Xfce, Lxde
 

Hi.I know this is a widely discussed topic but I would like to "hear" your opinions according to my scenario and needs. Note: this is not intended to be a flame war :)

I have an old laptop (P3 with 512MB and 40GB hard drive) and I decided not to install gnome on that box. After researched a little bit and looking for options, I would like to have either xfce or lxde.

I've been a gnome user for years, but I'm planning to move to one of these two desktop environments.

I've tried both of them in the laptop mentioned above and Xfce seemed heavier than lxde. Some issue with lxde was that I opened lxterminal and the title bar wasn't there, after minimize and maximize it, the title bar appeared partially and close/minimize/maximize buttons never showed up (video driver problem?).
I'm quite impressed with lxde performance.

After testing them for a few hours, I would like to move to lxde but wanted those goodies from xfce.

I'm in a battle with myself deciding between "light" (lxde) and "goodies" (xfce). Note that I'm not expert in desktop environments so, as I mentioned above, I would like to "hear" your opinions to help me decide which one to adopt and if there is some "lxde tips/tricks" to customize lxde.

Thanks in advance.

The way I'm reading this, it sounds like Xfce is light enough for you and LXDE is not full-featured enough for you. Go with Xfce.

hi

well that might be true except I can see no reason why you can not have both installed?

2) why not install lxde.....and install extra apps because lxde is "letting you down"

eg I do not use lxterminal for lxde but roxterm....and its really easy to set up font and tabs.

.......ROXTerm is a terminal emulator based on the VTE library. It was originally intended to be a lightweight alternative to gnome-terminal, but its role has shifted to providing a richer range of features for power users. It can be used as a ROX application, as the name implies, but also integrates well with other X desktop environments such as GNOME.

You can also try no desktop environment, just a window manager.

Thanks for your replies. I really appreciate them.
I think I'll go for lxde+openbox, it's not really letting me down :) I'm getting along with it and I'm liking it more and more.

At first I installed xfce and I felt it slow, played around with it for a little bit and I liked it but never got convinced.
Then I installed lxde+openbox and I was really impressed with its lightness, everything worked perfectly unless the lxterminal (with the title bar problem), so I uninstalled lxterminal and installed xfce4-terminal and it worked like a charm.
I'm getting along with lxde+openbox and I think I'm moving to it.

Any other opinions are greatly appreciated.

I think it depends also on the OS (or distribution) you are using (or rather the services it runs out of the box). Which one is it? I use xfce on Debian and it sure is not "feeling" slow (just tested it on a Pentium3, replaced fluxbox in VirtualBox with xfce...).
So, you might use lxde, xfce or a wm, make sure you don't run services you don't need (epecially on low specs)

Speed is very much a matter of distro as well as GUI, and especially the number of things that get set up. On my desktop:
Fedora + Openbox: 1% CPU usage, 79 processes
CrunchBang + Openbox: 4% CPU usage, 101 processes

Using Fedora, I found no real difference in performance between Gnome and Xfce.

If I weren't using Gnome, I'd use the Openbox window manager. It doesn't really come with anything, so you can create your own mixture: e.g. fbpanel, lilyterm, xfe file manager, leafpad editor, etc.

Well, agree with David.

I installed xfce and lxde on a Debian Lenny, and xfce was not so slow, even though, lxde was faster, but there wasn't a huge difference between them.

Later I wanted to do the test with a different distro, so I installed xubuntu and lubuntu and I really felt xubuntu very slow compared to lubuntu.

The bad thing is that I cannot have Debian Lenny because of problems with dependencies/versions of some apps (e.g. rabbitvcs).
Few months ago I installed Debian Lenny and upgraded it to Squeeze but never felt comfortable with it.

If I move to xfce, I will need a really recent distro (something like ubuntu lucid (command only) + xfce). What would you recommend?

Thanks

It's been a while i have tried Xubuntu (go figure why...).That is for sure what one might call "bloated" (doesn't make it bad, but if one wants to use xfce cause one is looking for a lean and mean distro that simply isn't one). Have a look at Crunchbang, based on Squeeze, install it on Debian for yourself (stable, testing or sid, whatever you want) or check for Dreamlinux (which is based on stable).
Sidux (based on sid) comes with an xfce-edition too.

As i run Debian i would do it on Debian. As you can see i don't know distros not based on debian.

Thanks j1alu.
Downloading right now sidux xfce edition. I didn't know about a xfce edition of it.
Googled around and found great comments about it.

I'll test it and let you know what happens.

sidux is a great distro, good luck with it. :) My only word of warning is, read the sidux manual carefully! You need to follow a specific process for installing and updating applications; if you improvise and do it some other unsupported way (synaptic, aptitude, upgrades in X, etc.), they won't be very nice to you on sidux forums, consider yourself warned. ;)

Here is the link: http://manual.sidux.com/

If you decide you want something less "bleeding edge" I can recommend CrunchBang or AntiX. They are two very fast distros based on Debian that will take some of the "sting" out of trying to build up a Debian Squeeze system from scratch.

yep sidux forums can be a bit nasty if you even mention that you use smxi.

However, I once I discovered smxi.....I never went back to their manual way. See my signature if interested.

Try doing a DU (dist upgrade) their way and then clean install and do it the smix way?

smxi can do kernels, graphic drivers, virtual machine stuff as well.

Thanks for your suggestions.
As a matter of fact, while downloading sidux I started to read manuals and other stuff and I thought that for those reasons you mention, definitely sidux is not for me.

After that, I downloaded and tried crunchbang statler + xfce and I instantly fell in love with it. It has what I was looking for: beautiful artwork, Debian Testing based, very light and useful (runs great and much faster than xubuntu), very configurable and even though it's an Alpha is pretty stable.
I'm writing this post from my crunchbang and in a near future I'll be moving my personal desktop and office pc to crunchbang statler + xfce.

Thanks for all your suggestions and tips.

Regards

Makes one think, once again, if they do know how many people they brush off and make go away with that kind of "behaviour" or "attitude". Don't let me start on it.
Glad you like crunchbang, me too. greetings.

P3 can handle either WM masterfully.

I'd vote XFCE just because I think it's neat. You can probably even get compositing up under XFCE on your P3.