DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 943, 15 November 2021 |
Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
One of the great frustrations many Android and GNU/Linux users face is that it is difficult to get traditional desktop Linux applications running on Android and it's even less likely an Android application will run on Linux desktop distributions. There are a few projects which attempt to address this issue of applications built for different Linux-based ecosystems not being portable. One such project is called Waydroid. The Waydroid team develops compatibility software designed to run Android applications on Linux distributions that are running a Wayland display server. We have more details on what Waydroid is and how it works in this week's Feature Story. In our News section we talk about the System76 team planning to develop their own desktop environment for Pop!_OS. At the same time the UBports team has published a report on various projects they are collaborating with to make Linux on mobile devices more viable. Meanwhile one OpenBSD developer is working to port more games to the secure-by-default operating system. Then we answer questions about lightweight desktop environments, comparing the LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce desktops. Of these three resource-friendly desktops which is your favourite? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Waydroid
- News: Pop!_OS plans own desktop environment, UBports collaborates with other mobile operating systems, porting games to OpenBSD
- Questions and answers: An overview of LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce
- Released last week: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, Raspberry Pi OS 2021-10-30, 3CX Phone System 10
- Torrent corner: 3CX Phone System, Alpine Linux, ArcoLinux, kodachi, openmamba, Raspberry Pi OS, SparkyLinux
- Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 12.3 RC2
- Opinion poll: Preferred lightweight desktop
- Reader comments
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First impressions of Waydroid
The goal of being able to run Android apps on a laptop computer or on a GNU/Linux distribution has been the driving force behind several projects. The Android-x86 project seeks to run Android itself on common laptop and workstation hardware while projects like Anbox try to run Android apps on a GNU/Linux desktop using container technology. Today I'd like to look at another project which has the goal of running Android apps on both desktop and mobile GNU/Linux distributions. This young project is called Waydroid and its website suggests we can run many Android apps as though they were regular desktop applications.
There are some caveats to this wonderful plan of running Android apps on a desktop Linux distribution. One of the limitations is Waydroid needs to run in a Wayland graphical session. This essentially limits Waydroid to running on systems running recent versions of KDE Plasma or GNOME with compatible hardware. Though I had trouble finding specifics, it seems as though Waydroid needs specific kernel options to be enabled at build time - options which I'm told are incompatible with the Fedora family of distributions, unless we want to build a custom kernel.
Getting set up
According to the Waydroid website the supported options are to run Debian 11 "Bullseye", Ubuntu 20.04 "Focal", or Ubuntu 21.04 "Hirsute" with a Wayland session. We also need to have Python 3, cURL, and the LXC Linux container software installed. Most mainstream distributions include Python 3 these days, but cURL and LXC usually need to be installed through the package manager.
The distribution I was using this week was running MATE 1.24 which does not offer Wayland support so I had to look elsewhere. For the sake of my test I decided to install Kubuntu 21.04 which includes a KDE Plasma session running on Wayland. (Wayland is not the default session, but it can be selected from the login screen.) Once Kubuntu was installed I added the LXC and cURL packages, then confirmed Python 3 was available. Finally, I confirmed I really was in a Wayland session and began installing Waydroid.
The Waydroid website has step-by-step install instructions at the bottom of the main page. These walk us through setting up a new package repository, installing a Waydroid package, and then using that to download what appears to be a copy of an Android build. The Android software is installed by running "sudo waydroid init" and worked smoothly for me. The initial package is tiny, less than 1MB in size. The Android image is quite a bit larger, about 750MB in size. I feel it worth mentioning the Android image is unpacked in the /var directory so we should make sure we have plenty of free space in that part of the filesystem.
At first, when I tried to start the Waydroid service and launch a new session, the software claimed it could not start because it was not running on a Wayland session. I confirmed again my session was Wayland (provided by KDE Plasma's Kwin window manager). I then got the idea to restart the computer and, when Kubuntu came back on-line, I was able to start the Waydroid service and launch a session. The "waydroid status" command confirmed it was up and running, correctly identified my user ID, and that I was running a Wayland session.
Early impressions
At this point I tried to launch the Waydroid software from the application menu and, after a lot of disk activity, nothing happened. When I tried running the command "waydroid show-full-ui" which is suggested on the project's website, again nothing happened.
My system monitor showed the Waydroid container software was running and I could access the Android filesystem by running "sudo waydroid shell", giving me the chance to run commands in the Waydroid container. However, I could not get any graphical applications or controls to show up.
I next tried installing a package, the F-Droid software centre, which the Waydroid documentation recommends. The software installed and I could confirm the package was on the system by running "waydroid app list", but anytime I tried to run F-Droid nothing happened.
I went digging further through the Waydroid documentation and discovered that while both GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops should work, Waydroid recommends versions of Plasma "after 5.21". I was running version 5.21.4, which seemed likely to qualify, but perhaps the documentation meant the latest version of Plasma (5.22) was required? The documentation mentions GNOME running on Pop!_OS, Fedora, or Ubuntu should work. Earlier I mentioned there were comments on various forums that Fedora's kernel was not compatible with Waydroid, so I decided to try Ubuntu 21.04.
Starting over with a clean slate
I wiped Kubuntu from my system, set up Ubuntu 21.04 with GNOME, installed the LXC and cURL software, and confirmed I was running a Wayland session. Once again I installed the Waydroid software and once again its service failed to start until I had rebooted my computer.
Once again I was able to confirm Waydroid was running, I could access its shell and filesystem, and I could get the F-Droid software centre package to install. I then tried to run the Waydroid launcher from the application menu and nothing happened. I also tried running "waydroid show-full-ui" which results in a lot of disk activity, followed by nothing.

Checking on Waydroid's status and processes
(full image size: 361kB, resolution: 1360x768 pixels)
The Waydroid documentation explains how to install a new Android package from the command line, but is unclear about what should happen when we try to launch the same package, or whether we should refer to the app by its full name (org.fdroid.fdroid) or its simple name (fdroid). I tried both and, in both cases, nothing appeared to happen. However, I could confirm the software (along with several default Android apps such as the settings panel and clock) were installed in the container by running "waydroid app list".
I tried running the clock, settings panel, and software centre - all without any visual results. I did see these programs show up in the list of processes when I ran top or ps, meaning the programs were running somewhere, I just couldn't see them.
Conclusions
Waydroid seems like a good idea and a useful concept. It's even relatively easy to set up, assuming you are running a distribution with the necessary kernel features and a modern Wayland session. The command line syntax for Waydroid is quite straight forward and it even has little helpful blurbs on what options are available. In short, the Waydroid project seems to be doing several things well.
While I could install Android apps into the container and even run them (according to my system monitor), I was unable to ever see any Android apps or interface. Perhaps I'm missing a key component, perhaps it's a bug. I looked through the Waydroid log (kudos to the team for making logging and debugging a key feature right from the start), but I was unable to find any problem. There was a warning at times about Waydroid not being able to identify the "host_user", but the "waydroid status" output also showed it correctly found my username and ID.
I've browsed through the project's issue reports and discovered several other people with the same problem, though we do not appear to have a common distribution, video card, or error messages. In other words, Waydroid seems like a good idea and (based on other reports I've read) Waydroid is working for some people. However, it's not ready for general use yet. It's close, but most people will probably need a more friendly installation process, a little more specific documentation on installing and running apps, and (in my case) to be able to see the apps we're running in the container.
Waydroid is close and I've heard it's already running pretty well on some distributions on the PinePhone, but it still has a little ways to go before I can recommend it to people who want to run Android software on their laptop or GNU/Linux phone.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Pop!_OS plans own desktop environment, UBports collaborates with other mobile operating systems, porting games to OpenBSD
In a response to a poll about whether Pop!_OS users would be interested in seeing the distribution offer a KDE Plasma edition alongside the project's default GNOME flavour, one of the members of the Pop!_OS team revealed System76 is working on a custom desktop environment. The desktop, which will be called COSMIC, is not a fork of GNOME, but a new project written in Rust which will offer the same desktop layout and design as the one Pop!_OS already ships. When asked why System76 would put development effort into a new desktop environment, the response was: "What are you expecting us to do? We have a desktop environment that is a collection of GNOME Shell extensions which break every GNOME Shell release. Either we move towards maintaining tens of thousands of lines of monkey patches, or we do it the right way and make the next step a fully fledged desktop environment equal to GNOME Shell." This announcement comes about two months after the Solus team revealed plans to drop the GTK+ development library which the Solus team says is negatively impacted by GNOME's management of the toolkit.
