Are there any openSUSE users with openSUSE LXDE experiences they are willing to share?
Are there any users willing to help the volunteer openSUSE LXDE packager?
I thought I would start a new thread dedicated to using LXDE on openSUSE-11.3 milestone versions, and also openSUSE-11.2 LXDE users if they have tidbits to offer.
LXDE is now a desktop provided by the openSUSE community for openSUSE-11.2 as a liveCD, and the plan is LXDE will also be included as a desktop option in the openSUSE-11.3 DVD .
The packager for LXDE is very heavily loaded, so please anyone who is will to give help in both packaging and/or testing, your help is needed and will be most likley be appreciated. A good place to contact the developer is on IRC freenode channel #opensuse-lxde or using the contact information in link#1 below.
I installed openSUSE-11.3 milestone4 on my sandbox PC a week or so ago, and its working well, albeit there are some 11.3 bugs that need fixing. My sandbox PC is an athlon-1100 with 1GB RAM, and an AGP nVidia FX5200 graphic card. I installed the nVidia proprietary graphic driver, which alo helped improve performance.
Overall, I have to say it is very fast on such an old PC.
For example, on this PC with LXDE in openSUSE-11.3 M4, I was able to simultaneous do the following with no noticeable lag:
download (and upload) a video with transmission (a lightweight btorrent client) at a speed of about 100KB/sec up and also 100KB/sec down.
copy a large 700MB file to another Linux PC on our home lan with FileZilla (using sftp) at a speed of 2.1 MB/sec
play a DVD quality MPEG file with MPlayer
chat on IRC with xchat
have PCManFM (file manager) open for investigations and top running in a terminal to monitor CPU/memory.
Very little memory was in use, but my CPU was close to being maxed out. Even though the CPU % was high, because of the low memory useage, I was left with the impression I could have done a lot more, and I was left with the impression that a PC with a similar processor but less RAM could have performed similar.
Please note the following URLs for more LXDE information
IMHO the LXDE desktop really needs community support. Currently it is in what I see as a relatively “fragile” development stage, where despite its maturity as a good desktop, it has very few packagers, few testers and few users. In particular there is a MAJOR risk that the LXDE packagers will burn out from the effort if more people do not volunteer. We need contributions on all sides: users, testers, and packagers.
So please contribute with your time and effort.
Its a FAST desktop so in some ways you will be rewarded.
It was suggested to me by ken_yap in another thread, that to assist in testing of LXDE I could attempt to limit the available memory of my test computer. As an example, the boot code “mem=256M” was given to me.
IMHO this is a great Idea !!
So I booted the openSUSE-11.2 liveCD for LXDE, adding mem=256M on my athlon-1100 and the liveCD booted and ran OK. Firefox ran (albeit Firefox could take from 20% to 85% of the available RAM) . Speed was fast. So that was no challenge. Too much memory. Too fast a CPU.
Now I happen to have openSUSE-11.3 Milestone4 with LXDE on this PC, so I rebooted to that, and at the grub/splash menu added the code “mem=128M” >:)
LXDE booted. It took a while for the mouse to become active (at first I thought it frozen) but eventually the mouse worked. I checked with “top” in a terminal … it confirmed 128MB allocated ! Performance was noticebly not as quick as when the PC’s full 1GB of RAM is available, but it is still a good speed. Its NOT slow.
I then launched Firefox. I believe Firefox requires more than 128MB of RAM to run , which means for it to work, openSUSE-11.3 M4 would have to access the swap partition. I noticed hard drive access increased, but Firefox did run. In fact I am typing this from Firefox on this LXDE with 128MB of RAM allocated on openSUSE-11.3 M4. This is impressive. FINALLY something light weight for users of old PCs.
We do need to help the LXDE team to keep this effort alive. I’m going to copy this post to the beta/forum thread area where it more appropriately belongs.
Thanks ken_yap for the suggestion.
And please, VOLUNTEERS to test and help the LXDE team are needed.
Don’t forget, you can find some of us hanging about on IRC freenode channel #opensuse-lxde
While I note 128 MB worked ok with LXDE, 84MB did not (did not work quickly - that is).
Some Detail : I used to have an old Compaq laptop that had 84MB of RAM (maximum allowed) and my wife has long since given away that laptop. So I decided to see if LXDE could go below 128MB and since I recalled an old PC of mine once having 84MB of RAM, I thought I would give that a try.
I am amazed. It actually worked with 84M of RAM !! I did NOT try a browser but I did run xchat on the LXDE desktop. It was definitely slow. Mouse moved jerky. The boot was slow (although I have seen Vista and XP take longer to boot). Still , 84MB is not recommended for LXDE (its too small amount of RAM) . It was constantly into swap. I’m not sure the openSUSE installer would even install (in text mode) on a PC with 84MB of RAM. But since I already have openSUSE on this drive, it was possible to test (with the mem=84M option).
