LXDE has greatly gained in popularity lately but I wondered what advantages it would have over XFCE. Wouldn't they both use about the same resources both being more economical than KDE/gnome.

XFCE I would think has maturity on its side but beyond that are they both competing for the same market space? why should I choose one over he other?

Edit why does fluxbox not get a look in really.

XFCE has matured, not entirely to my taste, although I use it. LXDE looks nice.

For me, a significant factor is familiarity. Every time some dweeb "Revamps the front end" all the users are at sixes and sevens until they find where things have been hidden this time. What has LXDE got that makes it worth the ever increasing pain of changing?

Both LXDE and fluxbox would be lighter than XFCE. XFCE would be lighter than the bloated GNOME and KDE.

Lxde is slightly lighter than Xfce in my experience, but not enough lighter to bother with. If I'm installing on a system without much RAM, and Xfce might use a bit much, I load up one of the *box.

Its always reminded me of WinXP. I'm not sure why.

Xfce can be made to use more RAM on boot, idling, than KDE 4.X or gnome.

I was shocked at how much RAM some of the xubuntu versions used. I've seen 200MB+ used on boot, ilding with xubuntu. At the same time I had a KDE 4.X system that was using about 200MB of RAM in the same situation.

It's the crappy shade of 'BSOD Blue' that gives it a windows feel.

Unless you're into retro computing in a big way, 200MB on boot isn't disastrous. This 32 bit box has only 1 Gig, which is pitiable by modern standards, but on boot it always has 200MB to spare. What else is using ram on boot? Once loaded, I have xpdf, wine, OO, firefox, and a couple of other things going and it's no fuss, and no swap.

KDE IME runs at the same speed as an unsouped init, so it probably is doing things one at a time. KDE reminds me of vista with all bells & whistles working.

I've found LXDE less easy to configure than Xfce — in some cases less easy than a window manager like Fluxbox, as the documentation is rather poor.

Contrary to what many think, Xfce is not really intended to be lightweight. In distros like Mint and Fedora, it takes much the same amount of memory as Gnome 2. But, unless you're talking about KDE, the distro is usually more relevant than the GUI: Mint running Xfce takes twice the memory that Yoper does!

Well I currently have mint installed using gnome. I was looking to do a debian install and go something lighter broadcom drivers are a concern to me as I have no hard wired conection. I had tried Mepis-antix and liked the feel of the distro but no the window manager so much as it uses icewm-Rox.

Both Kanotix and Mepis sport KDE which looks nice but is heavy and I end up basically feeling end up feeling let down. Gnome seems lighter to me especially gnome 3 though its not really supposed to be much lighter, I tried it with fedora and it was light and fast; though fedora is unstable and kept crashing(I didn't really need or want firefox 6 which is no the standard in 15).

I think I found a solution in the aptosid manual. Would be great if occasionally there could be an aptoWheezy release though as I don't need to be on unstable testing would be better.

Most people pick Lxde over Xfce either to save a few Mb's, or because they prefer pcmanfm over thunar as a file manager. Personally, I like thunar better, and also prefer the more updated Xfce and it's options over Lxde.

In reality, Lxde is not all that much lighter than Xfce. Most base their perception of Xfce by what they see in Xubuntu. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's a far cry from experiencing Xfce on a Gentoo or Arch system.

As for memory usage, my netbook running Gentoo fully booted uses 80 Mb's on a fresh boot. That's with Wicd, Tilda, and Conky running, as well as some tray applets. That's pretty damn light for something that can be called a Desktop Environment. In contrast, Firefox or Chrome easily uses more memory than the entire Xfce desktop suite.

You could install xfce or lxde on antiX (full) or use the base or core versions and build upwards.

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Which one you choose would depend on what you want. In my opinion, LXDE looks nicer than XFCE, but lacks configuration choices. LXDE is not yet a finished product. So if you want lots of latitude for customising, XFCE is the best choice. If you do not care about customising and simply want a desktop that is easy to use and visually appealing, use LXDE.
Fluxbox, Openbox and similar DEs have not gained in popularity, because they are difficult to configure for novices. After installation, various functions must be configured using shell commands. After that, the user must create the desktop. So these "minimalist" desktops are only popular with people who have knowledge and like to build things from scratch. (Of course, others may disagree with my assessment.)

I'll watch for that next time I install Lxde (that is not going to be anytime soon)

I agree, 200MB on boot isnt that big an issue unless you are pretty light on RAM.

BTW, when I saw 200MB+ of RAM used at boot with xubuntu, that was with a 256MB system. The other system, running KDE 4.X, had 4GB

Its not that bad. LOL

+1, though even debian Xfce is pretty light as well IMO.

At least xubuntu-desktop has gone on a bit of a diet, its not as fat as it has been in the past.

Yep. Runs pretty light. I run Rox File Manager with pcmanfm since pcmanfm is pretty much siamesed in with LXDE in Debian. I am used to pcmanfm running with rox file manager in full AntiX iso i686 installs also. On another core install. I only run Rox file manager only.

My core iso install with LXDE only

http://i751.photobucket.com/albums/x...reeny/lxde.jpg

My other core install with Fluxbox only with LXPanel also.

http://i751.photobucket.com/albums/x...eenshot1-1.jpg

Both run Fast and are low on resources. LXDE took me some effort though to iron out certain bugs that seem to be inherent with Debian Testing version of LXDE, Once ironed out. It works OK. I do these things mostly as a learning exercise to better my knowledge with different ways to run a Linux Desktop. Gnome, KDE, XFCE may be easier to configure. But being a Biker. I like light weight vs heavy weight. Speed of Desktops matter also on my older gear. I like Icewm also better than XFCE. Just personal preference though. To each their own.

I have got antiX installed and going. Still not really liking icewm though, however even though its somewhat odd I am not minding the feel of fluxbox although the ability to set some default applications I always use in the panel would be nice.

Just to test different DE's I installed LXDE, XFCE Fluxbox & I liked the reponse times on my laptop,
As for Lxde & Xfce the tochpad doesn't work & it was enabled in configuration editor. But they were all faster than my gnome.

Still relevant old thread:

Reasonably true, presuming one likes XFCE.

This answers the initial question. Once you're browsing the system resources difference between LXDE & XFCE is a split hair.

Around the time of this post and from what I've seen, XFCE is more refined.