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There are a number of Linux-based mobile operating systems currently available. Some of these strive to provide an open, GNU/Linux platform while others are children of the Android family. Some of these projects are able to collaborate to share code and progress. The UBports team have published a blog post which outlines various ways the developers work with other distributions and mobile platforms. One key component that gets shared is called Halium. "Halium provides a Hardware Abstraction Layer that allows GNU/Linux to run on mobile devices that come pre-installed with Android. Halium contains the device-specific Linux kernel with drivers, as well as Android services needed to talk to the hardware and the telephony stack oFono. Thanks to the Halium abstraction layer, Ubuntu Touch, Droidian, LuneOS and other mobile Linux platforms have the same way to use the Android source code, launch Android services and flash images to devices. So Halium makes sure that all these projects are able to boot on a phone. By collaborating on these low-level components, these distributions have a common Linux base. This allows each project to focus on the development of the higher layers, where they differ from each other in their user interfaces."
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The OpenBSD operating system is well known for its security, clean design, and accurate documentation. Something it is less known for is being used as a gaming platform. The OpenBSD Webzine interviewed one of the OpenBSD developers who is working on bringing games to the platform: "Working on games on OpenBSD has a very pioneering feel to it because it seems so outlandish at first sight. The advantage for me is that there is lots of (relatively) low-hanging fruit and little risk of breaking something that's critical to many users and developers. There is a certain purist take on using OpenBSD that I disagree with. Like that certain applications are frivolous and not worthy of developer attention - games, watching videos, social media... or even a graphical user interface. Instead, I hope to increase the scope of use without sacrificing the core ideas driving the project." The rest of the short interview can be found in Issue 4 of the OpenBSD Webzine.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
An overview of LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce
Untangling-desktop-differences asks: Firstly, thank you so much for your many years dedicated to DistroWatch and the advancement of Linux.
I am really confused about the desktops Xfce, LXQt and LXDE as they all say 'lightweight' and are a similar mix of letters. There may be more than just those three - all 4-letter "l" "x" something something. It seems like every few months a new one appends itself to this list.
Could you maybe one week illuminate the subject and write about the points of difference, purpose (target audience), etc about each of them?
DistroWatch answers: First, I appreciate your kind words, thank you. I have a great time working on open source software and DistroWatch.
Regarding the desktop environments, let's talk about Xfce first. Xfce describes itself as follows:
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.
While Xfce describes itself as being lightweight, most people would probably refer to Xfce as being a middle-weight desktop environment. As the project's description says, Xfce strives to balance speed and low resource consumption with visual appeal and user-friendly features.

Xubuntu running the Xfce desktop
(full image size: 239kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
In a lot of ways Xfce finds a middle ground. It offers lots of features, customization options, friendly tools, and desktop utilities. On the other side, Xfce manages to maintain a fairly small CPU and memory footprint. The desktop typically consumes less than 500MB of memory and practically idles the CPU. Xfce has a well deserved reputation for being relatively small (compared to KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Budgie, and Deepin) while offering most of the key features and options people want to see in a modern desktop environment.
While Xfce may not ship with as many in-house applications as KDE Plasma or GNOME do, the project ships some useful key components. Xfce includes its own capable settings panel, the top-notch Thunar file manager, a bulk file renaming tool, screenshot utility, virtual terminal, and a number of other small tools which fill out the desktop experience.
The Xfce desktop is built with the GTK+3 toolkit and tends to evolve slowly and steadily. The project has a reputation for taking its time implementing changes, giving users a slowly evolving desktop experience (in contrast to GNOME and Plasma which make rapid, breaking changes).
Xfce has its own, highly capable window manager, Xfwm, which performs well and has very little overhead.
The LXDE project is the most lightweight of the three desktops we are talking about today. LXDE is built using the depreciated GTK+2 toolkit and typically uses the third-party Openbox window manager.
LXDE, in comparison with other Linux desktops, has a tendency to be viewed less as a unified, complete desktop, and more as a collection of desktop tools running on top of Openbox. The LXDE components, like the panel and file manager, tend to be updated independently rather than as a whole.
The LXDE desktop usually offers the best performance and lowest memory footprint of the popular Linux desktop environments. It probably also ships with the fewest components and tools as people who run LXDE tend to want performance and minimal resource consumption over features.

LXLE running the LXDE desktop
(full image size: 768kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Unfortunately, LXDE is mostly unmaintained these days. The LXDE project has shifted focus to working on LXQt (more on the latter desktop in a moment). The LXDE website and wiki largely consist of out of date information and broken links, a reflection of the lack of maintenance the desktop components receive these days. Some Linux distributions still ship LXDE, but most are moving on to its successor, LXQt.
The LXQt desktop started as a merger of the LXDE-Qt and Razor-qt desktop projects. It strives to provide approximately the same look and experience as LXDE, with two key differences. The first is that LXQt uses the Qt toolkit as its base (opposed to GTK+ which is used by LXDE and Xfce). The second is LXQt is actively maintained and continues to put out regular releases.
The LXQt desktop has approximately the same tools, features, and layout as LXDE. Like its sibling, LXQt uses the Openbox window manager under the hood and piles desktop components such as a panel and application menu on top. The desktop components of LXQt offer most of the same functionality and minimal approach of LXDE, but have a distinct Qt style to them that will look familiar to people who have run KDE Plasma. In fact, LXQt might be viewed as a sort of minimal cousin of the KDE Plasma desktop with many applications and options removed.

SparkyLinux running the LXQt desktop
(full image size: 289kB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
While all three desktops (Xfce, LXDE, and LXQt) describe themselves as lightweight and (by modern standards) they are, there is a bit of difference in the weight of each. In my experience, Xfce tends to be the heaviest of the three with the highest number of features and conveniences. LXQt, in my tests, is smaller than Xfce, but requires about 50% more memory than LXDE while offering approximately the same features as its sibling. LXDE requires the least amount of memory and CPU but is using an outdated toolkit and is largely unmaintained.
As to who is the target audience for each desktop, that is a matter of taste. In my opinion, Xfce is a desktop for people who want a full-featured desktop environment, but who don't want the overhead of all the widgets and visual effects that comes with KDE Plasma and GNOME. LXDE is a super-light desktop that manages to run on older, less capable hardware - in part because it is so minimal and built using obsolete technology. The LXQt project fills in a middle ground. It offers modern technology and a minimal interface. It tends to be heavier than LXDE by a notable amount while usually being smaller than Xfce. The LXQt project is really ideal for people who like the look and style of KDE Plasma components, but who want a minimal interface with fewer options and features.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
Raspberry Pi OS 2021-10-30
Raspberry Pi OS is a Debian-based distribution custom built for Raspberry Pi computers. The development team have published a new version of Raspberry Pi OS which carries the code name "Bullseye". The new version is based on Debian 11 and upgrades a number of desktop components. "All of the desktop components and applications are now using version 3 of the GTK+ user interface toolkit. GTK+ is a layer of software that applications can use to draw standard user interface components (known as 'widgets') such as buttons, menus and the like, so that all applications have a consistent look and feel. Up until now, most of the desktop has used version 2 of the GTK+ toolkit, but increasing numbers of Debian applications are using GTK+3, so to try and keep things consistent, we've upgraded all our software and the desktop itself to the newer version. GTK+3 has been around for several years now, and people have occasionally asked why we didn't move to it before now. The simple answer is that many things are much easier to do with GTK+2 than with GTK+3, particularly when it comes to customising the appearance of widgets - GTK+3 has removed several useful features which we relied upon. It has ended up being necessary to find work-arounds to a lot of these - hopefully no one will notice them and everything will still work as before!" Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
3CX Phone System 10
Agathoklis Prodromou has announced the release of 3CX Phone System 10, a major update of the company's specialist Linux distribution designed for VoIP telephony. The new version is based on Debian 10 "Buster" and it comes with the latest version of 3CX telephony software, build 18.0.1.237, released last month. From the release announcement: "Our latest 3CX ISO is now available bringing the latest version of Debian 10 and 3CX v18 Update 1. The new ISO image supports Microsoft Hyper-V Gen2 virtual machines with 'Secure Boot' enabled for additional protection. Debian 'Buster' version 10.11. Keeping your instance as up-to-date and secure as possible is a key priority for us. That is why, unlike other PBXs, we make sure that our ISO image files support the latest operating system. This means that you receive regular updates to strengthen security, increase performance and reduce resource requirements." Further information about the latest version of the 3CX telephony software is available in the changelog.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5
Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5, the lates update of the company's commercial, enterprise-class Linux distribution with bundled customer support: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 is now generally available. It brings new features and improvements to help streamline deployments, optimize performance and help mitigate risk in your environments. RHEL 8.5 continues the tradition of new features and improvements for running Linux containers. This release brings tooling that will add flexibility and reduce friction in running Podman in a wider range of environments. Containerized Podman - the RHEL 8 Podman container image (rhel8/podman) is now GA and can help unlock the usage of Podman in cloud CI/CD systems, on WSL2 on Windows, under Docker Desktop on macOS, and (of course) on RHEL 6, 7 and 8. You can use the Podman container image to help develop and run other container images. Verify container image signatures by default - in RHEL 8.5 users can pull container images with confidence." Read the press release, the What's New blog post and the release notes for more information.
