LXDE – Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment for Ubuntu

Sponsored Link

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. Different from other desktop environments, we don't tightly integrate every component. Instead, we tried to make all components independent, and each of them can be used independently with few dependencies.

LXDE Features

• Lightweight, runs with reasonable memory usage

• Fast, rund well even on older machines produced in 1999

• Good-looking, gtk+ 2 internationalized user interface

• Easy-to-use, the user interface is simple, but usable enough

• Desktop independent (suprise! Every component can be used without LXDE)

• Standard compliant, follows the specs on freedesktop.org

• Suitable for old machines

Install lxde in Ubuntu

First you need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file add the following lines

For Hardy Users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main

For Gutsy Users

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu gutsy main

Save and exit the file.

update the source list using the following command

sudo aptitude update

Install lxde desktop environment using the following command

sudo aptitude install lxde

This will install all the required packages for lxde.

Intrepid Ibex and future releases

LXDE desktop has been added to Ubuntu stable repositories. No editing of sources are needed.

sudo aptitude install lxde

Now you need to logout from your system go to Options--->Select Session...

Now select LXDE option and click on Change Session

Next screen you can select if you want LXDE desktop environment as default or only for this session

After logging in you can see similar to the following beautiful desktop environment

LXDE Logout Screen

Sponsored Link