Another round in the battle between Xfce and LXDE. This time the distro is Linux Mint 9. So far, the Xfce desktop has lost two rounds in a matches with LXDE on the same distro. It has lost both the free memory battle and the quality of distribution battle. On this last round, who is going to be the winner?
Both installs were from a Live/Install CD for each desktop. No problem with either install, and both use GRUB2. While GRUB2 may have its problems, I like the fact that it automatically finds and correctly boots other Linux distros. To avoid installing GRUB2 on the MBR, you need to click the “Advanced” button on the Ready to Install screen (Step 8 of 8). This screen allows you to select the boot partition.
Both editions discovered by RALink USB Wireless Adapter, both were able to connect to the network. However, you need to edit the connection to make it automatically connect to the network.
The graphical menu for both is a radical departure from the traditional Linux Mint 9 menu. The Xfce and LXDE menus are slightly different, but both are more like the traditional start menu. Like Lubuntu, the Linux Mint 9 LXDE edition has no icons on the desktop, and only a few on the task bar.
The default browser for both desktops is Firefox, and both played movies from hulu.com.
The default graphic viewer for both is gpicview. The default video viewer is the the GNOME MPlayer for Xfce and the VLC media player for LXDE. However, LXDE also includes the GNOME MPlayer. The GNOME MPlayer played videos in .flv, .mp4, and .wmv formats without any problems. The VLC media player failed on one .flv movie. Personally, I prefer the GNOME MPlayer.
In terms of the memory usage, following are the numbers from running the free command immediately after login:
- For Xfce, the amount of free memory was 101,400 KiB and the total free memory, after adding in available buffers and caches, was 320, 120 KiB.
- For LXDE, the amount of free memory was 233,304 KiB and the total free memory, after adding in available buffers and caches, was 355,316 KiB.
This was a close race, up to the final factor – memory utilization. LXDE wins the competition on that point alone. While LXDE is not for everyone, it definitely adds new life to older machines.
With Linux Mint 9 LXDE installed, I decided to download more packages. I tested the Software Manager with a few packages. I don’t like it. It may be more graphical, but it also fails to communicate any information about additional packages installed. As for the progress bar, it seems to get stuck at 5%. When I checked the start menu, I found nothing. I think I will stick with the Synaptic Package Manager.
Using the Synaptic Package Manager, I installed Chromium, Opera, Open Office, Quanta, Qwenview, and Eye of Gnome. Of all the packages, only Eye of Gnome failed to appear in any sub-menu of the start menu. As mentioned in my post on Lubuntu, Chromium had a problem with Adobe Flash videos. However, Chromium under Linux Mint 9 work just fine at hulu.com. Same repository, but different results?
For the time being, my HP Pavilion ze4300 laptop with 512 MiB of memory will be multi-booted with Linux Mint 9 LXDE, PCLinuxOS 2010 LXDE, and CentOS 5.5. Now for more tests on CFS versus BFS as schedulers for laptops. Plus, still working on the boot lineup for my rather ancient Dell Inspirion 8100. So far, only openSUSE is guaranteed a slot in the lineup. The other two used to be Mandriva and Simply Mepis.
10 comments ↓
I know its not part of your ‘battle of the distros’ but why have you not considered Linux Mint Fluxbox?
My second question would be if one is targeting low end hardware then I would in a sense start from scratch. Say, load Ubuntu mini.iso of the lastest release. Then add in Fluxbox for the GUI. Then pick only the apps I want in the system to lighten the disk usage.
Most of the distros carry too much baggage in my opinion that is not used that often.
I’m running PCLOS LXDE on two desktops, and PCLOS e17 on a third. One of the desktops is an old Dell PIII @800Mhz. I tried both e17 and LXDE on this one, and believe LXDE has a slight edge. I’m sure it does over XFCE. The other LXDE desktop is on a fairly modern AMD dual-core machine. I like the desktop for its speed and simplicity.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of a “battle” for the Mint desktop. Now that Mint is a rolling release based on Debian testing, it should be even more of a contender than it ever has been. And that’s saying a lot.
[...] Linux Mint 9 Xfce or LXDE? Another round in the battle between Xfce and LXDE. This time the distro is Linux Mint 9. So far, the Xfce desktop has lost two rounds in a matches with LXDE on the same distro. It has lost both the free memory battle and the quality of distribution battle. On this last round, who is going to be the winner? [...]
Can you please give the exact model number of the RALink Wireless adapter, perhaps linking me to it with your Amazon affiliate id (if you have one, that is)? I’d love to have an adapter that is easily recognized in Gnome and LXDE. thank you
There is no particular reason why haven’t tested Linux Mint Fluxbox, other than a lack of time. I will add it to the list of other distros to test, but no guarantees as to when I can get to it. At the moment, I need to work on a series of blogs comparing the BFS and CFS schedulers.
If I roll my own installation, I would start with Gentoo and build from there. Who knows, it might be the subject for a good series of posts. However, most users of Linux want something out-of-box. Consequently, I focus on released distros.
Linux Mint alone can keep me out of trouble just testing the various versions.
Mine is not exactly new, as I bought it a Fry’s Electronics several years ago. However, for the record, it is Hawking Wireless 108G USB adapter is actually a Ralink RT2501 USB Wireless Adapter. I bought it because it allows me to change antennas. When dealing with weak signals, a good antenna is everything.
I figured out the problem as to why Eye of Gnome does not appear in the start menu. The /usr/share/applications/eog.desktop file has the line NoDisplay=true. Once I changed it to false, Eye of Gnome appeared in the menu. However, you also need to change the Name to some other than Image Viewer, as this is also the Name for gpicview.desktop.
Hallo!
I am a writer and not a programmer. I am currently tring to complete the move from MS-Win-XP to a Linux System. The biggest stumbling block I see is a file-system that is understandable and usable. None seem to come close to the MS-Explorer. What would you recommend and on which simple Linux System platform?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards, Patrick Forkin.
While MS Window uses a hierarchical file system like UNIX and Linux, the organization is totally different. In Linux, as in UNIX, there is a single root to a file system. Individual drives are just mount points in this single structure. Consequently, you do no see separate drives. There is no Documents directory, as in MS Windows. Rather, each user as a separate directory under the /home directory. The file managers reflect the structure of the Linux file system. It is one of those differences that you just get used to over time.
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