LXDE

This guide introduces the user to LXDE (the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), explains its components, and leads the user through the installation.

What is LXDE?
After installing a base Gentoo system, and the X server, there are many choices to consider regarding which graphical environment will be best to use. There are many options available, ranging from minimalistic window managers like Openbox, to full-featured desktop environments like KDE, and GNOME.

Some users might like having a lightweight graphical environment, but do not wish to install and configure every component individually like with Openbox. For quite some time users in this position would install Xfce because it fit the description of a lightweight environment and came with a suite of lightweight applications. While Xfce provides a full-featured environment without the extensive resource usage of KDE or GNOME, it has the potential to lean towards the heavy side. At last an alternative to Xfce has been created: the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, or LXDE for short.

Users however who dislike all those dependencies (dbus, polkit, consolekit, ...) inevitably pulled in by lxsession should have a look at Lumina.

Components of LXDE
LXDE, being a desktop environment, is comprised of several components. Each program offers a certain functionality; together they form a complete desktop environment. Currently there are eleven core components and several other programs necessary to make a complete LXDE installation. These programs are the ones pulled in by the package, discussed in the following installation section.

Core components

 * is a GTK theme and icon configurator that allows you to customize the look of LXDE.
 * is a collection of default configuration files.
 * is the main set of icons.
 * is the application menu manager.
 * is a keyboard and mouse configurator.
 * is the panel that includes the application menu, system tray, and clock.
 * is a graphical interface to X Resize and Rotate, allowing for display manipulation.
 * is a session manager, providing options to shutdown, reboot, and suspend the system.
 * allows you to enable / disable applications at startup.
 * is an easy way to edit application shortcuts, especially for desktop icons.
 * is the task manager used to view / edit running services and programs.
 * is the vte-based tabbed terminal emulator.

Other applications used by LXDE

 * is the configurator for OpenBox, allowing you to change window decorations and more.
 * is the default image viewer.
 * is the configurator for OpenBox, allowing you to change window decorations and more.
 * is the default image viewer.

Additional applications LXDE can use

 * Text Editors: app-editors/leafpad
 * LXDE Display Manager:

Installation
After the X server has been emerged and configured, LXDE is ready to be installed. While each component can be installed individually, the more efficient and typically preferred method is to emerge the meta package set:

Upon review of the emerge command's output (if the current set of USE flags looks good, etc.) enter "yes" when prompted to emerge the packages. Just like with other desktop environments, the X Server must be told to load LXDE automatically. This is done by adding it to user's file.

This will automatically start a LXDE session when the command is typed at the console.

GTK icon warning
Now that the X server knows to start LXDE type in to fire up LXDE. The first thing that may appear is a warning about an improper GTK icon set. To fix this minor hangup change the icon theme. Click on the LXDE application menu (in the lower left-hand corner of the panel), and navigate to -->. In the menu, click on the  tab, and choose nuoveXT.2.2. Click and then click. The next time a user logs in to LXDE the error message will not appear. Users are not limited to using the nuoveXT.2.2 icon theme. They may install any other icon theme through LXappearance. When other icon themes are selected the GTK icon warning will no longer appear when starting PCManFM.

Right-click menu
In LXDE, not every appearance option is handled through LXappearance as one might believe. Rather, there are some common options that are handled through a right-click menu on the desktop. At the bottom of that menu is the "Desktop Settings" menu. Here users can find icon sizes, single-click and double-click behavior, maximum thumbnail size, and desktop wallpaper settings. It may behoove one to look through the these tabs for additional appearance settings. It can be quite confusing.

Taking screenshots with xwd
There are many ways to take screenshots in LXDE, but all methods require some work in order for them to operate as desired. The solution below uses xwd to capture screenshots, imagemagick convert to save them to png, and notify-send to send a notification to desktop.

See, ,.

It will place the screenshots in

First create key bindings:

Then create and make executable the following simple script:

Lightweight screen lock and screensaver
A lightweight screensaver and locker can be done with xautolock, xset, and i3lock/slock. Add the following to the file:

The values of xset is also influenced by  and its AC counterpart in. If laptop-mode-tools are installed, these values could be leading.

External resources
There are many resources available regarding the various facets of the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. Some additional resources are listed below:


 * The Official LXDE forums
 * The Official LXDE wiki contains instructions on customizing the LXDE installation, including keyboard layouts, autostarting applications, changing the default window manager, and much more.