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Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear)
SlashGear has an
interview with Olivier Fourdan, creator of Xfce. "As Intel's
investment into the Moblin OS gets increasing attention, and more
non-technical users are introduced to Linux-based platforms in the shape of
low-cost netbooks, 2009 will see open-source become more mainstream than
ever before. Under the hood there's much that makes Linux safer, more
efficient and secure than rival systems, but for most new users it's what
they can see on-screen that counts. SlashGear caught up with Xfce creator
Olivier Fourdan, whose desktop environment has not only been selected by
Intel for Moblin but can be found on many existing Linux netbooks, and
talked Intel, Moblin, the future for netbooks and what challenges he sees
for open-source newcomer Android."
(Log in to post comments)
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 7, 2009 1:18 UTC (Sat) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] It's still in early stages of development, with Moblin 2's final UI not baked into the code yet. Alpha 1 instead uses the XFCE desktop environment as a placeholder although the Moblin crew says the final UI won't be based on XFCE.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 7, 2009 6:34 UTC (Sat) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
XFCE is getting bloated now, go LXDE !
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 7, 2009 21:32 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Different levels of functionality. Xfce has more functionality than LXDE. Gnome has more functionality than Xfce. Xfce uses more resources than LXDE.
The differences in resource consumption between the three pale in significance as soon as you open up a browser, whether it be FF or Epiphany. Ditto for office software.
I recently did the rounds of Gnome/Xfce/LXDE and spent weeks with each one. I ended up choosing Gnome. The most functionality with little effective additional cost when running a realistic desktop workload.
The resource differences are measurable, but insignificant in the real world. LXDE does rock for some toy desktop scenarios. Possibly even for some realistic Moblin scenarios. But those would have to be scenarios with lower resource availability than my Asus EEEpc
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 8, 2009 2:11 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
LXDE's mission is to provide a usable desktop for low-resource computers that you typically find in less developed countries.
So if your trying to use Firefox with it, then your doing it wrong. It's not a 'lite' program. So no Firefox, no Flash, no OpenOffice.org, etc. They consume much to much resources to really work well on the sorts of computers that LXDE is designed to work with.
It's amazing the amount of functionality that Linux can provide on a old P2 or P3 style computer with 128MB of ram. But XCFE or Gnome are not going to be able to deliver on that sort of setup.
With Netbooks memory usage doesn't really matter as much as people pretend it does. 1GB-2GB is a common amount of RAM now.
What matters is creating a solid usable desktop interface that fits well into small displays, doesn't hog the CPU, and takes advantage of the graphics processing power available to reduce the load on the CPU and increase efficiency; especially for video playback.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 9, 2009 6:27 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
"""
LXDE's mission is to provide a usable desktop for low-resource computers that you typically find in less developed countries. So if your trying to use Firefox with it, then your doing it wrong. """
That is reasonable. As long as WWW access is not required, or if Dillo is sufficient. Dillo does not see to me to be sufficient, in the long term, for most efficiency-minded people who can afford more but like to go "slumming". My comments on these matters tend to be directed toward the "slummers" who think that LXDE is cool this week.
I do like Gnome, Xfce, and LXDE, as well. I found that Epiphany was a better match for all of them than FF. Along with Abiword and Gnumeric. They pull in the Gnome libs, and do crush LXDE's memory savings to insignificance. But not as badly as FF and OO.o do. Shared memory is your good friend, as the Damn Small Linux guys have demonstrated so well in their work.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 9, 2009 16:55 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Ya. Midori or Epiphany with the webkit engine can do a bit better then Firefox in terms of resource usage. If you do some addblock stuff and don't bother with flash then it can still be pretty usable.
Otherwise in the future probably the mobile versions of browsers, like the mozilla folks are working on, should be the answer for the 'lite' browser needs.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 9, 2009 15:46 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
I've been very impressed with LXDE and OpenBox on lightweight distros including Crunchbang, U-Lite and SliTaz (I think it uses some parts anyway). The first two run really well in 200MB RAM despite being Ubuntu based, and perhaps with Midori could even squeeze into 96 MB.
XFCE is nice but it uses so much RAM out of a 200 MB laptop that I have to look at LXDE. Also there was a bug where the component handling the menu and panel would crash at random, leaving the user without a menu - a bit disconcerting and not easy to recover from if you don't know XFCE.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 12, 2009 13:15 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
But a low-resource computer today is a high-end computer from five or ten years ago. And ten years ago people were running GNOME and KDE. I expect they have become bigger since then, but are they really so unusable if you have 'only' 128 megs of RAM?
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 8, 2009 9:21 UTC (Sun) by feistyfeline (guest, #56554) [Link]
I agree that Gnome is suitable for most general applications. XFCE and LXDE are designed for systems where resource constraints are a problem. Abuse of web 2.0 such as myspace, etc will cause you problems no matter what. User generated pages using active content mashed-up from different sites is an obvious problem. The simplest solution apart from limiting the number of concurrent interactive applications in Linux is more memory, and installing a system that's optimized for your hardware - the current Fedora is optimized for i686 (meaning P4 class or better) so is downright sluggish on my old Pentium M that has plenty of memory.
If you have a boss that still thinks that OS2 was the best OS there ever was there's going to be a problem with hardware upgrades, so what I've done in the past is make sure someone has to suffer -- install all the memory hogs to compel the boss to upgrade (no this is good business sense not sabotage).
At home use what your heart's contented with. If you drive a Prius and hug trees every free moment you get no one can compel you love a fuel guzzling Cadillac or Hummer and pummel baby seals to death on your vacations, and vice versa. Use whatever makes you happy, and don't settle for any less. That's why we all use Linux so that we can make such choices - Freedom.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 8, 2009 10:58 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
There's also a matter of startup time.
Both KDE and GNOME here have much room for improvement vs. XFCE and LXDE.
This is quite meaningful if you have a system that boots often (e.g. live CD). This is also important if the system is mostly a one-application system that does not need most of the extra stuff those have to offer.
Xfce creator talks Linux, Moblin, netbooks and open-source (SlashGear) Posted Feb 9, 2009 10:35 UTC (Mon) by nedrichards (guest, #23295) [Link]
As mentioned by Jussi in the comments of the article itself Moblin 2 - Netbook will not be using XFCE as its default desktop environment. We're making something different.
Nick, Intel OTC
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