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Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:27 am
by gbm31
asymmetros wrote: 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.
in fact, i replaced nautilus with pcmanfm, eog with gpicview and gedit with leafpad.

but, i still use gnome-panel. and i still use some of gnomes "goodies" which aren't available in lxde (yet?)

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 1:08 am
by Nick_Djinn
Some of you sound like you are capable of making you own desktop environments that could be excellent. Id be interested in trying out any ISOs you produce. Id put them on a USB drive to try them out.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:56 am
by asymmetros
Telecaster72 wrote: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 :wink: )
It is a matter of taste of courser, but imho LXDE looks like a poorly configured Openbox. I do not like fLXpanel for example. Instead of this, i prefer tint2 or/plus Xfce-panel. That 's my real point: you can start with pure Openbox (Openbox and nothing else) and then you can add whatever you like. If this sounds minimal for someone, Xfce is the best alternative.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 10:20 am
by Telecaster72
asymmetros wrote:It is a matter of taste of courser, but imho LXDE looks like a poorly configured Openbox. I do not like fLXpanel for example. Instead of this, i prefer tint2 or/plus Xfce-panel. That 's my real point: you can start with pure Openbox (Openbox and nothing else) and then you can add whatever you like. If this sounds minimal for someone, Xfce is the best alternative.
All true, i think LXDE has it´s place if you want a preconfigured OB based system without having to fiddle around too much. That being said i think Xfce is feeling more mature and ready and would recommend that to any newcomer with a crappy PC, especially if you want composite, xfce´s built in composite manager is a gift from above compared to getting xcompmgr to run nicely...
It is a matter of time to spare, knowledge and convenience. I went for LMDE instead of aptosid out of convenience because i know mint always has everything more or less working out of the box.
Another thing:
Is there a difference between the xfce i get if i install it from the debian repos and the regular Mint/Ubuntu repos? Would the debian version be more "pure" than canonical´s ubuntufied one maybe with added gnome dependencies and bloat?

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:15 am
by Nick_Djinn
I never understood the point or appeal of adding XFCE to a gnome base.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 8:27 am
by rekik
Nick_Djinn wrote:I never understood the point or appeal of adding XFCE to a gnome base.
Before Mint Debian Xfce : having the goodness of Xfce on a Mint base without wainting for Mint Xfce release

After Mint Debian Xfce : combining goodness of Xfce and of an Ubuntu based Mint

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:26 pm
by Nick_Djinn
What is the "goodness of XFCE on an Ubuntu base"?

To me it sounds like a step down, since XFCE is a bit less polished and functional. I suppose a minority of users might prefer its layout, but in general XFCE is mimicking the streamlined look and feel of Gnome only using lighter weight options (not just apps, stuff like thunar file manager).

When you put XFCE on a gnome base you reduce it to being a cosmetic shell, and as a cosmetic shell its really nothing special when you already have Gnome.


Then you end up with a bunch of confused individuals who think that XFCE is not a lite weight contender because its nearly as slow as Gnome/KDE and lacking functionality (whats the point?), and in exchange for virtually no performance boost you also sacrifice a bit of functionality.....not as much as if you switched to LXDE, but still..Then you have people trying to argue that its just a different approach and that it can compete with Gnome and KDE on its own....Maybe it can if you pile on the features. With all the gnome eye candy enabled it gives Gnome a run for its money actually, but its not lite weight on ANY base at that point. In general I think its a tough sell. XFCE deserves its place among lightning fast operating systems like XFCE, being only slightly heavier and a lot more functional and a lot more upgradeable and customizable.


I hope that moving XFCE to a debian base (hopefully not a Gnome base on debian :?...) will help people realize that XFCE really is a contender for ultra fast desktop environments, but we will probably get more of the same foolishness and people just assume that 100% of the benefits is from moving to Debian rather than recognizing that part of being that its not piled ontop of a Gnome base.




XFCE is lightning fast on a good computer, potentially faster than LXDE since it stores more in ram if you got it while LXDE requires more communication with the hard drive......Maybe its not QUITE as lite on legacy hardware, but its not any slower. People still think that XFCE isnt fast or good for their needs if they want speed, at least compared to LXDE....On moderate hardware, p4/Athlon or better, 512mb ram, I would say that XFCE can be faster than LXDE simply because apps get loaded into ram while LXDE has to reload everything each time even during the same session as a ram saving approach on outdated hardware.......Also, its NOT just a matter of not loading all the features and eye candy either. Its really about the additional gnome libraries, and while I am no expert I believe that XFCEs compatibility with gnome might mean that its even more greatly slowed down by adding too many gnome libraries than another distro like LXDE might be. There just isnt any point unless you absolutely love the layout, and I think its a tough sell to most users.....which explains the strong preference for LXDE.....Not that LXDE isnt a great distro and good on hardware even too outdated for XFCE, but XFCE isnt getting the appreciation it deserves.


