didn't do anything fancy to install xubuntu, just used the whole space to install from a usb stick so I wonder if some residual software is still present.
Contrary to most advice, if you find something that’s compatible with a Wayland session (basically Gnome or Plasma) you might be pleasantly surprised.
I found that to be by far the closest I got to a macOS-like experience with Linux on a retina Mac, in terms of fluidity, trackpad scrolling and responsiveness.