LXDE updates

Posted on 4 Aug 09 at 21:30 | Tagged as , ,

LXDE logo Lately we updated some of the LXDE packages in Gentoo, and tonight I added a few more. We have now a practically complete LXDE desktop on Gentoo. So if you feel like trying the most lightweight desktop environment, consider to emerge lxde-meta. If you come across any bugs or other issues, please let us know. Bugs should be reported at bugs.gentoo.org. Support questions are welcome in the #gentoo and #gentoo-desktop IRC channels on Freenode, or #lxde on OFTC. You can also go to the forums.

The current version, lxde-meta-0.4.2 and its dependencies, is considered our stable candidate, so we’d like to straighten out any issues there may exist. Also, some documentation would be welcome. So if you want to contribute a “How to configure and use LXDE on Gentoo” guide, we’d be very thankful. Or if you want to help maintaining LXDE in portage, we could always use more people. So contact me if you’re interested in a herd tester or developer position.

We also have an overlay with live ebuilds, but it is basically unmaintained. So I cannot recommend you use it, unless you want to test and update the ebuilds. If you’re on bitbucket, send me a pull request. We used to have several user contributors, but I guess they are too busy with other things now — as am I. Currently my focus for LXDE (whenever I have time for it) is to get the packages up-to-date with the latest released versions and get what we have now tested and marked stable.

So have you tried LXDE yet? What are your thoughts? And are you willing to contribute?

7 comments

  1. François on 5 Aug 09 at 05:36:

    I did give a go when it first entered portage. I wanted to see if I could be a better
    choice of desktop to run through a vnc session. Problems are that I am fairly dependent
    (addicted) to my kde apps and it wasn’t a smooth experience.
    I didn’t like pacman that much but I am sure it could be alright with a bit of configuration.
    Setting some of the apps that I wanted and have the icon appearing didn’t work well at
    the time.

    I am thinking to make it my desktop on my old ppc machine as something lightweight
    may be more appropriate. If I become a regular user I may be interested in contributing.

    I guess I am really looking at a viable alternative to kde (don’t have to have all the bells
    and whistle of kde but some configurability nonetheless) that isn’t gnome (I really can’t
    stand it – each time I give it a spin I end up extremely annoyed.)

  2. Markos Chandras on 5 Aug 09 at 18:22:

    I tried LXDE a couple of days ago. To be honest I couldn’t get used to it. I am a KDE4 user and I found it really hard to migrate to a more “complicated” desktop. Even though I like the idea of a more elegant and simple DE, migrating from KDE4 is not that easy from me. I even tried Openbox+KDE but still it didn’t work for me

    I definitely gonna try this again when I have more time and patience to migrate :)

  3. Francois on 6 Aug 09 at 10:51:

    I have seen the post about kde4.3 earlier today and I think
    it would be nice if you provided a package.keywords/package.unmask
    files for lxde. That would make life easier.

  4. Vicente Olivert Riera on 7 Aug 09 at 11:42:

    I have uninstalled XFCE and installed LXDE. It’s very fast and I’d like help for improve it.

    To Francois:
    You need this in your package.keywords

    lxde-base/lxde-meta
    lxde-base/lxinput
    lxde-base/lxterminal
    lxde-base/lxpanel
    x11-misc/pcmanfm
    lxde-base/lxde-common
    lxde-base/lxmenu-data
    lxde-base/lxtask
    lxde-base/lxsession
    lxde-base/lxsession-edit
    lxde-base/lxappearance
    media-gfx/gpicview
    lxde-base/lxrandr
    lxde-base/lxshortcut
    lxde-base/menu-cache

    …then, emerge lxde-base/lxde-meta

  5. Mario Behling on 16 Aug 09 at 19:17:

    Thanks for the updated packages. It is great to see you engaging in the LXDE community for such a long time already. Keep up the good work! All the best!

  6. dani on 14 Jan 10 at 08:37:

    In my opinion, LXDE is faster than Xfce. Fancy enough rather than Xfce. Panel icon management is much easier on Xfce rather than LXDE. Better than hourly compile time in KDE.

  7. dani on 14 Jan 10 at 09:22:

    Ben, LXDE panel (if on the top) and Tilda (drop-down terminal) is overlapping. I have to re-adjust Tilda X and Y position.

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