Alfred Peng from Wuhan, China started to port LXDE to OpenSolaris. I met him in Singapore and could see how it is running already pretty smoothly.

Since it’s a GTK based desktop environment, some of the applications (pcmanfm, lxpanel, lxappearance, lxlauncher etc.) can be easily built and installed. But some still don’t work. The network manager lxnm is one of them, also lxtask and lxterminal. Good news is that the OpenSolaris nwam manager works great with small memory footprint 🙂 The app lxmusic, which is the media player for LXDE, depends on xmms libraries. This could be a limitation for the distribution as xmms links against a lot of patented codecs. Maybe GStreamer framework could be a better choice from a distribution’s point of view. Anyway, I can still use Songbird/Rhythmbox/Totem.

To compare with my personal experience of Xfce, LXDE runs better on OpenSolaris. Xfce is a little bit sluggish on my box (configuration issue?). LXDE’s performance and memory footprint are really impressive to me. It provides a nice alternative for the resource-limited desktop users (Eee PC users for example). On the other hand, the desktop layout of LXDE is pretty similar with Windoz. I guess this is because a big bunch of the developers are from Taiwan 🙂 This helps easier migration for users from the Windoz land. As the LXDE applications are still in the 0.x stage, please feel free to get in touch with the community (mailing list or IRC) for any problems you find.

The first set of spec files have been checked in to the SFE reporitory (SFElx*, SFEgpicview, SFEgtknetcat, SFEopenbox and SFEpcmanfm). If you’re familiar with CBE, it’ll be very easy for you to build and install LXDE on OpenSolaris. Those who are interested can also refer to the CBE instructions.

Actually the porting initiative comes from Mario Behling‘s introduction of LXDE on the Singapore Linux meetup group event in January. The frozen-bubble porting was also after the event 🙂 It’s nice to talk with him face to face and get to know a lot of community people behind: pcman, jserv and many more in the Asia region. Stay tune, I believe there will be more to come from LXDE community. (http://blogs.sun.com/pengyang/entry/lxde_lightweight_x11_desktop_environment)

LXDE on OpenSolaris with Alfred Peng from Wuhan, China

Links

* Alfred Peng – Blog http://blogs.sun.com/pengyang/
* LXDE on Opensolaris http://blogs.sun.com/pengyang/entry/lxde_lightweight_x11_desktop_environment
* Opensolaris LXDE desktop community http://opensolaris.org/os/community/desktop/communities/lxde/
* Opensolaris in the LXDE Wiki http://wiki.lxde.org/en/OpenSolaris

Mario Behling

Mario Behling is a German born serial entrepreneur. He founded the lubuntu project, and as the co-founder of FOSSASIA he supports communities to develop open technologies for social change. Mario presently works on SUSI AI from his Singapore base.