Bits by Ben » lxde

LXDE 0.5.0 update

Ben — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:00:22 +0000

Hello there! Long time no see, I know. (At least on this blog.) For our LXDE users out there, I want to point you to the fact that Victor Ostorga has provided us with some updated packages, and we now have lxde-meta-0.5.0 in portage, in the testing branch. So go ahead and test these updated packages out, and report any bugs you find!

LXDE updates

Ben — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:30:02 +0000

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?

FOSDEM 2009

Ben — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:24:00 +0000

Last Saturday I was at FOSDEM, the yearly European meeting of Free Software developers in Brussels. It was very nice to meet fellow devs, especially those from the Gentoo KDE team, as I chat with them on a daily basis in the #gentoo-kde IRC channel.

I also met up with Mario Behling and Christoph Wickert, from the LXDE project, which seems to be gaining a lot of momentum (several distros such as the famous Knoppix liveCD now offer LXDE as default desktop or lightweight option). They had a so called “Lightning Talk” with a 15 minute slideshow presentation. I spoke to them after the talk about the recent developments in LXDE, the growth of the community, and the need for some talented volunteers to work on offering more themes. LXDE themes would be a combined package of a matching Openbox theme and GTK2 theme, possibly with an iconset added. A wiki page is in the making, and there may be a contest later.

All in all, FOSDEM was a success, especially the social aspect. I hope to go for the whole weekend next year. What about you? Did you enjoy FOSDEM this year? And are you planning to go next year?