AlmaLinux OS 8.5
The AlmaLinux OS team have announced the release of a new point release in the distribution's 8.x series. The new version is built using upstream's 8.5 sources. "Hi, Community! The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is thrilled to announce that AlmaLinux OS 8.5 Stable is now available. This stable release for x86_64 and ARM architectures is ready for production installations and to power all your computing needs and workloads. So grab it from the nearest mirror and join us on the AlmaLinux Community Chat to discuss. The Raspberry Pi image is also updated to the newest version. Our Live Images, Cloud and Container images updates are in process and will be updated shortly as well." Further information on AlmaLinux OS 8.5 is available through the project's release announcement with technical information provided in the distribution's release notes.
Lakka 3.6
Tomáš Kelemen has announced the release of Lakka 3.6, the latest stable version of the project's lightweight Linux distribution that intends to transform various popular computing devices into full-blown game consoles. From the release announcement: "We are happy to announce the new and updated version of Lakka. Changes since version 3.5.2: RetroArch updated to 1.9.13.2; option to control the menu by all users is back; new option for automatic frame delay (accessible via Settings, Latency and also via Quick Menu - Advanced Settings must be enabled to access this option); cores updated to their most recent versions; beetle-fce - added new libretro core (exists besides beetle-fce-fast); ecwolf - added new libretro core; fbneo - added highscore.dat to RetroArch system folder; mame2003-plus - added artwork, cheat.dat and history.dat to RetroArch system folder; scummvm - added engine files, themes, soundfont and basic scummvm.ini file to RetroArch system folder; Mesa updated to 21.2.5; mainline kernel updated to 5.10.78; Raspberry kernel/firmware updated to 1.20211029; fixed issue with older Intel GPUs...."
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Peers connected: 1,797
- Total torrents seeded: 2,648
- Total data uploaded: 40.9TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Preferred lightweight desktop
In this week's Questions and Answers column we talked about the differences between three popular, lightweight desktop environments: LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce. Which of these three is your favourite? Let us know why you like your desktop in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on predictable release schedules in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which is your preferred lightweight desktop?
LXDE: | 276 (11%) |
LXQt: | 250 (10%) |
Xfce: | 1260 (48%) |
Other: | 354 (14%) |
I do not use a lightweight desktop: | 472 (18%) |
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Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 22 November 2021. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • ISO start time... (by J. Mulkey on 2021-11-15 01:25:52 GMT from United States)
Can someone explain why ISO DVD's take so long to boot up. When I first started using them 15 years ago, they were pretty fast. Then a couple of years ago, they slowed way down, like a factor of 10. Is it EFI that makes them slower? Or is it a disk check that runs before things get started?
2 • "lightweight" desktops (by Adina on 2021-11-15 01:43:21 GMT from United States)
My preferred lightweight desktop is Plasma. Specialized lightweight desktops are a relic of the time when KDE was as heavy as GNOME, a time we don't live in anymore.
3 • LXQt can use a number of different window managers (by shep on 2021-11-15 01:54:12 GMT from United States)
LXQt uses the Openbox window manager under the hood < - Not Correct
From this Debian webpage: https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/lxqt
dep: xfwm4 window manager of the Xfce project or x-window-manager virtual package provided by [show 53 providing packages]
https://cubiclenate.com/2019/01/27/using-kwin-on-lxqt-with-opensuse/
4 • Xfce (by Gerard Lally on 2021-11-15 01:57:33 GMT from Ireland)
Always come back to Xfce. No drama, unlike Gnome ; and no headless lemming devs all trying to squeeze something new -- yet again -- into KDE / Plasma. Fingers crossed the Xfce team can somehow break away from Gnome's grip on Gtk.
5 • There is a build of LXDE built on gtk3 (by shep on 2021-11-15 02:03:21 GMT from United States)
LXDE is built using the depreciated GTK2 toolkit and ... Also not entirely true
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LXDE#GTK_3_version
These reviews are turning into puffed up click-bait. If you are going to make an authoritative statement, verify it first.
6 • Lightweight desktop (by Travis on 2021-11-15 02:03:34 GMT from United States)
@2
I agree with you. KDE used to be a heavyweight desktop environment and it has come a long way and I’d consider it lightweight. The desktop environment that’s getting to be heavier weight is XFCE.
7 • Xfce: fewer features than KDE, but similar in weight (by Dave on 2021-11-15 02:33:12 GMT from United States)
People who like the look and feel of Xfce should definitely go ahead and enjoy it, but shouldn’t do so under the illusion that it’s particularly lightweight. It’s lighter than Gnome, but similar to KDE in its use of RAM and CPU.
8 • desktop resource usage (by Rush Ville on 2021-11-15 02:34:10 GMT from United States)
I was using MX 21 xfce until a couple days ago, when I borked grub. I figured this was a good time to play with the kde version. To my surprise, the ram usage at desktop idle was almost the same between the two. Around 650 mb.
The computer is a Toshiba 855D running an AMD a-8 Apu with 4 gb ram.
Admittedly, while xfce feels a little more snappy, it's not big difference. Good enough that I'm gonna keep the kde version.
Just my experience, rush
9 • Light Desktop - mate (by Brian R. on 2021-11-15 02:46:11 GMT from United States)
I'm surprised I didn't see Mate listed. I find it one of the better lightweight desktops. In my experience it uses less than Xfce and is quick and capable.
10 • Lightweight - DWM (by Andy Prough on 2021-11-15 02:50:06 GMT from United States)
I voted 'other' - my favorite lightweight desktop is not a desktop, it's a window manager - DWM. JWM and CWM are even lighter from what I've seen. In comparison, XFCE isn't really light at all.
11 • LXQt and LXDE (by Jesse on 2021-11-15 02:51:53 GMT from Canada)
@3: "LXQt uses the Openbox window manager under the hood < - Not Correct"
Yes, correct, LXQt running on Openbox is corrent. LXQt is typically used with Openbox. Though it can be used with other window managers. Debian may choose to use an alternative, but that's not typical. From the LXQt documentation itself: "LXQt does not provide its own window manager but any arbitrary window manager can be used, most notably Openbox, KWin (the window manager of KDE), and Xfwm4 (the window manager of Xfce)."
@5: "LXDE is built using the depreciated GTK2 toolkit and ... Also not entirely true..."
Yes, it is entirely true, LXDE uses GTK2. Read the link you posted. It clearly states that what you linked to is an experimental (and not entirely working) fork of LXDE that uses GTK3. This is not the LXDE software you get if you install it from upstream or from your distro's package manager.
12 • Does lightweight matter? (by Gerard Lally on 2021-11-15 02:55:33 GMT from Ireland)
Does it really matter whether Plasma is now as lightweight as Xfce? When you are working with full screen programs open, the only part of the desktop you see or care about is the panel. Xfce's panel is far superior to any other out there, and you don't need an engineering manual to make changes to it, unlike Plasma's panel.
13 • gtk addiction (by dave on 2021-11-15 03:10:37 GMT from United States)
I realize this is easier said than done-- and that as a user who does not contribute to such development, I shouldn't talk.. however, I have been saying for years that the non-Gnome projects who are reliant upon GTK should band together and fork some version of GTK (probably a pretty old one) and move things back in a sane direction. It could be called DTK (Deprecated Tool Kit) or STK (Sane Tool Kit) as a tongue-in-cheek diss to Gnome's mismanagement of GTK.
Heck, even Soystem76 has seen the writing on the wall.. though I'm not too keen on Rust-- more power to them. I won't be using it, but any news of projects breaking their ties with Gnome is good news. Hopefully, they will do the smart thing and build their DE so it is easy to customize. Gnome Shell would've been a lot better if it had the customizability of Gnome 2. At least it sounds like they have learned a lesson from Canonical's mistakes with Unity.. any connection with Gnome is a mistake in the long run.
