What do you do when your aging computer starts slowing you down so much that Ubuntu seems to crawl? Sure, you could try out XFCE via xubuntu-desktop, but there’s also a new kid on the block. Enter LXDE.
Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment
LXDE is, according to its Wikipedia page, “…a 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.” From what I’ve seen, it’s done a tremendous job at that. Plus, its use of GTK+ makes all of your Gnome desktop applications fit right in.
LXDE isn’t built on a ton of dependencies like other window managers, but is a collection of lightweight, usable, individual packages that together form a completly usable desktop using only and estimated 45MB of your precious old memory. These packages include, according to LXDE.org:
Now, on with the extremely step-by-step install:
1. From your Ubuntu “Hardy” desktop, in the System menu under Administration, open Software Sources.
Software Sources
2. Click the Third-Party Software tab, and then click on the Add button.
Third-Party Software
3. In the APT line, enter:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main
and click Add Source.
4 . Again, you’re going to click the Add button, to also add the line:
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main
and, again, Add Source.
Adding sources
When finished, your Sources List should look something like this.
5. After clicking Close, a dialog box will pop up stating that “The information about available software is out-of-date,” indicating that the software sources have changed. Go ahead and click the reload button, and, once the process completes, Software Sources will close.
Reload
6. Open a Terminal and at your prompt, type:
sudo apt-get install lxde
You will be asked if you would like to continue twice. Answer ‘y’ to both questions.
Installing the LXDE Desktop
7. Once the installation is complete, either log out or hit ctrl-alt-backspace to restart the window manager. Either way, you’ll end up back at your log in screen and click Options>Select Session and click the radial button for LXDE and Change Session.
Select Session...
Choose LXDE>Change Session
Now, once you log in, you will be instantly catapulted into a new, usable, LXDE desktop.
Your new LXDE desktop.
