PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE Review: Fast, attractive and easy to use Lightweight rolling release distro

Of all the desktop environments I have used till date, LXDE definitely ranks among the most efficient ones. Just to give a proof of how much it is efficient than other desktop environments, I have used till date 13 LXDE distros and their combined average RAM utilization is ~ 116 MB (all 32-bit OS), to load the default desktop with task manager running. LXDE consumes less than half of the resources what a normal KDE 4.10 or a GNOME 3.6 distro would consume under similar conditions. Further, it is 44% more efficient than it's nearest rival XFCE 4.10. 

Desktop Environment	Average  Ram Usage (MB)	# Of OS reviewed
E17	100	4
Openbox	108	7
LXDE	116	13
Gnome 2.32	134	5
XFCE 4.8	137	9
Mate 1.6.0	147	2
XFCE 4.10	167	13
Mate 1.4	187	5
Mate 1.2	199	2
Cinnamon 1.4	200	1
Cinnamon 1.8	209	2
Cinnamon 1.6	214	3
Gnome 3.6	248	8
KDE 4.10	255	4
Gnome 3.4	279	5
Gnome 3.8	280	1
KDE 4.8	295	11
Unity	311	4
KDE 4.9	337	11

Still LXDE is not the most popular desktop environment. Even personally, I prefer to use a KDE over LXDE though I know that LXDE is more resource friendly. The reason is plain and simple - customization in LXDE is not as easy as in other desktops. For example, adding an application to autostart in LXDE requires me to hit the terminal; whereas in other desktops, I just add another application to autostart by the click of a mouse. Similarly, the settings manager in KDE and GNOME are integrated but not in LXDE. Even enabling compositing is not an easy task in LXDE. Also, the desktop is so bland! Many users prefer not to tamper with the default desktop settings and hence like desktops which are attractive right from the first boot!

If you see the number of distros I reviewed for KDE, GNOME or XFCE outnumber LXDE distros. ROSA and Comfusion came to be attractive LXDE distro but didn't have the functional elements that I mentioned. The rest were plain vanilla LXDE with the missing attraction factor. Even Linux Mint didn't create an LXDE spin for quite sometime (I guess the last one was Linux Mint 12 LXDE). However, the PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE spin made me hopeful about LXDE. PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE is attractive, it is fast and very easy to use! Plus, it has a rolling release. 

From PCLinuxOS 2013.06 LXDE http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

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PCLinuxOS KDE 2012.2: Pretty and solid distro

I have heard a lot of good things of PCLinuxOS and yesterday, finally I decided to try it out. I downloaded the stable version 2012.2 (KDE) from the PCLinux FTP. The ISO is about 690 MB and I booted it up in my VirtualBox. The initial liveCD boot was easy, it asked a couple of questions on my keyboard and location and finally landed on the desktop.

The desktop looks typical KDE and for serious stuff. One good thing is in the first login itself, the guest and root passwords are mentioned. For a lot of distros, many-a-times I have to search on net to get the default root password. The developers have surely thought of the first time users.

Applications

PCLinuxOS has a rich ensemble of out-of-the-box applications. Further, from synaptic package manager, other essential apps can be downloaded. Firefox 9 with Adobe Flash support, Dropbox, Thunderbird, pidgin, bit-torrent client, GIMP, VLC, DVD slideshow maker, television viewer, etc. are provided by default along with a host of KDE specific applications like Konqueror browser, smb4K, Ksnapshot, etc. Kmymoney or personal finance manager is provided with the default CD and I found it quite good.

The OS by default doesn't have any Office app but a link is given for the users to download LibreOffice once installed in the system. However, what I found is that PCLinux provides out-of-the-box support for a lot of graphic cards (like Intel EMGD, Nvidia) and peripheral devices like printers and scanners. This is really good for new Linux users.

CPU and RAM Usage

CPU usage is about 3-10% and RAM about 280 MB without any other app running - which is decent for a KDE OS.

Overall

Overall, I liked PCLinuxOS - a pretty solid KDE desktop. Definitely I liked it more than Kubuntu. The distro is really good and worth a try. Quite a few screenshots are provided in my Flickr Album for those who are interested to know more about PCLINUXOS.

July 15, 2012: I removed Xubuntu 12.04 LTS from my netbook and replaced it with PCLinuxOS. Seems like the distro, as well as, neat KDE interface, is growing on me! Installation was easy and the OS is really fast. 

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