This is one of the reasons I don't like Xfce as much as I used to. GTK3 is sort of a nightmare. And yes, it's significantly more bloated than it once was. I picked Xfce for the poll because I'm currently using it, but tbh I prefer a window manager type of setup. The only reason I haven't gone back to IceWM is laziness.
14 • Lightweight environment - I still like Blackbox or Openbox (by Erich Friesen on 2021-11-15 03:26:34 GMT from United States)
Blackbox had all that I needed and want and stayed out of the way.Wish that it was gpl so I have started using openbox.
15 • LXDE (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-11-15 03:47:27 GMT from United States)
Upstream LXDE is build entirely on GTK+3. Ref: official LXDE blog. And, I voted LXDE. But, more accurately, on my primary desktop and a few others, I just use OpenBox, with PCManFM file manager to run the desktop and LXPanel to provide a full-service panel. The results look a lot like LXDE, but without the bloat.
16 • LXqt is broken (by atilla birer on 2021-11-15 04:38:56 GMT from Romania)
When you change font DPI settings they don't even take effect. Thus I stick to LXDE.
17 • XFCE preferred by system developers, despite newer environments. (by Greg Zeng on 2021-11-15 04:59:57 GMT from Australia)
From today's current Distrowatch database,there are 276 "active" operating systems. Linux has 251 active systems, Then BSD (15), Solaris (4) and "other" (4).
Not all operating systems need Desktops. IoT systems are often Linux based. Some Linux systems interact with other "computers", without any need for CLI (command line interface), WM (window managers) nor other consideration for human operators.
Focussing on Linux systems, the Desktop Environrents (DE) number about 50. "Windows Managers" (WM) do not encourage the WIMP (Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) made famous by Xerox, Apple & Microsoft. "Forks" from Gnome-2, MATE & Cinnamon, did not like the early experiments of the replacement Gnome. Historically Xfce was one of the early survivors of the DE variations. LXDE, and later LXQt were lower resource versions of XFCE, having less flexibility & fewer features.
The earlier KDE settings were heavy in resource use, but as others comment here, KDE Plasma now can have lower resources than Xfce.
There are about 250 active teams of developers for the Linux systems. The DE preferred by the creators of Linux operating systems is: Xfce (92), Gnome (67), KDE (55), MATE (49), LXDE (38), LXQt (29) & Cinnamon (27). The above 7 preferred desktop environments also may have a "fall-back" systems, in both WM and CLI.
Personally I prefer the predictability & reliability of Xfce. The innovations of the later DE are full of exciting features & experiments,but have unwanted reliability. Often these later DE versions might be ugly to use, or ugly in appearance. No Linux system yet understands Gkrellm better than PCLOS. The other DE try to emulate Gkrellm, but cannot do it. The minor gains of LXDE, & LXQt too costly for the slight advantage of resource savings on modern computer systems.
18 • xfce (by Titus_Groan on 2021-11-15 05:26:54 GMT from New Zealand)
and here I was thinking that Xfce stood for:
eXtremely Fine Computing Environment.
nothing wrong with their marketing!
19 • Desktops- (by Albert on 2021-11-15 05:32:06 GMT from United States)
I like classic desktop setups which are highly/easily configurable and relatively fast. Therefore I like Xfce best. I also like Mate and KDE for the same reasons. I've seen that snappiness has a lot to do with the kernel being used; lately I tried a system with KDE that was really fast. I think that KDE is not as easily customizable as Xfce, but you can manage anyway.
20 • Why ignore TDE? (by bin on 2021-11-15 05:46:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
If you're looking for lightweight, graphically rich and stable then why ignore TDE.
Q4OS is probably the best current distro release using it - though it's easy enough to install elsewhere.
Yes it is based on KDE 3.5 and yes that was a while back and yes Trinity Desktop Environment is still being maintained and patched and enhanced and yes it doesn't rely on GTK (though theses days one does tend to use a lot of GTK based apps)
21 • Lightweight DE (by RoestVrijStaal on 2021-11-15 05:47:06 GMT from Netherlands)
It's a pity that JWM is not mentioned in the poll, because IT IS used by true lightweight distributions like Puppy (and descendants), Tiny Core Linux and antiX.
22 • lightweight desktops (by always curious about FOSS on 2021-11-15 06:55:11 GMT from Germany)
The real fat elephants in the os are the browser and a lot of blown uo websites. In comparison, the desktops no longer play a role. For me it's XFCE becuse of the easy configuration of the Panel, with the lot of tools. I find KDE to be cluttered and complicated. And i like Openbox very much. It's really light and customizable. The Gnome Desktop is a single paternalism of the users. I hate the Gnome Desktop.
23 • What means to be lightweight (by radu on 2021-11-15 07:29:07 GMT from Moldova)
XFCE is lightweight. KDE is not lightweight
cause do serious testing people !!!
If you use a distro optimized for KDE: like OpenSUSE or Kubuntu or KDE neon and open task manager after system start and see that it eats 600 MB it says nothing...
cause dolphin eats a lot & okular & gwenview ....
and when you use KDE daily with all of its apps open and measure RAM & disk usage (I/O) & CPU it eats much more than XFCE with all apps open
Disk Usage especially -> KDE uses HDD like crazy. (thank you very much Nepomuk and co.)
p.s: If you take a distro optimized for Xfce (Linux Lite, Mx Linux, Manjaro) you will see that XFCE eats much less than KDE.
24 • Xfce (by MiMismo on 2021-11-15 08:00:35 GMT from Spain)
Xfce developers are the only DE developers that no gets crazy as time goes by and this is a feature difficult to see nowadays. It's true that it is less light as it was since the adoption of gtk3, but still Xfce is as coherent, easy to use and reliable as ever. If you have work to have done and like traditional desktops (not futuristic experiments that go nowhere), imho this is the best option.
25 • KDE, Xfce, GNOME, etc. (by Microlinux on 2021-11-15 08:01:32 GMT from France)
I've been 100% GNU/Linux for the last two decades (since Slackware 7.1). I used to build all major - and most of the minor - desktop environments from scratch (building packages from source).
My unfiltered take on this after 20 years of using this stuff:
- KDE is nice and gets nicer with every release.
- Xfce is nice and gets nicer with every release.
- GNOME is a mess that gets worse with every release. I hate it with a passion and the FOSS world would be better off without it.
As for lightweight desktop environments, the latest KDE (Plasma) runs nicely in our local school on two dozen battered Dell Optiplex 330 built in 2007 with a dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM. It's as lightweight as Xfce but offers way more functionality.
26 • Pop OS and its woes (by ostro on 2021-11-15 08:30:30 GMT from Poland)
System76: A Case Study on How Not To Collaborate With Upstream https://blogs.gnome.org/christopherdavis/
27 • XFCE in Linux Mint 20.2 (by Bert Barten on 2021-11-15 08:38:01 GMT from Netherlands)
For me is XFCE on every distro the best. At the moment I use Linux Mint 20.2 with XFCE on a Dell Inspiron N5030 with dual core processor. On this laptop I installed several distributions with KDE and XFCE. They all work pretty good, but Linux Mint with XFCE works the fastest and without any problems. Very solid and easy to use distro. For every user with a windows laptop recommended!!
28 • desktop (by Dave Postles on 2021-11-15 09:18:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've been running the Fluxbox desktop edition of MX. I rather like it. This is on a very old Compaq box which my partner discarded - originally 2Gb RAM, but I've doubled the RAM.
29 • XFCE (by Alessandro di Roma on 2021-11-15 10:41:16 GMT from Italy)
The best for me is XFCE plus wmtile, see https://pypi.org/project/wmtile
30 • Desktop (by James on 2021-11-15 11:10:55 GMT from United States)
I prefer Mate. I do not use any OS that does not offer Mate.
31 • @1 • ISO start time... (by James on 2021-11-15 11:17:07 GMT from United States)
I really don't know, but I suspect it is the size of the OS's today. I can remember when they fit on a CD. That all has to be loaded.
32 • What is light weight? (by Appalachian on 2021-11-15 12:02:21 GMT from United States)
If light weight means less resource usage then, as many people have already pointed out, you want to add KDE to the list. Depending on the distro, and the items installed, I get more or less the same resource use out of KDE that I do on both XFCE and LXQT.
Considering how light LXQT is on features, this means that LXQT is pointless. I can get comparable resource use, more features, and much more polished experience from KDE than I can from LXQT.
If you're really low on resources, then the thing to do these days is just run a window manager. But then again, time itself is a resource, and getting a window manager turned into something useful is a time intensive process, so in the end KDE probably wins here too.
