Other than memory size, why do people prefer xfce these days? I use it in https://nowsci.com/webbian/ to keep image size down, but use Gnome on my machines.
It is absolutely rock solid, you can adapt it to your workflow, whichever it is, change the window manager, have all the panels you want and go back to the default configuration immediately. It is an amazing desktop environment, extremely and easily customizable, because it is modular, and, in the end, it simply works. The default look is misleading.