Its very slow but still, its also Amazing !!
Again, 84M of RAM NOT recommended as its too slow.
OK, I started firefox with xchat still running, and it worked with only 84MB of RAM !! Incredibly slow. Like really really really slow. But firefox actually runs. 11.3 with only 84MB of RAM is heavily into using swap. But the application did actually run.
This is impressive.
With 128MB of RAM the behaviour is much more benign and snappy. What a difference the shift from 84MB to 128MB of RAM makes !
Well, you know how to push limits, oldcup! I’m downloading the M4 dvd now and will be testing an LXDE system in VBox, then perhaps on my MSI Wind netbook (once I get it’s broken screen relplaced!). I’m not sure I’ll be installing it on my main systems (desktop and laptop) because they are usually in active use, and I am too much of a KDE user to switch to anything else for very long. :shame:
I emphatically agree with you on the need for testing openSUSE LXDE. Ironically, because it will probably have fewer users, it will need more testing to get it stable, which would be important if it’s going to be an official desktop. It would nice to make openSUSE an “official” LXDE distro, but I hope we’re not spreading resources too thin - we now have KDE, GNOME, XFCE and LXDE to support and test - one of the frustrating factors for me is that it’s a real hassel to setup and use 4 testing installations, not to mention that I also consider 32bit vs 64bit something worth testing (I have seen bugs on one and not the other), making 8 11.3 varieties that need testing.
Give him another month and he won’t even need a CPU. lol!
Nice going buys. I like how the LXDE desktops can run with only 128MB and yet the menus and bars are almost as good as KDE with the bonus that the same openSUSE repos are usable. LXDE will be very comfy in old machines with 256MB.
I’m going to install the LiveCD for LXDE on my netbook. Accer aspire one. 1GB RAM and a 1.6GHz Atom. With ubuntu netbook edition I usually maxed out the CPU doing 4 things. In fact, i can only have it plying a flash video to stop it from freezing too much lol!. So hopefully, i can get more out of it with LXDE;)
That Atom has so much “horse power” relative to LXDE’s requriements, you may not even notice the benefit. Its when the RAM starts getting slim that LXDE really shines relative to the heavier desktops.
Good luck thou, and let us know what you think. Also, note the LXDE implementation on the openSUSE-11.2 liveCD while good, is not up to par with what we are going to see in openSUSE-11.3 LXDE (currently in milestone4). LXDE in 11.3 is shaping up to be very good.
A pointer for LXDE’s clipboard … its behaviour is “not quite right”.
The fix is to right click on the clipboard in the lower right of the desktop, select “preferences” and under the tab “behaviour” deselect “synchronize clipboards”.
I’m told by the LXDE packager that its difficult to make this a default value, because there is no obvious config file where a default setting can go. To change the code upstream is not feasible as the developer of the clipboad “parcellite” announced on 2-April that the clipboard will no longer be supported: Parcellite » Blog Archive » Thanks, and Good Night … < sigh > … so we have to hope someone either “forks” parcellite, or picks up the ball for a different light weight clipboard such that the LXDE community can use it.
I got a prob. I used the links that you provided and all I saw the one click installs. Hmm, do I need to download the DVD then install that way? My link isn’t exactly that quick lol.
In regards to the Atom, that sounds good. I expecting good results.
For openSUSE-11.3 milestones there are no liveCDs yet. Instead one must download and burn the openSUSE-11.3 milestone DVD. From that the LXDE destkop can be installed. The link is here: Software.openSUSE.org … it will likely be a few months after 11.3 is released before there is a liveCD of 11.3 LXDE.
I was looking at the LXDE web site: LXDE | LXDE.org where they note:
CPU RAM Hard Disk Speed
Pentium II 266 MHz 192 MB 5400 rpm moderate - fast
VIA 400 MHz 256 MB 5400 rpm moderate - fast
Pentium III 600 MHz 512 MB 4500 rpm fast
QEMU emulation on
AMD Athlon 1.6
(1.4 GHz) 128 MB QEMU disk image fast
AMD Athlon 1.6
(1.4 GHz) 512 MB 7200 rpm very fast
Intel Atom 512 MB Flash Disk very fast
with a recommendation that 128MB is the minimum for reasonable behaviour. My testing with the boot code mem=xxxM values (where xxx are different RAM values in MBytes) confirm that.
One note, if the build is i686, this excludes the AMD K6 processors, which is i586 (missing one instruction: cmov). I believe some of the ancient VIA processors are also not i686. PII and above are i686 though. Maybe I should just chuck this K6 since it stands out like a sore thumb whenever i686 distros come out.
we need you guys, please Join the team
now to test in Vbox first so I can know what to expect.