A few month ago I heard about LXDE. LXDE is exactly what I’ve been looking for, it even seems familiar for Windows users. It’s easy to install on every running installation, like any desktop environment.

Here we see the PcMan file manager, the Gpic image viewer and the standard text editor leafpad. The startmenu is very small and easy to overlook

Through a middle click we can view all applications opened on all desktops. The graphical theme chooser of openbox, lxde’s window manager and a classic shell (lxterminal).

So the most basic LXDE apps are:

• PcManFM, should look familiar to windows users
• Openbox, combined with the panel a very need window manager
• Gpicview
• LXDEPanel
• LXDETerminal, simple terminal without many effects, but with tabs support

With Gpicview I’ve found a new favourite image viewer, it’s really quick and functional.

Beginners might need a bit help with language and keyboard layout functions, I’ve not found build-in options for that yet. Maybe a small app for that would help. If you don’t know how to change your keyboard layout, have a look at the setxkbmap command.