LXDE is an acceptable substitute for Gnome 2

[nomnex]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:28:54 +0100
Pedro Francisco <pedrogfrancisco at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why LXDE instead of XFCE? Just curious...

The first time I tried XFCE, the rat and the ugly font logo, the
icons, all the GUI environment was looking cheap & somewhat childish. I
was not found of the file browser, the email clients (claws) and the
terminal, etc - of course, this is 100% subjective, because it's only a
matter of taste, and first impression.

XFCE made me feel the poor Gnome2 brother (it was before Gnome3), and I
am not versed in DE customization.

Then I tried LXDE. From the first second, I liked what I saw on my
screen. That was minimalist, modern and neutral. I liked the file
manager (pcmanfm) and the default mail client (sylpheed) at once.

I probably spent more time learning how to configure LXDE, than I would,
if I had kept using XFCE, but I am happy now. I am affected by a panel
bug: it crashes when I use FF (there no current LXDE panel maintainer),
thank to Christoph Wickert on Fedora, I found a workaround editing the
open box configuration file.

The Fedora LXDE Spin is also really great (if not the best spin) for
my taste. It's neutral and it has a good balance of easiness and
completeness. Each new release add something great, and I am sensitive
to these details. Check the new Yum Extender on F-15!

http://www.yum-extender.org/cms/

Most of the people fall back to XFCE. I think they are being
conservative. There is probably more GUI options in XFCE - it supports
transparency, and the development might in a better state (it's an
older project) than LXDE?

Well, I am mainly talking about details here (and those can be
changed), but I am an end user. Ideally, I would rather use a CLI
than GUI environment, but the trade off between the learning curve vs.
the self-satisfaction is too great for my usage of a computer.

That's what LXDE and possibly XFCE are satisfactory - they give me
impression (still subjective) of a relative freedom using a GUI. I
dislike (as in "loath") OSX and Windows for the opposite reason. As for
Gnome3 and Unity, it has became the same: The users must adapt to the
DE. It's not anymore a set of tools put together to help him, it's a
complete environment designed for him.

That was my review of LXDE.

-- 
nomnex.
Registered Linux user #505281. Be counted at: http://counter.li.org/