Features/LXDE

LXDE

Summary

LXDE - Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment

Owner

• Name: ChristophWickert (feel free to add yourself)

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 10
• Last updated: 2008-09-02
• Percentage of completion: 85%

Detailed Description

LXDE is a new project aimed to provide a new desktop environment which is lightweight and fast. It's not designed to be powerful and bloated, but to be usable and slim enough, and keep the resource usage low. It consists of

• PCManFM: File manager, provides desktop icons (in Fedora, maintained by Mamoru Tasaka )
• LXPanel: Feature-rich desktop panel (in Fedora, maintained by Sebastian Vahl )
• LXSession: Standard-compliant X11 session manager with shutdown/reboot/suspend support via HAL and gdm (review requested)
• LXAppearance: LXAppearance is a new feature-rich GTK+ theme switcher able to change GTK+ themes, icon themes, and fonts used by applications (in Fedora, maintained by Christoph Wickert
• LXTask: Lightweight task manager derived from xfce4 task manager with all xfce4 dependencies removed, some bugs fixed, and some improvements of the UI (in Fedora, maintained by Christoph Wickert )
• LXTerminal: Desktop-independent VTE-based terminal emulator (in Fedora, maintained by Christoph Wickert )
• LXLauncher: Open source replacement for the Asus Launcher on the EeePC (in Fedora, maintained by Christoph Wickert )
• LXNM (still under development): Lightweight network manager for LXDE supporting wireless connections (no plans atm)
• Openbox: Lightweight, standard-compliant, and highly-configurable window manager. This can be replaced by any other window manager like icewm, fluxbox, metacity, ...etc. (in Fedora, maintained by Miroslav Lichvar )
• GPicView: A very simple, fast, and lightweight image viewer featuring immediate startup (in Fedora, maintained by Marc Wiriadisastra )
• Leafpad: Lightweight and simple text editor (in Fedora, mainained by Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams )
• XArchiver: Lightweight, fast, and desktop-independent gtk+-based file archiver (in Feadora, maintained by Christoph Wickert )

Benefit to Fedora

Another desktop below Xfce that can run well on

• elder computers
• Netbooks like or the Eee PC
• OLPC

Scope

• Package Reviews
• Comps
• OLPC: I'm planning to maintain LXDE packages for the XO and already did some porting.

Reviews

• LXDE-common
• LXSession
• LXAppearance (closed)
• LXTask (closed)
• LXTerminal (closed)
• LXLauncher (closed)

Comps

• new group with id "lxde-desktop", name "LXDE", description something like "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment"
  • mandatory: lxde-common, lxpanel, openbox, pcmanfm
  • default: gpicview, leafpad, lxappearance, lxtask, lxterminal, obconf, xarchiver
  • optional: epdfview, galculator, lxlauncher, obmenu, parcellite
  • maybe some more proposed light applications from the Fedora Lite Spin , but I wonder if apps like dayplanner, quodlibet, sylpheed etc fit well under 'Desktop'.

Test Plan

Get the missing packages into rawhide after F9 is released. LXDE should be ready for Fedora 10.

User Experience

• Screenshot of the default LXDE Desktop:

http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/screenshots/lxde/lxde-desktop.png

• LXDE with some of it's applications

http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/screenshots/lxde/lxde-apps.png

• more screenshots upstream: http://lxde.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
• Installing LXDE with a single click in pirut:

http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/screenshots/lxde/lxde-pirut.png

• Optional Packages in LXDE:

http://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/screenshots/lxde/lxde-pirut-optional-packages.png

• While yum groupinstall LXDE installs the complete LXDE Desktop, the core components lxpanel, lxsession, pcmanfm and openbox can be installed with yum install lxde-common. lxde-common contains the necessary configuration files and and pulls the lxde-icon-theme.

Dependencies

none

Documentation

lxde-common contains manpages for all LXDE components, so there is not much we need to care about.

References

• LXDE - Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment Homepage

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