LXLE is a distribution that has been around for around three years. It used to be an LTS version of Lubuntu, but now it caters to those who want a lightweight and flexible desktop with lots of software, since Lubuntu has an official LTS version since 14.04. This review comes from the fact that after reviewing Bodhi, Lubuntu, and Crunchbang++, I still haven’t found a perfect, polished distribution yet. Will LXLE finally be it? Read on!
Editor’s note: Sorry about the unexplained 1.5 month hiatus as I was busy with schoolwork. I was also in India with bad connection speeds so I wasn’t able to download anything for review.
1. First impressions and ease of use
The live ISO is 1.4 GB in size, quite large for a “lightweight” distribution, and can be downloaded from their website at http://lxle.net/download through SourceForge. A mini-rant: When will distros stop using SourceForge? Security problems aside, it’s ad-riddled and easy to misclick the download button, and somehow seems to select the wrong mirror. http://kernel.org is much better and trustworthy too.
Anyway, we have a nice LXDE desktop with a nice simple Conky on bootup. It’s a familiar interface and 99% of users would have no problems adjusting to it, since the layout is the same as most desktop environments, including that of Windows.
Interestingly, there’s a dock on the left side of the screen. I don’t see what the point of this is as I would just pin my most used apps to the taskbar, but I guess it’s nice to have if you’re coming from OS X. It can easily be disabled if you want it to.
Ease of use score: 10/10
2. Installer
This is the Ubiquity installer, which does its job quickly and extremely well, so I’m not going to bore you with screenshots. It’s how an installer should be, fast, simple, and gets out of your way. No hiccups at all.
Post install stats are quite average for a lightweight distribution in comparison to the aforementioned Bodhi, Lubuntu, and Crunchbang++, but nothing to blow you away. It should perform extremely well on most systems from the past ten years.
Installer score: 10/10
Release date
|
ISO size (GB)
|
Distribution base
|
Install time
|
Boot time
|
Size of install
|
Desktop RAM use
|
Kernel Version
| |
KaOS 2015.02
|
2/24/2015
|
1.4
|
Independent
|
18:03
|
0:36
|
4.6
|
415
|
3.18.7
|
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
|
2/25/2015
|
1.1
|
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04 Beta 1)
|
12:57
|
0:27
|
4.2
|
457
|
3.18.1
|
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
|
2/6/2015
|
1.4
|
Arch
|
11:33
|
0:27
|
4.7
|
351
|
3.16.7
|
Netrunner 15
|
2/16/2015
|
1.9
|
Ubuntu Utopic (14.10)
|
16:20
|
0:41
|
6.4
|
714
|
3.16.0
|
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
|
11/4/2014
|
4.4
|
openSUSE Harlequin (13.2)
|
15:29
|
0:39
|
4.4
|
422
|
3.16.6
|
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
|
2/17/2015
|
0.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
5:50
|
0:34
|
2.2
|
348
|
3.16.0
|
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
|
11/29/2014
|
1.4
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
8:45
|
0:42
|
4.5
|
343
|
3.13.0
|
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
|
3/22/2015
|
2.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
20:54
|
0:47
|
7.4
|
745
|
3.13.0
|
Korora 21 Cinnamon
|
2/6/2015
|
1.7
|
Fedora 21
|
13:24
|
1:04
|
5.0
|
602
|
3.18.3
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
4/21/2015
|
1.3
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
10:10
|
0:46
|
4.2
|
843
|
4.0.0
|
Lubuntu 15.04
|
4/24/2015
|
0.7
|
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04)
|
11:55
|
0:22
|
2.4
|
216
|
3.19.0
|
elementary OS 0.3
|
4/11/2015
|
0.9
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
11:20
|
0:26
|
2.6
|
392
|
3.16.0
|
Linux Lite 2.4
|
4/1/2015
|
0.8
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
4:31
|
0:23
|
3.5
|
416
|
3.13.0
|
Linux Mint 17.2 MATE RC
|
6/16/2015
|
1.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
12:37
|
0:38
|
4.8
|
303
|
3.16.0
|
Crunchbang++ 1.0
|
4/29/2015
|
0.6
|
Debian Jessie (8.0)
|
17:25
|
0:17
|
2.3
|
187
|
3.16.0
|
Mageia 5 KDE
|
6/20/2015
|
1.7
|
Independent
|
7:55
|
0:26
|
4.1
|
421
|
3.19.8
|
Solus 0.201529.4.0
|
7/16/2015
|
0.7
|
Independent
|
4:13
|
0:14
|
2.4
|
182
|
4.1.2
|
LXLE 14.04.3
|
8/31/2015
|
1.4
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
8:41
|
0:34
|
4.5
|
231
|
3.13.0
|
Average of all distros
|
1.5
|
11:46
|
0:33
|
4.1
|
422
|
3. Design
LXLE comes with a nice default theme named CobiBird. It’s similar to Lubuntu’s and Xubuntu’s default themes, and it’s reminiscent of the current Linux theme trends. The default font is Liberation Sans, which looks great, but a little bland for my tastes. However, it manages to keep
the contemporary look.
