Fedora 13 - Xfce spin vs. LXDE spin

The Fedora 13 Xfce spin has more applications than the LXDE spin. So far the machine crashed on the screensaver (in Xfce, not in LXDE, and the same thing has been happening with Ubuntu Lucid if I don't choose blanking the screen instead of a random screensaver).

Otherwise it's been running well (and I'm using it right now).

I can't say that Xfce is slower or faster than LXDE in Fedora 13. Right now I'm running the Midori browser in the Xfce spin, which though not in the LXDE could easily be added.

Javascript performance is better in Midori than in Firefox, but I don't see Midori blowing FF out of the water with other Web operations that I'm accustomed to doing.

I have a bit of experience in Xfce, which I've run before quite a few times, and I like seeing things like the Thunar file manager (still super quick and powerful), the Mousepad text editor and Xfce Terminal app. The office-software lineup of Abiword and Gnumeric is in both Xfce and LXDE spins. But Xfce includes the Orage calendar app, whereas the LXDE spin has the Osmo personal organizer.

I'm doing most office-software-related work in Google Docs these days, including calendaring, so I don't really care much about office apps.

The Gigolo app is in both spins. It seems to be a way to explore not just the system's own drives in file-manager fashion but also FTP sites - kind of like the Nautilus file manager in GNOME, which has these added capabilities. Gigolo does seem to work well.

The PCManFM file manager in the LXDE version is pretty good, but again, I really like Thunar and find it as fast or faster than anything else I've ever used (including the ROX Filer).

While the LXDE spin uses Sylpheed for mail, the XFCE spin uses Claws. I still do like to access a couple of mail accounts with IMAP, and I'd have to test both of these. I had been having trouble configuring Thunderbird for my less-than-orthodox mail servers, and those troubles went away with Evolution, the GNOME mail client. And here I'm far enough away from GNOME that I'd have to think pretty hard about which client to use. As it is, my "main" mail is on Gmail, which I find superior to any standard mail client for my use.

The thing to remember about both of these Fedora spins is that it's easy enough to add any or all of the applications from one spin to another. I'm not sure exactly what the LXDE spin's policy on GTK 1/2 apps are, but on my hardware it looks like it'll come down to personal preference and not vast performance differences.

The screensaver issue in the Xfce spin might be a factor. I'll have to experiment a bit to see how this aspect of the Fedora spins shakes out.

Right now, while I love Xfce, I'm leaning toward going with LXDE because it's something new, looks like it's getting the same small-app ecosystem as the one that grew around Xfce, and its an extremely fast operating environment.

One of the things I really like about Xfce in Fedora is the left-most button on the right side of the application windows that allows an app's window to "roll up" and just leave the application header there. You can have lots of little bars sitting there, only opening up the ones you want at that moment.

For my work, I need an image editor that will handle the IPTC tagging in JPEGs, and that means either gThumb (and all the GNOME-ishness it brings) or IrfanView via Wine.

Otherwise both of these spins are extremely capable systems that can do just about all I require. I like the Geany text editor/IDE, and while it's in the Xfce default, I could easily bring it into LXDE, where it won't cause havoc if GTK2 is already there (or even if it isn't).

And remember, I could always run either of these desktop environments in Ubuntu or Debian.

So far the Midori browser has been performing quite well. The more I can do with a non-Firefox browser, the better.

The only "stopper" when it comes to using Fedora is multimedia. You can't so much as play an MP3 without installing the codec, and while Ubuntu prompts you to do this, in Fedora (as in Debian) there's a bit of hunting involved. With Debian there's the Debian Multimedia repository (one of the best things about Debian is this repo). I've heard that RPM Fusion does the same thing for Fedora and Red Hat. If I end up installing one of these Fedora spins, I'll most definitely be looking into that.

I did download an Ogg file in the Xfce spin, and it played fine in the Parole Media Player, an Xfce app I've never heard of before.

The more I think about it, I'd be very happy to have both of these "spins" on one installation, and if there are metapackages for both the Xfce and LXDE spins (and I'm fairly sure there are), that's just what I might do.

So my pre-installation (live CD only) verdict on both the Xfce and LXDE spins of Fedora 13 (available with others at the Fedora Spins page) is that you really can't go wrong with either of these two iterations of Fedora 13 (and by extension F13 itself is looking pretty good).

Once I get to the installer stage, I'm sure I'll have much more to say about Fedora, and I'm already prepared for the user-ID difference between Debian-based distros (first UID is 1000) and Red Hat-based (first UID is 500), and having spent more than a little time with chown (FreeBSD's 1st user is UID 1001 for some reason ...) I have no fear.

Note: The screensaver in Xfce appeared to be redeeming itself. I'll have to do more testing, but it's looking good.