[nzlug] The lightest desktop system?

[Daniel Pittman]

"Sid Bachtiar" <sid.bachtiar at gmail.com> writes:

> I'm just wondering, what is the lightest desktop system available for
> Linux / Ubuntu?

If you really want the whole "Desktop" deal, as others have said, XFCE
is probably the best possible choice.

If you don't mind doing some integration work yourself, or you don't
mind having slightly less "Desktop" you could investigate two options:

The "ROX Desktop" is a very capable graphical file browser and desktop
presentation system.  It is probably the lightest tool I have used, and
is surprisingly good.

It does kind of target being a full blown desktop environment, but never
got there through lack of community pickup.  What is complete was very
good last time I used it, though.


Pair that with either IceWM or WindowMaker, both of which offer a
variety of methods of giving the rest of the "Desktop" deal, such as
icons or menus to launch software and show running tasks.


Then you can add whatever additional software meets your needs, and get
something quite usable, and with a lower footprint.[1]

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  Quite possibly not enough lower that you wouldn't win by taking
     GNOME or KDE and trimming the fat carefully, but YMMV.

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