For whatever reason XFCE gets accused of looking ugly, but I tend to agree with you. It looks fine out of the box, better with some minor tweaking, and is fully themeable if you're into that sort of thing.
KDE always had a reputation for being a bit of a resource hog. Gnome 3 was a rewrite in Javascript, so no surprises there. I never personally used Unity, but it always felt a little annoying when I had to use it on other computers, probably due to the layout and corner gestures.
The latest version of KDE (past year or so) uses approximately the same "freshly launched" size as XFCE does and is as snappy as anything else on a relatively modern system (when compared to Gnome3 and XFCE). I think the main reason to pick XFCE is the interface and overall stability not because it's lighter than KDE any longer.
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For whatever reason XFCE gets accused of looking ugly, but I tend to agree with you. It looks fine out of the box, better with some minor tweaking, and is fully themeable if you're into that sort of thing.
KDE always had a reputation for being a bit of a resource hog. Gnome 3 was a rewrite in Javascript, so no surprises there. I never personally used Unity, but it always felt a little annoying when I had to use it on other computers, probably due to the layout and corner gestures.
The latest version of KDE (past year or so) uses approximately the same "freshly launched" size as XFCE does and is as snappy as anything else on a relatively modern system (when compared to Gnome3 and XFCE). I think the main reason to pick XFCE is the interface and overall stability not because it's lighter than KDE any longer.