On Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:28:54 +0100 Pedro Francisco pedrogfrancisco@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.