The login screen is also well done and complements the look of the distribution fairly well.
With a couple of tweaks, I customized to my tastes (MOAR SOLARIZED) and got it looking the way most of my desktops look.
Font rendering in browsers is also excellent (unrelated side note: Go Patriots!).
Design score: 9.5/10
4. Applications
LXLE comes with the default set of lightweight applications:
Web Browser - SeaMonkey (Firefox fork)
File Manager - PCManFM
Email Client - SeaMonkey (Thunderbird fork)
Text Editor - GEdit
Image Viewer - Mirage
Terminal Emulator - ROXTerm
Music Player - Guayadeque
Office Suite - LibreOffice
However, outside of the core set, LXLE truly excels in applications. It has many games such as Solitaire, Mahjongg, Minesweeper, etc, and comes with many multimedia tools like OpenShot and Audacity. It’s got a password manager and an antivirus suite, and all of this out of the box.
Applications score: 10/10
5. Installing packages
As a derivative of Ubuntu, LXLE comes with the APT package manager. It has a wide repository, but it’s slow compared to other package managers such as Arch’s pacman. However, it has an excellent GUI package manager called Lubuntu Software Center. It’s simple and category-based. If you don’t like that, Synaptic is also included.
Installing packages score: 9.5/10
Final thoughts: So there you have it. LXLE is a very, very well put together distro. It’s easy to use, flexible, powerful, and it has almost everything you need out of the box. Its design is also very well done. I have no qualms about recommending it, and it looks like this is the lightweight distribution king we were looking for.
Final score: 49/50 = 98%
Distro name
|
Final Score
|
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
|
99
|
LXLE 14.04.3
|
98
|
Linux Mint 17.2 MATE RC
|
98
|
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
|
97
|
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
|
95
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
94
|
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
|
93
|
Korora 21 Cinnamon
|
92
|
Solus 0.201529.4.0
|
92
|
elementary OS 0.3
|
91
|
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
|
91
|
Linux Lite 2.4
|
90
|
Netrunner 15
|
90
|
Lubuntu 15.04
|
88
|
Crunchbang++ 1.0
|
86
|
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
|
84
|
KaOS 2015.02
|
80
|
Mageia 5 KDE
|
75
|
Average of all reviews
|
91
|
Newbie here!!! Longtime windows user that is not impressed with 10, looking to switch, few options on table, looked at most Linux distros...want something that whole house can buy into, all win users, like a pleasant transition, don't want to scare anyone!! Which would you recommend, have newer computers etc; Mint Mate/Deepin/Zorin/Regular Ubuntu, hard to decide so many choices, so many Linux user opinions, any help appreciated!
ReplyDeleteIf you have newer computers, I would go with Mint Cinnamon since that is very familiar to Windows users (other than Zorin but that doesn't have LTS releases). I run Cinnamon right now and it's quite nice and well built. Mint MATE also will do the job very nicely. When installing Linux on other people's computers I always go with Mint and it always works very well.
DeleteHope this helps you!
Thanks, trying Ubuntu & Mint Cinnamon, like both, still a bit confused by some stuff but I'm determined to switch, also like Deepin'
ReplyDeleteThat's how we all started. Hopefully you find one to settle down with.
DeleteDo you have a recommendation for tweaks to Mint?
ReplyDeleteI personally don't, but there's a lot of things that you can google that I would go off of. Most tweaks should be the same for any other distro, however (particularly Ubuntu and derivatives).
DeleteThanks very much, have been looking at Black lab, Makulu & PCOS also, so many choices...next challenge is setting up a home network, looked a tad tricky but onwards we go!!
ReplyDeleteGreat review! I have been using Peach OSI for the last 10 months and I have nothing but good things to say about it. Can you please do a review of Peach? I like to know your opinion about this distribution.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Linux Lite 14.04.4 looks really great with new features and appearance. Love it. One problem--I set the password and it's rejected. Can't find a way to skip the password setup with no Login. Can't wait to try this OS. Help...GarySmith
ReplyDelete