Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I’m really pleased that the LXDE project has gained so much steam. If you haven’t looked at it lately, you should take another look at the menu on the LXDE home pages. It’s not just a panel and a file manager any more — we’re talking about a new terminal application that minimizes memory use, a launcher, a network daemon and a few other things that are rounding out the entire environment.

The terminal application is a nice addition; I like Sakura but it’s occasionally an extra step removed from my desktop. (That probably doesn’t make much sense, but it doesn’t bear explaining, so just take it for what it’s worth. 🙄 )

Now for anyone who’s barging around the Internet on their sleek and polished quad core, LXDE is probably of the least interest to you. And that’s fine; continue to enjoy your Gnome desktop, or your KDE system with compositing, et al.

But for those of us who are too wise to dump more money into a “faster” system to do the same things with obtuse and overweight software, it’s a wonderful thing to see LXDE mature into a popular (with Crux ports too! 😯 ) and well-rounded solution for less muscular hardware. Something like this — in any shade, Ubuntu or otherwise — has been needed for a long time … or at least since Xubuntu adopted a weight problem, for one example.

So I’m not involved in the project directly, but I’m definitely rooting for it. If it keeps one more person from spending money on a new computer, then it’s a good thing. Or if it makes one more computer usable for someone less privileged, somewhere in the world, then it’s a good thing. 😀