After posting a preview screenshot for LXDE-Qt, I got quite a lot of feedback from various sources. Generally the responses from the users are positive, but there are also some people saying that LXDE is no longer lightweight.

Please, in the free world we’re all friends and let’s not spread FUDs to hurt each other. I’m not going to respond to groundless accuse or get involved in toolkit wars. Just see the screenshot.

This screenshot is done for a cleanly installed Debian testing system running LXDE-Qt after a cold boot. The Qt theme engine used is “CleanLook”.

The command “free -h” shows that 252 MB is in use. However, most of the space is used for buffers and caches. After excluding caches and buffers, the memory usage is 91 MB. On the same machine, LXDE gtk+ version uses 86 MB. Will you call this “bloated”? Please note that I open “lxterminal”, a GTK+ 2 terminal emulator, to execute the “free” command. That means doing this also loads GTK+ so the actual memory usage should be lower than this. Besides, I’m using zh_TW locale since I’m from Taiwan and we use traditional Chinese here. That means, I also have Chinese fonts and input methods loaded in the memory. If you’re a western user, you probably don’t need them and can save a little bit here.

By default, similar setting under Ubuntu will use around 200 MB of RAM. That’s caused by differences between distros, not the bloat of LXDE. So, please stop spreading unfounded FUDs. Qt is designed for use with embedded systems and cell phones. How fat and resource hungry can it be? It’s the way you use it that really matters.

Delivering a good lightweight desktop is always our goal no matter what approach we’re using. So stay tunned and be confident.