No, I am not implying that, and I think that the concept of "minimal" is widely misinterpreted.

What I am saying is that Xfce contains and implements all of the functionality that I want in a desktop, in some areas more of it than KDE does... and it does it in a smaller, simpler, cleaner collection of software, which does it in less space using less memory.

So, while KDE includes a lot of large complicated components, I don't want many of them. I prefer standalone best-of-breed tools than ones that are closely integrated. I don't like KMail, or the chat tool, or the contacts manager, or the networking and VPN client, or the file manager, or the browsers (plural), etc.

I want a vertical taskbar. KDE does this poorly, it requires more work to configure it and it doesn't handle it well.

Xfce does it well, and it has valuable functions for this role built in, such as making it simple to configure the size and layout of the start menu button. I can constrain it to one text line, or a one-line icon plus a one-line label.

KDE, despite having approxiumately 1000 configuration options, doesn't include options to control the size or shape or layout of the start button.

So, while KDE has a lot of irrelevant stuff that is therefore bloat and cruft to me, it lacks important core functionality that I want.

This is the harsh side of the Pareto Principle. One man's core function is another man's needless bloat.

For me, and IMHO, KDE is mostly bloat and misses out on important stuff.

E.g. up to KDE 4 it at least let me set the panel to span 2 monitors. That was removed in KDE 5. An important function was lost.

I do not want desktop widgets. I do not want 3 or 4 or 12 ways to display desktop icons. I do not want file manager content rendered via HTML. I do not want a desktop with an integrated email client, choice of web browsers, chat program, complete office suite, etc. I do not want my file manager to be able to connect to FTP or POP3 or anything other than showing me the files on mounted drives.

I don't want my file manager to talk to network protocols at all. That is not its job. If it is to show the content of network drives, it should tell the underlying OS to mount those drives. I don't want it to duplicate OS functionality.

But there is a lot of stuff I might like. I liked BeOS. Window title bars were only long enough to contain their title and the control buttons. That was space-efficient. I also liked `wm2`. Title bars on the side of windows was also space-efficient on widescreens, and in 2023 all screens are widescreens.

I don't want textures or bitmaps or themes or anything, but I want more control over size and position and placement of title bars than KDE offers me. Yet Xfce, despite being "minimal", can do this.

People misunderstand what "minimal" means. It doesn't mean "does not implement core functionality." It means "is as small as necessary to implement core functionality and yet is able to encompass extensions to be as customisable as the user wants".

Xfce does all I want in a desktop and more besides, and it does it in a small efficient package.

KDE does a tonne of stuff I don't want but it does not do stuff I need, like graceful elegant handling of vertical taskbars. Therefore all the other functions, like 2 or 3 menu entries for "Help | About" and yet none of them tell me the current KDE version are just bloat to me.

Some apps have a version number. Some have a date. The idea of a desktop is consistency. This is inconsistent and highly annoying. FIX IT!

Some apps have menu bars. Some have hamburger menus. Some combine menu bar with title bar similarly to GNOME's CSD.

I hate CSD. I detest hamburger menus. This is meant to be a configurable desktop. What kind of menu I get is not globally configurable. FIX IT. This is bad and it is annoying to see and even more annoying to use.

The idea of a big configurable customisable desktop is meant to be consistency and harmony and a single system-wide look and feel. KDE fails to offer this and is getting worse as time goes by. That is a failure and it's why I don't use KDE.