Does PCLinuxOS LXDE Take the Lightweight Title?

After installing PCLinuxOS Xfce, I was ready for the GRUB configuration issues. One experiment, however, forced me to install it twice. Although similar to PCLinuxOS Xfce, PCLinuxOS LXDE also different. I am not just referring to the memory footprint. How does it compare to PCLinuxOS Xfce?

On the first install, I let the installer configure the remaining disk space. It create a root partition, followed by a 1 gigabyte swap partition, and then a home partition. There was no need to create a new swap partition, as there already was one on the disk. Besides, there is no need for a 1 GiB swap partition on a system with 512 MiB of memory. This reflects old-school thinking, and a lack of understanding of how the Linux 2.6.x kernel handles swapping. The kernel only uses the swap partition for dirty anonymous memory partitions, and then as a last resort. It does not need to use swap for code segments, as they can be retrieved from disk. The kernel does not need to swap data in disk buffers to which there are no changes. If there is no other choice, the kernel will swap dirty memory partitions (data has changed, but not saved) to disk. Consequently, 512 MiB is more than sufficient.

Somethings were the same. This time, I was ready for the Legacy Grub versus GRUB2 issue. By habit, I automatically tried to use vi, but it is only available as rvi under this distro. It took awhile to find it, but the editor that works is leafpad. I edited the menu.lst file, and regenerated the GRUB2 menu. Once I deleted the (hd0,5) on the initrd line, I regenerated the Grub2 menu in Linux Mint 9 using the update-grub2 command.

Like the PCLinuxOS Xfce, you need to modify the list of repositories to get updates and additional applications. Unlike the PCLinuxOS Xfce, the default repository is not the install disk, but a site that has the install image. The requirement to add another site may not be obvious, but is necessary as there were over 2oo updates. It may be my imagination, but the LXDE repository list is not the same as the Xfce repository list.  Like the Xfce edition, PCLinuxOS LXDE does not have OpenOffice on the install disk.

In terms of memory usage, LXDE makes a huge difference. over Xfce. The readings after logging in were 262,308 KiB of free memory, which increases to 374,484 KiB when adding in available buffer and cache space. In terms of free memory, this is an increase of about 83 MiB over Xfce and 185 MiB over Gnome. Moreover, it makes a difference when running applications.

The video player for LXDE is SMPlayer, and it does play DVD movies. I played the same move under Gnome (Linux Mint 9) and LXDE. Under Gnome, playing the movie was difficult as the sound kept disappearing, and the video would halt as the system struggled to keep up with the load. When played under LXDE, the move played without a problem – no sound problems, and no halting video. I couldn’t run the same test under Xfce, as the default installation does not include a video player. SMPlayer had no problems playing .mp4, .smv, .flv files. I am having a sound problem with .smv and .flv files, which needs some research. As for viewing photos, GPicView is not as good as Eye of Gnome, but it is far better than Shutter.

PCLinuxOs LXDE still has the same rough edges as the Xfce version. Beyond the installation issues, the Network Center is one of those rough edges. Yet, it seems to be a better release than the Xfce release. LXDE definitely wins the competition in terms of lightweight desktops. Personnally, I don’t miss the fancy desktops. I am more concerned about the performance of the applications than the sex appeal of the desktop. Now, I need to try LUbuntu, Linux Mint 9 LXDE, and any other recommended LXDE release.