Arch Linux

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Fairly new system, LXDE or Xfce easier to tweak to my ideal system?

So I have a fairly new system: 2GB RAM, 2 GHZ dual core processor, 335 MB video RAM, etc. I'm reinstalling arch because I polluted my old install with a bunch of software I'll never use, etc. And now I'm trying to decide whether I should use lxde of xfce. Xfce is fast, but lxde is instant as far as starting up programs and other tasks. I want to know which one is easier to set up with preferred apps like firefox, openoffice, compiz fusion, getting a nice theme working, and more. I had a sweet setup on Xfce at one point, but LXDE is ridiculously faster and smaller.

So the question is: LXDE or Xfce?

Btw I want things like full support for multimedia, web plugins, ntfs read/write, that kind of thing.

patroclo7

Member

From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY

Registered: 2006-01-11

Posts: 915

Re: Fairly new system, LXDE or Xfce easier to tweak to my ideal system?

For the apps, there is no difference. For the theme, lxde comes with a lightweight X settings manager and with a tool called lxappearance with which you can choose your gtk theme without fiddling with ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and friends. The session management is similar (but lxsession-lite is unable to savew sessions).
Lxpanel has not all the goodies of the xfce-panel but is nice (and you can replace it with no effort with the panel you like most, including eventually xfce-panel)

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Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,963

Website

Re: Fairly new system, LXDE or Xfce easier to tweak to my ideal system?

If you want complete freedom, skip installing a DE and start with the individual components of LXDE (openbox as a WM, etc). Build your own DE using what you want and only what you want.

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My Arch Linux Stuff • Forum Etiquette • Community Ethos - Arch is not for everyone

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: Fairly new system, LXDE or Xfce easier to tweak to my ideal system?

That's actually a really good idea! I don't think I'm ready for that quite yet, but that's now on my to do list after I get situated with lxde (the impression I'm getting is that it is pretty easy to set up to ones liking as far as apps and appearance goes.

Thanks for your responses! I'm off to using lxde! I'll post (in new threads) if I need any help!