LXDE Forums

I read a post (can't remember where) by one of the LXDE developers who indicated LXDE will eventually be deprecated. When that occurs down the line, does that mean LXDE won't be available? And if it's still available in certain repositories, will it still be safe to use?

By 'safe", I mean will there be security updates, or will there actually need to be security updates? When one does the normal routine, weekly (or whatever) upgrades to the system, say Lubuntu, does that entail mainly upgrades to the kernel, library files, etc.? Or does the desktop environment like LXDE also need security patches and thus get upgraded. I haven't really paid attention to what gets patched.

tldr: If LXDE is ever deprecated, will it still be available and can we still use it safely?

For the time being lxde and lxqt are both being developed. I believe that Lubuntu is the only major distro that has chosen to replace its DE. There may be others. There are well over 40 other distros that use lxde. LXDE is still in the Ubuntu repositories and is still being updated. Both will exist for the foreseeable future.

abacus7 wrote:By 'safe", I mean will there be security updates, or will there actually need to be security updates?

the applications lxde consists of hardly need security updates.
i'd say, yes, it is safe to use as long as it works, and as long as the rest of the distro is kept up-to-date.

btw, i don't think that most of the applications of the lxde desktop are going anywhere:
openbox, lxappearance, pcmanfm, i use them daily although i don't use lxde.

Rex Bouwense wrote:For the time being lxde and lxqt are both being developed. I believe that Lubuntu is the only major distro that has chosen to replace its DE. There may be others. There are well over 40 other distros that use lxde. LXDE is still in the Ubuntu repositories and is still being updated. Both will exist for the foreseeable future.

Both are available from Fedora as separate Spins. https://spins.fedoraproject.org/

Raspberry PI OS for Desktop PC and Mac also uses LXDE

I feel LXDE must keep on going

If people understood better what LXDE really is, they wouldn't be so worried about it dying.
what defines a desktop ebvironment?
a) session management
b) applications that somehow fit together

so, about:
a) LXDE's session management is very rudimentary (i know it got a little more complex in recent years but still next to nothing compared to the likes of GNOME)
b) the applications it consists of: only very few are specific to LXDE: lxappearance, pcmanfm, lxrandr, lxsession, lxpolkit
even so they work well without the whole DE and enjoy some popularity outside of LXDE.
many applications are not even original LXDE apps: openbox, Firefox or whatever browser is installed.

the applications are sufficiently maintained and apart from the browser (which isn't part of LXDE anyhow) there isn't any security risk.

so, relax everybody.

also, it's still many years (at least a decade is my guess) until Xorg will not be a mainstream option anymore and everybody is using wayland.

the applications lxde consists of hardly need security updates. i'd say, yes, it is safe to use as long as it works, and as long as the rest of the distro is kept up-to-date.

SeanKernan wrote:the applications lxde consists of hardly need security updates.

Can you please expand on this?
Which applications, and where and how exactly do they fall through security-wise?

Can anyone tell if anywork or any release is in the pipeline for the LXDE project?

sagsaw wrote:Can anyone tell if anywork or any release is in the pipeline for the LXDE project?

Why do you need a new release?
If you have a problem, just tell us the problem, maybe we can fix it?

FWIW:
LXDE mailing lists: https://sourceforge.net/p/lxde/mailman/
Blog: https://blog.lxde.org/