I am deploying LTSP at my home on an Ubuntu 14.04 base. Everythings works great I just need to assemble a light DE for the clients. I'm not a fan of XFCE. KDE is to heavy. The Unity is bugged out (no session menu or system tray).

I'm on the fence with Gnome Shell or Mate. Either one would work but I'm looking for something with more spice. Something that looks real good but is very light. I'm debating rolling my own, maybe openbox with docky and a few normal apps to create a working DE but I don't know where to start. This will end up being used in my house, wife, and probably have a guest living with us as well for a time.

I'm also not sure of best practices to creating the DE, saving it and having it setup in such a way that when I add a user it automatically puts the configuration files in the proper places.

Would appreciate guidance on what to use, how to deal with packaging the layout for easy use when creating a user and so forth.

My personal favorite for light but nice is Cinnamon. One that I'm very much looking forward to as it progresses is LXQT. Currently most definitely not "ready for prime time", but looks very promising.

If KDE is too heavy, you'll want to avoid Gnome Shell, it's nearly as heavy as KDE while having nowhere near the prettiness.

jmgibson1981,

I used Xubuntu in my LTSP blog but if I were repeating the exercise, I would use Ubuntu 16.04 MATE, or the forthcoming Linux Mint 18 MATE.

LTSP from Scratch:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...scratch-35204/

This article might also help you:

http://ubuntu-mate.community/t/how-t...t-versions/566