33 • LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce (by Carlos Felipe on 2021-11-15 12:18:25 GMT from Brazil)
I like xfce, but nowadays I use GNOME Shell, running very good also in weak hardware
34 • Poll Query (by Otis on 2021-11-15 12:58:12 GMT from United States)
KDE Plasma on MX Linux. XFCE on Manjaro and GhostBSD and Artix. All on the same machine, a fast, modern laptop with a huge SSD.
I discovered XFCE in the days of tiny hard drive, slow CPUs, etc. Worked best for me on those machines.
35 • ...left out.. (by Otis on 2021-11-15 13:01:34 GMT from United States)
@34 I left out that I have XFCE on those three distros mainly to keep up with the development of XFCE and just because I do very much like it, even though KDE Plasma is on my daily driver MX Linux on the same laptop.
36 • Light weight DE (by hadji457 on 2021-11-15 13:07:00 GMT from United States)
@2 & @6, I am in agreement with you when it comes to KDE/Plasma. I experiment with DE's all the time. On my machine Plasma uses about 550 - 650mb of memory with all the bling going on. If I want "light weight" I run Fluxbox or i3 window managers.
37 • Lightweight desktops (by dragonmouth on 2021-11-15 13:19:24 GMT from United States)
Most Desktop Environments start out light or relatively light. But because of feature creep, over the years they get heavier and heavier. But then, all software gets heavier over time. Used to be full-blown distros weighed in at less than 500 MB. Now most of them are 2 GB and more.
The "weight" of a DE might have made a difference when m/b's could only support 1 or 2 GB of RAM. Today, with 32GB or 64GB systems being common, the memory usage of DE's is effectively a non-factor.
38 • Lightweight desktops (by uuu on 2021-11-15 13:26:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've been using tools from XFCE and LXDE on my desktop on Slackware for the past 7 or 8 years, although i run AwesomeWM for window management. It all works great together. As far as gtk goes, XFCE/LXDE are still doing it properly with user interface design. Unlike the abomination called GNOME.
The reason i've stuck with general use tools/apps from gtk based lightweight desktops is simply because GNOME has usability issues (i'm using a mouse and keyboard, not a giant pickle to slap my screen with!).
39 • Android apps on Linux (by Ankleface Wroughlandmire on 2021-11-15 13:46:57 GMT from Ecuador)
It's a real pity that the most simple and reliable method for running Android apps on the Linux desktop no longer exists. It was called "Arc Welder", an extension for Chrome actually created by Google that worked extremely well and didn't require Wayland or emulation or any complicated frameworks (unlike for example Anbox's dependence on a specific kernel version and the dreadful Snap framework). Unfortunately the extension has disappeared, leaving us with no good way apart from a VM to run Android apps on Linux.
40 • re: Slow booting ISOs? (by Kingneutron on 2021-11-15 14:36:16 GMT from United States)
@1 - if the ISO boots quicker in a VM (virtualbox / vmware) then try replacing your DVD drive. 20 years ago I would have recommended running a head cleaner through it but you can get a new one that supports M-Disc for pretty cheap these days.
41 • Really? It matters? (by Friar Tux on 2021-11-15 15:38:58 GMT from Canada)
Due to the amount of RAM these days I really don't care much about memory usage. I care more if it works flawlessly. For me, KDE has too many issues, Gnome doesn't work, and when it does, it's a bother to set up to the way I like. Most of the others are about the same as the one I use (Cinnamon) but without the desktop and panel applets - which I use a lot.
42 • fave light-weight DE (by paraplegic racehorse on 2021-11-15 15:40:01 GMT from United States)
My favorite light weight DE is, by far, Moksha. I don't run it on my daily-driver, though, mostly because of theme incompatibility with Qt and Gtk applications. But on my old single-core, single-threaded, sub-1GB RAM, 32-bit laptop, it's surprising snappy; and pretty. To be fair, though, the window bar and widgets consume a ridiculous amount of screen real estate compared to other DEs in similar resource-consumption space.
My daily driver is KDE Plasma, but I've replaced KWin with Xmonad because I want the funsies of KDE with tiling and the KWin tiling hacks are terrible.
43 • Xfce (by David on 2021-11-15 17:26:45 GMT from United Kingdom)
Xfce may be described as light when compared to Gnome and its spinoffs, but (unlike LXQT) it is not specifically designed to be light. It couldn't have been designed to be lighter than other Linux desktops because it was the first full open-source desktop, designed to replace Unix's commercial CDE. The policy was once summed up by a developer as aiming to just do the job without getting under your feet or in your face.
I use it because (1) it stays with text-based configuration files, unlike Gnome and Mate; (2) it's versatile, unlike Gnome which feels like something for a phone; (3) it's stable, without the periodic crises on KDE; (4) it has good documentation.
44 • DWW (by Tad Strange on 2021-11-15 17:39:14 GMT from Canada)
Is there any simple, solid method for running Android apps on linux, then?
It's not something that I've given more than a curious glance at, because I cannot think of a single app that I would want to run.
Of all off your lightweight DEs listed, I've only spent real time with Xfce, and even then I've never used it on a daily driver. I just prefer the look and feel of Plasma, albeit with many effects turned off, and no desktop widgets and such. Not for performance reasons, mind you.
Philosophically, the more the GUI becomes less of a DE and more of a WM, the less that I'm likely to use it. I just don't like setting up and maintaining desktop configurations with poor/sparse tools or, even worse, text files.
Older hardware that I actually want to run will get a modest RAM and HDD-to-SSD upgrade - that is what gets you noticeably better performance. If it cannot utilise either, it gets gifted or recycled.
45 • Best Lightweight Desktop (by Moss Bliss on 2021-11-15 17:50:46 GMT from United States)
Why isn't Enlightenment/Moksha in this poll? It is lighter weight than anything listed.
46 • Desktop (by Hank on 2021-11-15 18:25:53 GMT from Austria)
ICEWM makes most other environments feel like slogging dead slugs
Yesterday migrated yet another user from XFCE to antiX 21 with Runit and ICEWM-
The computer feels like twice as fast or more, Boot shutdown is ridiculously fast, on to desktop in way less time. Memory usage greatly reduced. Love it, user too.
47 • Desktop (by Hank on 2021-11-15 18:27:14 GMT from Austria)
ICEWM makes most other environments feel like slogging dead slugs
Yesterday migrated yet another user from XFCE to antiX 21 with Runit and ICEWM-
The computer feels like twice as fast or more, Boot shutdown is ridiculously fast, on to desktop in way less time. Memory usage greatly reduced. Love it, user too.
regarding wrongwaydroid, wasted time too....
48 • System 76 NIH syndrome (by mircea on 2021-11-15 18:55:53 GMT from Moldova)
It is sad that instead of working closer with GNOME, System 76 folks chose to create a separate desktop...
History doesn't teach this people !!!
In past a lot of people did the same Ubuntu with their Unity, which was abandoned cause it was too much to implement a display server(Mir) & alternative on Qt
Budgie which wanted to rewrite GNOME, but it was too much for them to implement wayland, so they gave up on GTK, started to switch to Qt, then moved back to GTK, then moved back from vala to C, then are discussing to abandon GTK in favor of EFL And Budgie founder abandoned budgie altogether and switched back to GNOME while working on https://serpentos.com/
And knowing this that creating a new desktop from scratch is a long feat, this folks wanna create a new desktop, mainly cause they have money and NIH syndrome....
49 • GTK (by Cheker on 2021-11-15 18:59:52 GMT from Portugal)
Speaking of GTK, didn't a certain dev team recently "threaten" to fork and maintain their own version of GTK? Did I make that up, am I getting it mixed up with the Pop OS DE announcement?
50 • Gnome, the delicate victim (by dave on 2021-11-15 19:37:25 GMT from United States)
Funny to read Gnome devs attempting to portray themselves as 'threatened' and somehow abused, when they are easily some of the most obnoxious, deceptive and passive aggressively threatening people in the FOSS world. They have been flagrantly crapping on other people's dinner tables for years, shouting, "bon App-etit!" and then have the nerve to cry when a fly lands on their own plate.
51 • DE (by Klaus on 2021-11-15 19:48:15 GMT from Serbia)
Nothing is as fast and lightweight as IceWM.
We need more distros with IceWM under the hood serial.
52 • lightweight desktop (by Toran on 2021-11-15 19:58:07 GMT from Belgium)
I think how lightweight a desktop is, depends on the distro. I have seen Mate hitting 1.3 GB, but also 650MB. Openbox with 330 MB, but also 1.3 GB. KDE Plasma with 1.1 GB, but also 560 MB. I consider a well configured KDE as lightweight. Sorry, but Openbox and Enlightenment are not desktops, but window managers capable of working as a desktop. I use KDE on Devuan with great satisfaction.
