Revisiting LXDE
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:36 pm
Hello,
After not using LXDE for a really long time, I found myself getting exposed to it again when I decided to reformat my Kali USB with the latest image.
It then occurred to me that LXDE is still probably one of the nicest desktop environments around, despite my aversion for it and LXQt's ascension.
Although I find LXQt a lot more user-friendly, it still suffers from the one and only thing I personally found lacking in LXDE and that is the LXpanel menu plugin in LXDE or simply, the panel menu as some may consider it.
Quite honestly, that's largely the only issue I ever had with LXDE. The only reason I can settle with it in LXQt is because they included a search utility and they even have their own launcher. So, being one of those people, I just feel a lot more productive when having those options.
LXDE's menu plugin was not only non-user-friendly out of the box but it didn't allow easy modification to make it so. Yes, I could make my text bigger, but that by itself didn't mean it was designed well nor rendered well on all screens.
I think, however, and to its prolonged use/success, LXDE wins the "lightweight" argument and does so because it follows the KISS principle to its core.
That is why I've found justification for using it on my Kali live pen drive. It includes what I need (and then some), it's simple as heck, and it's fast.
TL;DR:
The reason I felt like posting this at all was because I felt that I perhaps criticized LXDE too much in the past. I still wouldn't choose it as my favorite desktop and I still think there's no excuse for a lacking in usability when it comes to GUI components, but that doesn't mean I don't see where it fulfills most people's needs. I think it allowed a lot of basic things you'd see in any "modern" desktop environment and perhaps even had its own quirks. It was by no means perfect, as none are, but whenever I used it, I had what I needed—whether that was a text editor, a terminal, or a file explorer—I had it.
In my opinion, if LXDE had simply modernized that one thing, that one desktop component, there wouldn't have been much justification to move on to LXQt. Obviously, I don't know the real reason why things moved on aside from built-in limitations but I'm not a dev, so I can't give any concrete insight.
If it were me, however, and they did simply make the menu more user-friendly, I wouldn't have minded sticking with LXDE.
So, if there's anything to take from this aside—and not that anyone should care—it's that I didn't hate LXDE per say, I just couldn't use it.
After not using LXDE for a really long time, I found myself getting exposed to it again when I decided to reformat my Kali USB with the latest image.
It then occurred to me that LXDE is still probably one of the nicest desktop environments around, despite my aversion for it and LXQt's ascension.
Although I find LXQt a lot more user-friendly, it still suffers from the one and only thing I personally found lacking in LXDE and that is the LXpanel menu plugin in LXDE or simply, the panel menu as some may consider it.
Quite honestly, that's largely the only issue I ever had with LXDE. The only reason I can settle with it in LXQt is because they included a search utility and they even have their own launcher. So, being one of those people, I just feel a lot more productive when having those options.
LXDE's menu plugin was not only non-user-friendly out of the box but it didn't allow easy modification to make it so. Yes, I could make my text bigger, but that by itself didn't mean it was designed well nor rendered well on all screens.
I think, however, and to its prolonged use/success, LXDE wins the "lightweight" argument and does so because it follows the KISS principle to its core.
That is why I've found justification for using it on my Kali live pen drive. It includes what I need (and then some), it's simple as heck, and it's fast.
TL;DR:
The reason I felt like posting this at all was because I felt that I perhaps criticized LXDE too much in the past. I still wouldn't choose it as my favorite desktop and I still think there's no excuse for a lacking in usability when it comes to GUI components, but that doesn't mean I don't see where it fulfills most people's needs. I think it allowed a lot of basic things you'd see in any "modern" desktop environment and perhaps even had its own quirks. It was by no means perfect, as none are, but whenever I used it, I had what I needed—whether that was a text editor, a terminal, or a file explorer—I had it.
In my opinion, if LXDE had simply modernized that one thing, that one desktop component, there wouldn't have been much justification to move on to LXQt. Obviously, I don't know the real reason why things moved on aside from built-in limitations but I'm not a dev, so I can't give any concrete insight.
If it were me, however, and they did simply make the menu more user-friendly, I wouldn't have minded sticking with LXDE.
So, if there's anything to take from this aside—and not that anyone should care—it's that I didn't hate LXDE per say, I just couldn't use it.