Linux Mint Forums

The package is called thunar-thumbnailers
You will also need FFmpegthumbnailer for video thumbnails

I love how you can upgrade XFCE to practically matching gnome, or keep it basic and match LXDE.

wayne128 wrote:Interesting comparison.
So many people mentioned LXDE is lighter and faster than XFCE.

When built from the same base LXDE is faster and lighter than XFCE.

Yeah, but not by a lot. We could be talking about a system that starts with a minimum of 142mb vs 180mb for a really basic install. I suppose it could make a difference with 256mb of ram, but either will run just great with 256 ram. With 384mb of ram or 512mb ram, there is virtually no performance boost for LXDE, and LXDE might actually run slower since fewer processes are being stored in ram, which means more trips to the hard drive.....unless you are using an SSD or hybrid drive, in which case you might as well go heavy and still enjoy lightning fast speeds.....I guess the exception would be hybrid drives in a legacy PC running only 256mb of ram.

With that slightly heavier install you are getting an operating system comparable to Gnome, easily upgradeable to a near identical experience to gnome without actually having to install Gnome.

LXDE isnt going to be "faster" than XFCE on a computer that has 512 ram and at least 1ghrz CPU....Its just going to save a few mb of ram, but not enough to be a game changer. It actually might be slower, depending on how heavy you go with the extra niceties.

WIth XFCE you can fully customize and decide how many bells and whistles you get....With LXDE you hit a low ceiling, and the performance isnt any better....You sacrifice a lot of features, for not very much ram and no significant boost in performance over XFCE.

The Linux world is biased against XFCE in favor of LXDE because Ubuntu put XFCE on a GNOME base, but built LDXE up from a minimal base. They experienced XFCE as being as slow as GNOME, and LXDE was a breath of fresh air as the ONLY default lite weight install.

If you ask Debian users or users of other distros, most greatly preferred XFCE over LXDE, not the other way around.

No experience with lmde, it's on the todo list when the support cycle runs out on this release. Just commenting cause all things considered should be the same regardless of distro. Meaning logical to assume, the less resources a desktop uses the more pep the comp is going to have. Mint 10 main ed w xfce is definitely peppier than is was with the default gnome. Fluxbox ... used less resources still. But isn't as user friendly as xfce for me.

I think we agree.

It is true, Ubuntu gave XFCE a bad reputation and it does a very nice LXDE distro with Lubuntu.

It's also true that when you have a well built XFCE desktop (like the Debian 5 or 6) and a well built LXDE desktop (ditto) the difference between both is very small, 15-25MB of RAM and the XFCE desktop has wicd (in the Debian 6 version) and LXDE doesn't.

It's also true that both desktops work equally well with 256-512MB of RAM or more on a "normal" CPU but XFCE does take more CPU cycles and more RAM so on a slower computer it does make a difference. Tried Debian 5 LXDE on a 64MB Duron 800MHz and it worked (forget iceweasel or OOo) but Debian 5 XFCE boots but doesn't do much more, decided to use a basic Openbox setup. On a 256MB 366MHz Celeron (PII based) the CPU usage difference was obvious. In the end, it's what you said, If you have 512MB or more with a 1GHz CPU or better they are about the same but XFCE gives a full desktop just as GNOME and KDE, it's not just a light desktop and that makes a difference for some users.

When Mint XFCE was released I was impressed with the ability to install from a live CD with only 192MB of RAM (GNOME requires 320-384MB) and the full desktop experience with a choice of apps very similar to the GNOME desktop but for a lower end computer (PIII or slower, 256MB or less) LXDE has some advantage. Also, it's simple and without changing/installing a thing you can log into Openbox and save some more RAM if you need to.

Yep. There is a sweet spot for LXDE between a DEBIAN XFCE and Puppy. I really like puppy for the super legacy computers though.

And there is a sweet spot for Puppy between DSL and Debian LXDE. Below that I go to FreeDOS or Debian 2.x/3.x/some_floppy_linux.

I do play around with some WM, right now it's Openbox. That's one of the reasons I like LXDE, I install LXDE but login with Openbox and guest users login with LXDE.

Does OpenBox and LXDE use a lot of the same libraries?

Openbox is the default WM in LXDE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXDE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbox

As a result it's already installed in a normal LXDE distro. Furthermore, in the SLIM login window you can chose to login with LXDE or Openbox. LXDE is the default option. So when you install Mint LXDE or Debian LXDE you can use LXDE or Openbox.

The Openbox version doesn't have a panel or even a clock, it's just Openbox and as a result has very little memory utilization, usually 10-20MB less than LXDE (about 15MB in Debian 5).

Hardly seems worth it unless you trying to revive something pre-pentium.

You can add tin2 and other stuff and makes a nice desktop (check Crunchbang and Archbang) and it's still lighter than LXDE. Arch forum really likes Openbox for a LnF WM:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88515

It's great for PII or slower but it makes for a nice simple fast desktop on better CPU's.

nunol wrote:I wonder which is faster, Mint 10 LXDE or the new Debian based Mint XFCE?

As far as WM go I think Openbox is fast but dwm is faster.

Well, I am using Openbox + pcmanfm + lxpanel on top of Mint Debian and the final result is a super fast and super light system.
Even in a virtualbox enivronment the response times of the system are minimal.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 40#p407630


I didn't gave a try to Mint Debian XFCE, so I cannot make any comparison. XFCE is intrinsically heavier than LXDE (due to composition), so I would expect Mint Debian with LXDE to win the competition

There is nice post about openbox by vrkalak in the Mint Forum: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 49#p308131

I looked at the requirements, and Mints XFCE seems lighter than Debians, at least when it comes to minimum requirements and initial ram usage.

Open Thunar then open edit menu > preferences > show thumbnails

my oldest notebook in use is a thinkpad x21 with a mobile p3 (500-700mhz) and ram maxed out at 384mb.

after using lmde for a while (deactivating mintmenu gave back quite some responsiveness) i've tried replacing gnome with xfce, and later lxde, and finally got back to gnome, but with openbox as wm instead of metacity. the system ist very responsive, and i have all the goodies i need (and have become used to) in gnome, like easy proxy management, which i need for beeing online via my cell phone.

next thing i will try is replacing nautilus with another file manager, and some other little things like gpicview...

and finally got back to gnome, but with openbox as wm instead of metacity...
...next thing i will try is replacing nautilus with another file manager, and some other little things like gpicview...

Interesting. In Gnome, even gnome-terminal uses more resources -if you it compare for example with sakura or termit. And Nautilus isn't exactly the lightest file manager. Lately, i was using thunar in Gnome. Now, in Xfce i am using sometimes tuxcmd as an alternative. Or for images, geeqie is a lightweight and fast as gpicview but it is also a complete photo viewer, with exif info, a basic photo management etc..
They are a ton of light applications out there, most of them obscure -even if some of them are equal or better to others.

Correct me if i am wrong but isn't LXDE just preconfigured Openbox with LXpanel, Pcmanfm running the desktop and maybe some other LX specific software mixed in?
On my old computer AMD 2ghz/512 RAM LXDE was really snappy, i couldn't really tell the difference from pure Openbox (if my memory serves me right )