53 • lightweight desktop (by Toran on 2021-11-15 20:01:30 GMT from Belgium)
IceWM is not a desktop, but a capable window manager. So are Jwm and Fluxbox.
54 • Lightweight Desktops (by Peter086 on 2021-11-15 20:17:35 GMT from Spain)
I've been a full-time Linux user since 2004, but first installed it in 1996. I've used Gnome 2/3, Xfce, Mate and KDE 2/3/4/5. Besides, I have tested a few others in search of lightness (most notably, Enlightenment, which is surprisingly fast, but weird).
Though I started with Red Hat's Gnome,I preferred KDE back in the old Qt 2/3 days, but switched to Xfce and Mate when KDE 4. When I tested KDE 5, I knew I was back "home". Nowadays, KDE is on the lighter side of the spectrum, while being fully customizable.
55 • xfce | lxde | lxqt (by Mathi on 2021-11-15 21:09:06 GMT from United States)
My observations:
xfce :
1. it feels like a full featured and integrated desktop. It has tools, utils and also plugins for added functionality like display notifications, weather, etc., 2. look and feel is not that modern but very consistent 3. consumes more memory than lxde but offers more tools and functionality
lxde :
1. lightweight of the three 2. feels like an asorted set of tools not a tightly integrated desktop. (This is it own advantages as well and i liked this) 3. outdated, not actively developed 4. ideal desktop for old and systems that are light on resource
lxqt :
1. This is definitely not lightweight like lxde. It uses some KDE components and in my opinion, this falls under the mid-weight desktop environment 2. Doesn't yet have feature parity with lxde. Some of the applications like filemanager, text editor, haven't yet reached feature parity with lxde. 3. Applications (like filemanager, text editor, console, etc.,) don't have uniform look and feel. User interface is not consistent 4. QT applications like scanner, network-manager-ui, pdf viewer, image viewer don't feel well polished like the GTK applications.
I was an lxde user, but now has switched to MATE.
56 • Desktop 'weight' can vary even among the same DE (by AdrienM on 2021-11-15 21:22:28 GMT from United States)
How 'heavy' or 'big' a DE turns out to be dependent on a number of factors. The stock DEs are significantly smaller when installed after the fact then as part of a desktop package, flavor, or spin a la Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu etc. (same goes for the Mints) Any default desktop offered by a distro is likely to be considerably 'heavier' than another because desktop oriented distros tend to include customizations for their users providing additional functionality.
It has been a few years, since my tests, but I found this to be the general order of DEs/WMs that I tested using Ubuntu Minimal (not a net install, this was just a core OS, no X even):
Openbox Fluxbox XFCE LXDE LXQt KDE GNOME
That's in order by memory footprint (via htop) after about 2 minutes of idle after boot. This used basic installs without recommended/suggested packages or apps except where necessary to get to a login screen and show the desktop.
Openbox was barely 'lighter' than Fluxbox by only a few MB at maybe near 60-70MB each. XFCE was about 100MB, with LXDE and LXQt running around 175-195 each. KDE was about 350MB and GNOME was a whopping 1GB. (I think this has been considerably reduced in later releases) Also, while LXQt is a tad heavier than LXDE (by 20-80MB depending) it is considerably 'snappier' in performance and response. That might be an important consideration when trying to find something for low-spec hardware. Of course, that DE doesn't support 32bit, so if you're trying to revive a really old machine (I was at the time) it won't be an option. (not sure if KDE or GNOME still support it either.)
One important caveat is available memory. These tests were all done in Vbox, with the limitation of 1 GB of RAM. (the point was to find something to run well on a very old machine) Upping this to 4GB caused nearly all of them to use more memory. I did not test any upper limit to see where various DEs/WMs max out.
I also played with trying to configure Openbox and Fluxbox to be a bit more 'conventional' with a panel and a few other conveniences, but by the time I was done, XFCE was the clear winner. (or one might just as well install LXDE/Qt)
There was also some variation in total running processes/threads in line with the memory footprint, but some was one surprise. XFCE (51/50) came in just above Openbox (33/26), but less than LXDE (64/93) and LXQt (65/97). (sorry, I didn't keep stats on KDE or GNOME)
Disk footprint varied considerably in the same order. (Fluxbox was smaller I believe than Openbox here)
As I can't find that Ubuntu Minimal iso for new versions, maybe someone can do the tests with Arch and see if anything has changed. (and include some new tests, like Budgie, i3, etc.)
Finally, bare metal installs will of course also show a difference from VMs.
57 • Desktops (by Martin on 2021-11-15 21:48:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Each to his own, my preference is for Openbox/Fluxbox, lightweight, very configurable and suitable for me. I have nothing against any other desktop others choose to use, it is part of the attraction in using Linux that so much choice is available. A big thank you to all the developers out there.
58 • Lightweight Desktop - Openbox (by Mario on 2021-11-15 22:32:19 GMT from Portugal)
My system runs debian with: - OpenBox window manager and LightDM display manager
- tint2 panels (left, bottom) and conky information (not essencial, but handy)
- Some rc.xml custom shortcuts and thunar as file manager (not essencial, but handy)
That's it.
After this you'll only need to install the programs you need to to get the job done (browser, media player, sync client, office suite, etc, etc)
59 • Lightweight desktops (by Mike on 2021-11-15 23:25:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
It is indeed all relative. Of the options in the survey if pushed I would use XFCE but I chose other since ALL Linux Desktop environments are lighter weight than Windows 10 21H1.
The reason I compare memory and CPU usage to Windows 10 21H1 rather than another Linux DE because it is more relevant to the real world and my line of work.
I simply don't care if one Linux DE gives me 250MB more RAM to play with 2 minutes after boot than another. My systems are not that critical on RAM to the point they swap to storage or I would care about it because I built them with enough RAM to start with. The machine with the lowest amount has 8GB, the rest are 16GB with the exception of one that has 32GB.
I run a number of virtual machines but also game in my spare time.
What I have found is that W10 21H1 will consume 3-4GB of RAM to carry out the same tasks KDE Plasma does well inside half that (which is great for the machine with 8GB RAM of which 2GB are assigned for integrated graphics).
So each to their own but I will stick with Plasma safe in the knowledge it is light enough and a pleasure to use. I see a lot of folk describe it as feature heavy and bloated, maybe it is when freshly installed from OpenSUSE or Debian Live Media but I used Kubuntu as a base which is actually quite minimal these days. The package list is the most sensible one I have come across to be fair.
60 • lightweight desktops (by Jay on 2021-11-15 23:54:28 GMT from Portugal)
Lightweight is clearly in the eye of the beholder, but I consider TDE and Xfce to be middleweights rather than lightweights. (I like both, but I prefer lighter.)
Like Mario (58), I prefer window managers and customization to desktop environments with all the bells and whistles. Systems should fit the user and if it isn't something I explicitly need, it's excess.
Lightweights I've played with are i3wm, Fluxbox, Pekwm, OpenBox, Awesome, dwm - WMs that idle at 256K to 384K with the OS included. (IMHO, middleweights max out at 512K.)
This system idles at 371k - a little bulky, but acceptable. I wouldn't ever want to exceed middleweight.
61 • Android apps....why? (by Reinaldo Fernandez on 2021-11-16 01:49:05 GMT from Venezuela)
This is a serious question....why run Android apps on my PC? That is why I have an Android phone, and most Android apps are, really not that great, so why?
62 • LXDE not actively developed? (by Tuxedoar on 2021-11-16 04:07:02 GMT from Argentina)
I don't understand why some people here state that the LXDE project is unmaintained or not actively developed. I don't agree with this statement. As it was mentioned above, LXDE doesn't have a distinctive release as a whole DE, rather its components are released separately, each at its own pace. If you take a look at the LXDE blog (https://blog.lxde.org/), for example, you'll see that there are release announcements of some of its core components dated at the beginning of this year (2021). So, would you still say that LXDE is abandoned or not actively deveoloped? If so, what are your parameters or criteria for declaring a project unmaintained?
By the way, I'm a happy user of the LXDE environment. I use it not only on resource-limited hardware, but on quite modern variants as well!. IMHO, LXDE has the right balance between both features and tools provided, and resources (RAM, CPU, etc) consumption. It's not distracting, it doesn't do things I don't ask for and it doesn't get in my way, so that I can be productive and focused. I'm not saying it's perfect, though. It's true that it uses an abandoned toolkit such as GTK2 and that might be a bigger problem in the future. As long as it's available on future releases of Debian, I'll keep it using it!.