Thats what you get from "adding the goodness of XFCE on a Gnome base".

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 10:23 pm
by nunol
From the XFCE site: "Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly."

If you add XFCE to a GNOME base you will lose a few of the points of the XFCE existence (fast and low on system resources). Sure, not every GNOME lib will be loaded and on modern hardware every DE is fast but I think that the reason XFCE is losing users to LXDE is because Xubuntu and other XFCE distros with to mutch GNOME stuff are not much lighter or faster than GNOME while with LXDE you can see a bigger difference.

It's not only the Mint poll that sees LXDE getting more users than XFCE, Fedora Spins (http://spins.fedoraproject.org/) also sees 2 times more LXDE users than XFCE and distrowatch ranks Lubuntu nº20 and Xubuntu nº42.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 10:58 pm
by Nick_Djinn
I have no experience with the Fedora versions. There are a few good XFCE distros though like PureDyne.

LXDE and Peppermint are great choices for reviving hardware of a certain age, but I dont think its the better choice if your system is fast enough but you are simply looking for 'performance'. Once apps are loaded into ram they work faster on XFCE. XFCE can be lightning fast, especially if you get the nightly version of firefox 4.2 or Minefield or a lite weight browser like Chrome or Opera. With XFCE you can really start to appreciate the power of your machine rather than always just barely keeping up with greater requirements perpetually. You can do this with more or less the basics that you would expect from Gnome, including Compiz. Also, It will share some software with E17 which can be nice for a change of scenery.

I suspect that the good name of Xfce has been run into the dirt even outside of the Ubuntu community, not because LXDE is doing anything wrong but because Ubuntu built it poorly and overly bloated it in Xubuntu.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 11:16 am
by toketin
m4daredsun wrote:
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 :D
Hi, what do you use as login manager and to log out? Because if you don't have lxsession active you can't use the logout option in lxpanel

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 11:00 pm
by nunol
toketin wrote:Hi, what do you use as login manager and to log out? Because if you don't have lxsession active you can't use the logout option in lxpanel
When I use a basic Openbox config I login in CLI, then startx and to logout there is a exit option on the Openbox menu. To reboot or shutdown I use the commands it a terminal window.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 12:55 am
by michaelzap
Back when I used Xubuntu, I came to the conclusion that Xfce was no faster than Gnome and used about the same amount of resources.

Then I tried Crunchbang Xfce, and I realized how wrong I'd been. A pure Xfce distro flies and uses way less RAM than Gnome. I'd go so far as to say that it's just as fast as OpenBox on the systems I've tried it on, although it does use more RAM than that.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Thu May 12, 2011 8:57 am
by nunol
michaelzap wrote:Then I tried Crunchbang Xfce, and I realized how wrong I'd been. A pure Xfce distro flies and uses way less RAM than Gnome. I'd go so far as to say that it's just as fast as OpenBox on the systems I've tried it on, although it does use more RAM than that.
The Openbox version is faster but only on slower computer like a PIII or a slow PIV can you tell the difference. The RAM usage difference is very small, about 10-15MB on Virtualbox so only in low RAM computers with 128MB or less can you feel the difference but both together make a perceptible difference on such computers. If you use a more basic Openbox configuration that the one in Crunchbang you will notice better the difference between Openbox and XFCE.

Debian 6 XFCE is another nice XFCE distro, Xubuntu doesn't make XFCE justice but on the latest 11.04 it's a nice alternative to Ubuntu Unity.

Re: Fastest Desktop Environment for LMDE....

Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 6:14 pm
by m4daredsun
toketin wrote: Hi, what do you use as login manager and to log out? Because if you don't have lxsession active you can't use the logout option in lxpanel
You're absolutely right about lxsession and lxpanel.

As login manager, I use the standard one coming with Mint LMDE, so no problem there.

To logout, you can use the entry in openbox menu (right click on desktop -> Exit), see @Nunol post

Additionally, I also modified the last line of the "config" file for lxpanel, which you can find here:
home/.config/lxpanel/default

Originally, it should look like:

Code: Select all

[Command]
FileManager=pcmanfm %s
Terminal=lxterminal
Logout=lxde-logout
but the logout button will not work.

I modified my file according to:

Code: Select all

[Command]
FileManager=pcmanfm %s
Terminal=lxterminal
Logout=skill -KILL -u m4daredsun
(Of course you have to put the name of your user on the last line)

Such a solution is a bit rough, but I do logout when I push the logout button on the menu :mrgreen: