“Juliet Kemp LXDE (the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is
new to the Linux desktop scene, having been launched in 2006. It
aims to provide a fully-functional desktop environment whilst being
as lightweight as possible, to both speed up your desktop and
reduce its environmental impact (by using less CPU and RAM). A
quick-and-dirty benchmark courtesy of the LXDE edition of Linux
Mint indicates that it measures up pretty well on speed and RAM
usage. In the third of my series on desktop alternatives, I took a
look at it to see how it shapes up from the user’s point of
view.“First impressions
“To get LXDE, install the lxde package on Debian or Ubuntu,
(it’s also available via the package manager on Fedora). On first
logging into it, it started up noticably faster than Xfce, and I
liked the default graphics. There’s a single menu bar, at the
bottom, with a menu, a couple of default application buttons (file
manager, terminal window, web browser), and a neat button which
either iconifies all the windows (left-click) or collapses them
into their top bars (middle-click). On the right-hand side of the
bar, LXDE shows off its energy-saving credentials with a CPU
monitor alongside screen lock, powerdown button, and clock.”
LXDE, the New Lightweight Linux Desktop
By
Juliet Kemp
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