Cheers!.
63 • passwords (by phoenax on 2021-11-16 07:14:22 GMT from Australia)
I know this will cause a storm again but i would like to see an option to use passwords at login and then not anymore unless setup to be that way ( of course they would have to be used as admin ) , but as an lone user of my computer i get really tired of having to enter passwords for every least little thing i do. I cannot find a way to remove this action as all the so called " help " places talk to you like you are a linux guru and i don't understand anything they say.. i give up..
64 • Desktop Environments (by DachshundMan on 2021-11-16 09:44:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am using Mint MATE on both my laptop (3rd Gen i5) and Ubuntu Mate on my RPi 4b. I do not really care about the particular DE so long as it does not get in the way of my working which is why I swapped to Mint when Ubuntu changed the DE to Unity.
I never really understood why there are so many Linux DEs as it seems to me they simply provide yet another reason for people not to move to using Linux as it seems as if it is more complex when you start asking what version do you want etc. Also there must be so many developers basically developing the same things for different DEs when they could be making Linux even better than it already is.
Do we really need more than (a) a very lightweight DE, (b) a mid weight DE and (c) a fully featured DE ? There would be nothing to stop distro teams from theming the one they chose to use.
65 • Lightweight desktop environments (by Kazlu on 2021-11-16 11:09:31 GMT from France)
This is a never ending debate... to which I would like to add a couple of things.
I have been a satisfied user of Xfce for many years now. Started when Unity came out, never left. I like the balance between features, snappiness and stability.
I have tried KDE several times and although the impact on system resources of an idle KDE doesn't seem to be enormous anymore, even comparable to Xfce, it really, really does not feel as snappy even on modern hardware. Every click, every action takes just a little while longer and after a while I'm fed up with it. The features are nice, although sometimes I get a little lost, but that's because I am not used to it. Same goes for Cinnamon, a tad more sluggish even.
MATE has been a nice experience whenever I tried it, the very definition of middle-weight DE. But there is just no point in switching to MATE when you are used to and happy with Xfce (and probably the other way around as well!).
I have been pleasantly surprised by Trinity. I have tried Q4OS on an old machine and although the boot time was bad and some applications would take time to launch for the first time, the system was surprisingly snappy. The resource usage is very low. A very good choice for old hardware, possibly better than Xfce.
I haven't seen yet any point in using LXQt in favor or either KDE or Trinity depending on what you need, but that's just me. Maybe it's a great middle ground?
GNOME? Really dislike it. It does less than other DEs while using more resources and feeling way more sluggish. And it's not flexible at all. You can't adapt it to your needs.
Finally, when you really want lightweight, the better route is to go from a lightweight window manager and build your way up from there. But that is a task that requires knowledge. Fortunately, many distros offer carefully crafted desktops build from them. The first that come to my mind are MX Linux (Fluxbox edition), Puppy Linux (JWM), Manjaro (community i3 edition), etc. antiX had 4 lightweignt WMs ready to use at install! The choice is large, overwhelming maybe. But those are very fine choices.
66 • @64 number of projects (by Kazlu on 2021-11-16 11:19:57 GMT from France)
For the same reason we have plethora of car brands and models when half a dozen would probably cover the needs of 98% of drivers!
That is how the GNU/Linux world is organised. It is not a unified organisation, it is composed of many individuals or groups who develop their projects according to what they want. Sometimes the projects end up very close, sometimes they drift apart for mere philosophical reasons. There are desktops of high enough quality so we don't have to worry about resource spread on my opinion. Desktop are probably not what is holding up people from adopting GNU/Linux.
67 • @64: (by dragonmouth on 2021-11-16 13:00:02 GMT from United States)
Why multiple desktop environments (and other software)? Because of the underlying philosophy of Linux. Why contribute and enhance a current project when one has the freedom to create one's own project. Never mind that it is so similar to dozen other projects as to be barely distinguishable as long as it gives the developer his 15 minutes of temporary recognition. Linux is growing in spite of such balkanization rather than because of it.
68 • XFCE (by sananab on 2021-11-16 15:33:52 GMT from Canada)
I want to like LXQT because I like speed. But there's something about XFCE that's more immediately comfortable.
I used to distrohop a lot, but then I stopped when I found Crunchbang, which remains my favourite Linux experience of all time. Then Crunchbang went kaput and its successors were underwhelming, so I landed on XFCE+Mint, because it was the least bother.
69 • @65 lightweight...? (by ostro on 2021-11-16 16:10:18 GMT from Poland)
You appear to have a very slow computer, if every click, every action takes just a little while longer with KDE. I'm just rying out Gimp on Windows 10 on a Celeron N3350 touchscreen laptop. I can assure you that everything is snappy with it. I have installed a bit more heavier Deepin 20.2.4 (KDE/Qt based) on a Celeron 4200 tablet and I can assure you that Gimp works very fast in it. At the same time, a web browser is on with few tabs, and also few other apps. It is the question of how good the computer/laptop/tablet is designed, more than how modern the distro/OS.
70 • @63 Elevation (by Tad Strange on 2021-11-16 16:15:14 GMT from Canada)
You're not alone.
We're not talking about running as root here, but rather having your credentials cached per session. Something like an elevation prompt, like the UAC that Windows has had for years, would be nice.
I cannot remember the distro off hand, but their custom configuration tools / control panel was so irritating to use because every item one clicks spawns a password prompt.
I doubt that encourages password Best Practices.
71 • @69 (by Kazlu on 2021-11-16 16:27:22 GMT from France)
It's not that KDE is actually slow on that computer, it's just that Xfce is snappier. I cannot count the time it takes to do every action, but everything is just a liiiitle bit slower with KDE than with Xfce, and I'm used to Xfce's snappiness. Even if it's just, I don't know, 0.5 instead of 0.3 seconds, it adds up and you can feel the difference.
72 • @71 (by ostro on 2021-11-16 16:46:38 GMT from Poland)
Well, if you can feel the diff of 0.2 seconds, you must have a keen nervous system... :)
73 • @63 @70 (by Kazlu on 2021-11-16 16:51:56 GMT from France)
Well, if you can do everything without a password (after login), it's the same as running as root... With every advantage and every drawback that implies.
The only distro I know where you run as root by default is Puppy Linux. Running as root can actually make sense but it is a different philosphy that Puppy and its derivatives use. Explained better that I could do it myself here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/faqs/login.html
If getting rid of prompts is a game changer for you, you might give a try to Puppy or its derivatives like Fatdog. Fatdog has the good idea of having you logged in as root, but internet applications running as a non-root user. But be aware that the philosophy of Puppy and its derivatives is different from most of the other GNU/Linux systems, it might feel weird.
Puppy derivatives: https://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=All&category=All&origin=All&basedon=Puppy¬basedon=None&desktop=All&architecture=All&package=All&rolling=All&isosize=All&netinstall=All&language=All&defaultinit=All&status=Active#simple
As a fnal note, Puppy is great when your computer does not start and you need something to get it up and running quickly to explore potential problems!
74 • @72 (by Kazlu on 2021-11-16 17:19:54 GMT from France)
When it's about the time between the moment you click on a folder and the moment the content is displayed, yes, you can feel it. And when you are browsing deep in your repositoried, it adds up hard.
75 • @65 (by AdrienM on 2021-11-16 17:39:10 GMT from United States)
Funny you should mention MX Fluxbox. I happened to play with it last night and I was intrigued, but it isn't ready for daily use. (if even usable) MX managed to take a WM that with a base system might chew up 75M out of 1GB of RAM, and make it weigh in at over 330M! It was sluggish, syrupy, and I times, I though frozen. (no wait indicator for the cursor)
I applaud the idea of attempting to make a 'conventional' desktop out of Fluxbox (and I'm sure MX being at the top of DistroWatch for some time will get Fluxbox more exposure) but this iteration (21 Wildflower) needs lots of work. It will definitely turn users away. There is a plethora of duplication of tools and settings in several places. (triplicate or more even) And it seems lots of resources are used for panels/docks with duplicated icons that slow things down.
I'd say their next version should focus on simplifying and consolidating, and really really getting back to Fluxbox's light footprint and performance. There's promise there for sure.
76 • @68 (by AdrienM on 2021-11-16 17:45:10 GMT from United States)
BunsenLabs has carried on the CrunchBang experience. It is light, clean, and FAST. (though Mint XFCE is quite a pleasant experience)
77 • desktops (by thim on 2021-11-16 18:03:50 GMT from Greece)
I was always moving back and forth, from Xfce to KDE and vice versa but for the last couple of years i am running (almost) only Plasma on my main box. One main reason for that is that i do like some KDE apps, namely okular, digikam, dolphin, yakuake, kate, tellico (miss amarok) and also i do prefer some qt apps (strawberry, lyx).
