The Lightweights within GNU / Linux

As elav took us out the little theme of Xfce, KDE y LXDE It gave me the idea to start something like the battle of the environments.

Well, this will not be as if 'this' is better or anything, but rather attending to my own needs (I have a PC with very low performance). There will always be debates about which environment to use and for that we have to consider: what do we want with our PCsNo matter how bad they are, we can always get the most out of them, so I'll just give you my opinion on GNU "Light Weights", so I immediately start with XFCE vs. LXDE.

My first encounter with XFCE It was around 2008 when I was at the University of Informatics Sciences (ICU) here in Cuba, a friend of mine showed me Xubuntu (the Ubuntu distribution based on XFCE that now I don't remember what version it was or what number it had) which consumed much less resources than the Gnome that I used in those days.

El LXDE on the other hand, I came to know him more less in 2010, when they presented me with a Debian with him and I was really in awe of this "new" desktop, which was also less resource consuming than my gnome. Both are as functional as they are light (that is precisely what I was looking for) not to load my PC so much, so I chose LXDE and I get to like it to the point that it is the desktop that I currently have in my Debian 6.0.

As for appearance, I must confess that both are attractive to me at first glance, that is, without incorporating the cheap (effects, animations, etc) de Beryl or CompizAnd the best part is that they not only look pretty at first glance but are quite "tuneable." Actually they are quite similar despite having their differences although I admit that Xfce has a community much larger than LXDE.

Here we see LXDE:

and here to XFCE:

 In either of the two we can configure things with just a right click on our desktop but honor to whom honor deserves, XFCE in terms of configuration, he is "kinder to newcomers" than LXDE; that in some things it costs a little to put "online." To do this we should enter the preferences of the desktop where, I do not know if it is to spend more time with it but I notice that the preferences of the LXDE are a little simpler than those of XFCE, here are the images:

These are the LXDE desktop preferences.

These are the XFCE desktop preferences

As I said before, Xfce is shown much more complete than LXDE... even has its little things that neither Gnome (for me the middleweight champion) pbone.

For example, if we place the mouse over any folder on the desktop (as you will see in the image) We get the drop-down poster with the properties, that is a characteristic of KDE (the super heavyweight champion) So you can see what I'm talking about here is another image:

As file managers (filemanager) XFCE uses Thunar, of whom the rumor spreads that they do not want to optimize more for fear of being heavier. On the other hand LXDE has to PCManFM, whom I see a little more powerful due to the fact that he has little eyelashes and because of his speed (hehe how easy I'm going for fetishism), However Thunar is capable of even taking Thumbnails (thumbnails) of the videos with a plugin -which if I remember correctly- is called Thunar-Thumbnailers or something similar.

Another thing that can be done through them is to access the network resources, in this part I must clarify that in my Debian when I was humming (exploring) el XFCE to see the things that I had, I could not Thunar access the network resources ... but I take responsibility for that since I did when I was testing Xubuntu 12.04.

I'm not going to talk much about text editors, XFCE has to MousePad y LXDE a leaf pad, and according to a partner of the GUTL I explained to myself once that one was made from the other, but right now they kill me and I don't remember if Mousepad was made from leaf pad or vice versa.

In each Operating System there is a program in charge of "drawing" and working with windows, and it is always good to recognize that some run faster than others, for example "Unity" in Ubuntu runs slower than Gnome-Shell, but if we talk about lightweight desktops then we have to refer to lightweight Window Managers.

XFCE use a windows manager called xfwm y LXDE uses OpenBox (some users use Flubox too) which is a robust application and why not?…, also a little old, besides that it does not come by default with the project LXDE; but it does have in its favor the great speed with which it is executed and the little expenditure of resources.

Version 4.X of XFCE It is the most current of the xfwm and yes it is part of the project of XFCE, it may not be as fast as open box but it brings many more configuration options (as a tool included in XFCE very similar to the Gconf-Editor of the Gnome). Here are some images of what their respective configuration managers look like:

LXDE + OpenBox

XFCE + Xfwm

XFCE window manager

Conclusions:

Despite being LXDE the desktop I currently use and having multiple applications at the moment, I would dare to declare that XFCE could be considered as the most complete lightweight desktop.

This I think is because he has been with us much longer in relation to LXDE, which is newer relatively speaking. XFCE it is much faster than most other desktops like Gnome y KDE but there may be users (like me) who prefer a lightweight desktop that runs a tick faster than XFCE (it's just a tinker and on some PCs the change may not be noticed), so LXDE is the option they are looking for.

There's something that bothers me about LXDE since not everything is good, and it is the part of right clicking on the bottom panel that brings up a menu that is too big for my taste, and many times they are so similar that you even get lost with the options. Anyway XFCE is for me (and for many other users) a more complete desktop than LXDE that with the passage of time is destined to be the replacement of XFCE (and mouse users forgive me).

If you want more information about these two desks you can reach their official pages:

lxde.org | xfce.org

Now…. the judges are you so start giving your opinions 😀