I agree that Xfce is medium weight, not light weight but nevertheless i run it on two rather ancient laptops: more than happy with the performance. So i do not see any benefit for trying even there Lxde or Lxqt: none of thems is so complete or so customizable as Xfce. Maybe someday i ll give another shot in pure Openbox: use to like it old days and still keep runing from time to time.
Gnome is something i dislike. I agree it is a mess ootb and furthermore i am against the general idea of fine gnome-developeres making all the decisions for the end user. For me, Linux desktop means customization.
78 • DEs (by Adam Drake on 2021-11-16 18:39:18 GMT from United States)
I run Debian Testing with Gnome on my personal workstation/server with little customization. It performs well on my 8 year old Xeon and 16 GB of RAM (recently increased to 32).
If I’m trying to run on older and/or slower hardware, antiX is my go-to.
79 • new DEs (by ppl bugs on 2021-11-17 05:56:43 GMT from Canada)
poll could have offered selection of older DEs (listed) versus newer ones (below).
* Deepin DE * Budgie * Cutefish * Pantheon * Lumina
80 • Window Managers and Desktop Environments (by missTell on 2021-11-17 12:29:06 GMT from Switzerland)
Linux is anarchy and chaos. It needs urgent (heavy) "spring-cleaning". Secure-delete 90 % of it, as well as 90 % of "distris", and keep only what's worth keeping.
There's no purpose to keep the stuff like Fluxbox, JWM, Mate and Xfce around. Xfce is utterly broken. One can't install something like that to any average "normal" user. Not talking about those "some like it's".
One can't let the users to "do it yourself".
https://ibb.co/bKHmmPy
https://ibb.co/YLtSvfK
https://ibb.co/vZH1GKQ
Keep the Gnome 3.xx / 4x, KDE, IceWM for the few 1366-Px-like screens left, because it can save a lot of space, i3 because of tilling and TWM as the spare WM, besides the main one.
81 • WM and DE screenshots (by missTell on 2021-11-17 12:30:10 GMT from Switzerland)
IceWM is easy to install, and it only takes someone to make it look decent.
https://ibb.co/Kwwnnyb
https://ibb.co/G3GNWff
https://ibb.co/10MJcpq
https://ibb.co/kgYMWwZ
The rest, one could also make better, but a valid reason WHY is missing.
https://ibb.co/BzNQ7zL
https://ibb.co/ZxZvRMh
https://ibb.co/0GXpHcv
The image titles will tell you, what WM / DE is on the image.
82 • @73 root philosophy (by Tad Strange on 2021-11-17 13:07:10 GMT from Canada)
The Fatdog philosophy towards root was an interesting read. Thanks for posting.
I've never played with it nor Puppy.
A friend has my old Acer netbook from way back. I'll have to see if I can convince him to let me wipe the old Win7 on it and try something light weight. Maybe AntiX..
83 • @74 Lightweight and KDE Plasma (by ostro on 2021-11-17 13:42:06 GMT from Poland)
Specially installed KDE Neon Testing on a 2-core Celeron N3350 @1.1GHz touchscreen laptop with just 4GB. Works quite well, touch gestures work nicely. I don't notice any lateness in opening apps and so on. Gimp, for example boots up immediately.
84 • The GIMP (by missTell on 2021-11-17 16:25:56 GMT from Switzerland)
How quick the Gimp starts, doesn't say anything about the "snappiness" of the operating system.
How quick the Gimp starts, depends to a big extent on the HDD/SSD speed and the processor, and on the number of fonts and extensions that it has to load upon start, and not at all on WM / DE. If it's a slow starter, then highly probable because of (too) many fonts and extensions on (too) slow hardware.
OS "snappiness" varies from person to person -- what lags for one person, might be snappy for another, and is often adjustable in the settings of many WM / DE, and if something is not snappy, then in most cases because of animations and / or compositing. Of course, the more primitive WM are always much snappier, while simpler.
85 • @79 (by missTell on 2021-11-17 16:51:16 GMT from Switzerland)
Budgie? Is dead since Ikkey is gone ... Pantheon? Looks nice and not more then that. The rest nobody really uses. You could've also asked for those 2 WM's:
https://ibb.co/PZHryTr
😉
86 • OS "snappiness" (by dick on 2021-11-17 16:57:18 GMT from Canada)
@86 "OS "snappiness" varies from person to person -- what lags for one person, might be snappy for another,"
The same applies to desktop preference, thus, the wide range of desktop ... variance.
87 • myriad choices (by dick on 2021-11-17 19:12:26 GMT from Canada)
@89 "If majority can't read the clock, then it's not a matter of taste any more etc.
Proper desktop preferences are not a subject of personal taste."
Couple of clicks... different clock in place, myriad choices ... Linux users embrace.
88 • If LXDE is deprecated and undersupported, how about LXLE? (by mxgogo on 2021-11-18 10:09:48 GMT from South Africa)
With Lubuntu climbing on the LxQt train, there seems to be more space - and thus potential demand - for something like LXLE. LXLE is like luxury for the minimalist - Lubuntu (even LXDE) given some loving tweaking and providing impressive performance. Like the Ford Anglia (if your memory stretches that far back) taken into the genial care of Colin Chapman and turned into the Lotus Elite?
I'm too busy daily driving my MXLinux_21 installation to spend much time delving into the future options for LXLE (who are ultimately based on Ubuntu LSD so still have a couple of years of commitment at least to go) but they probably have a superior insight into LXDE's failings and how possibly to get around them without succumbing to Qt? bloat, so I'll watch this space with interest.
When I was desktop-hopping years ago, I concluded I didn't like Xfce etc much. But I did get drawn into the MX-sphere because of the integrity and utility of the whole package, the "sortedness" of it all, and the overall ease of achieving and maintaining "my" personalised version of The Home Office according to Linux. It's fatter than I want it to be, but it's a comfortable bulk that provides a lot of access to things needed occasionally, and makes it easy to experiment with different packages and usage profiles. A well-rounded productivity mill. It has a lot going for it and I've appreciated that for several years.
But I am a minimalist at heart (and in fact have just downloaded the current CorePlus iso from TinyCore to putter a while in the garden shed fiddling with something hitherto unimagined) and see what I can see.
My feeling is that the LXLE guys might come up with something better before I do. In the meanwhile, I'll take note of the current advice from Mark Twain...
89 • XFCE (by Trihexagonal on 2021-11-18 18:09:05 GMT from United States)
I'm using kali-rolling 2021.3 on a T61 with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 @ 2.40GHz and 4GB PC2-5300 RAM on metal right now.
Currently running are Xfce 4.16 as a DE, with Audacious, QTerminal, Thunar, gKrellm2, Leafpad and Firefox-ESR.
CPU usage is at 10% and 2394.6MB free available memory with 460 Processes and monitored temp range at 41C.
I prefer Fluxbox and am constantly right-clicking for the app menu, but it's alright now...
90 • @88 LXLE ? (by Kazlu on 2021-11-19 09:35:05 GMT from France)
For trying Lubuntu on a very old dinoputer a few years ago (Pentium III @800MHz, single core of course, 512MB RAM), with LXDE, I concluded Lubuntu is not fit for old computers. The test is extreme, but it helps sorting out which really are fit for the task. The cause was not the DE, but the underlying system. Even the bloody update manager was sluggish to the point it was not properly working. This is a deal breaker. If you want a snappy desktop on a modern or even a not-too-old machine, Lubuntu is fine. But all in all, the Ubuntu ecosystem is not adapted to create lightweight distros. Midweight, at best. LXLE wouldn't make a difference.
Starting from MX and changing the DE is a good start. I won't go as far as recommending other options since you are experimenting with TinyCore, so you seem to know quite well quat you're doing! If we are talking about recommendations for less experienced users though, and we consider MX is too heavy, I would say Q4OS with Trinity is an excellent option. antiX is a possibility if one is not afraid of an unusual, barebones interface.
For the record, the Pentium III dinoputer is currently running antiX. It works fine. Of course, browsing the 2021 web is a challenge. But with a lightweight browser for casual browsing and Firefox with only one tab open if the website is more demanding, it works. It's slow, but it works. Of course that is not my daily computer, rather one I keep alive for the sake of experimenting. I was very pleasantly surprised by the performance of Q4OS on another not-so-old computer, so that will be my next experiment.
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