LXDE

Related articles
Desktop environment
Display manager
Window manager
Openbox
PCManFM
LXDM
LXQt
File manager functionality#Mounting
From project
home page
:
The "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment" is an extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment. Maintained by an international community of developers, it comes with a beautiful interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. LXDE uses less CPU and less RAM than other environments. It is especially designed for cloud computers with low hardware specifications, such as, netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.
Installation
LXDE requires at least
lxde-common
,
lxsession
and
Openbox
(or another
window manager
) to be
installed
. The
lxde
group contains the full desktop.
Starting the desktop
Graphical log-in
LXDM
is the default display manager for LXDE and is installed as part of the
lxde
group. See also
Display manager
.
Console
To use
startx
, add to
xinitrc
:
~/.xinitrc
exec startlxde
See also
Start X at login
.
Tips and tricks
Application menu editing
The application menu works by resolving the
.desktop
files located in
/usr/share/applications/
and
~/.local/share/applications/
. To add or edit a menu item, see
desktop entries
. Third party menu editors can be found in the
AUR
(e.g.
lxmed
AUR
). There are also official ones like
alacarte
(GNOME),
mozo
(MATE), etc.
Autostart
LXDE implements
XDG Autostart
. Applications can be automatically started in a couple of ways:
With
.desktop
files
Via LXsession
Each line in
~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
represents a command to be executed. If a line starts with
@
, and the command following it crashes, the command is automatically re-executed. For example:
~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
@lxterminal
@leafpad
Note
These commands do
not
end with a
&
symbol.
There is also a global autostart file at
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
. If both files are present, LXsession only executes the local file as of v0.4.9
Keyboard shortcuts
Mouse and key bindings (i.e. keyboard shortcuts) are implemented with Openbox. LXDE users should follow the
Openbox wiki
to edit
~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml
.
An optional GUI for editing the key bindings is provided by the
obkey
AUR
package. While it edits
rc.xml
by default, you can direct it to the LXDE configuration as follows:
$ obkey ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml
See
[1]
for more information.
Cursors
lxappearance
is a graphical tool to set
GTK
look and feel, including the cursor theme. Settings configured with LXAppearance are written to
~/.gtkrc-2.0
,
~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
and
~/.icons/default/index.theme
. See also
Cursor themes
.
Digital clock applet time
You can right click on the digital clock applet on the panel and set how it displays the current time using the strftime format. See
strftime(3)
for details.
Font settings
lxappearance-obconf
configures
Openbox
settings. See also
Font configuration
.
Keyboard layout
lxpanel
includes a keyboard layout applet. See
Keyboard configuration in Xorg
for generic instructions and
#Autostart
to automatically start
setxkbmap
in LXDE.
Screen locking
LXDE does not come with a screen locker of its own. See
List of applications/Security#Screen lockers
and
#Autostart
on how to start them.
The
Screen Lock
icon executes a script (located at
/usr/bin/lxlock
) which searches for a number of well known screen lockers and uses the first one it finds to lock the screen. See
lxlock
on GitHub.
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
(from the
lxde-common
package) lists
XScreenSaver
which will be launched automatically.
See
DPMS
on how to control the screen saver without external programs.
LXPanel icons
To change default icons for applications, see
Desktop entries#Icons
.
LXPanel menus
The panel's menus can be configured in
/etc/xdg/menus/lxde-applications.menu
as per the
xdg-menu
format to work with applications from other sessions (notably
MATE
) to add some of the function-ability that LXDE lacks.
Use a different window manager
LXsession uses the
window manager
defined in
~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf
(
Openbox
by default). If this file does not exist, it searches in
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf
instead.
Replace
openbox-lxde
in either file with a window manager of your choice:
For metacity:
window_manager=metacity
For compiz:
window_manager=compiz
Alternatively use
WM
--replace
as defined in
#Autostart
, where
WM
is the name of the window manager executable being started. This means that
openbox
will be started first on each login and will then immediately be replaced. Note that Openbox and LXDE do not share the same
rc.xml
and keyboard shortcuts may differ. See
xbindkeys
.
Using a composite manager
LXDE does not enable compositing by default, which can lead to screen tearing problems. These can be remedied at the cost of a some graphical performance by installing a
composite manager
, such as
picom
.
Replicating the look of Lubuntu 18.04
The wallpaper, GTK theme, and icons from Lubuntu 18.04 can be used with LXDE to replicate the look of Lubuntu 18.04. The package
lubuntu-artwork-18-04
AUR
provides the files necessary for this. Install the package, then open
lxappearance
. Select the "Widget" tab and choose "Lubuntu-default", then choose the "Icon Theme" tab and select "Lubuntu". Last, select "Window Border" and select "Lubuntu-default". Click "Apply" to save. Additionally, to theme the taskbar, right click the taskbar and select "Panel Settings". In the "Appearance" tab, select "System theme" and ensure the font custom color box is unchecked, then select the "Geometry" tab and ensure the "Height" is set to 24 pixels. Note that all of these settings may be adjusted as needed, but the above instructions should provide the default look of Lubuntu 18.04.
Troubleshooting
LXPanel crashes
With some
GTK
themes, launching
lxpanel
will lead to the following error:
lxpanel: cairo-scaled-font.c:459: _cairo_scaled_glyph_page_destroy: Assertion `!scaled_font->cache_frozen' failed.
In this case install
ttf-dejavu
.
If lxpanel crashes when browsing particular unicode web pages, install
ttf-droid
.
LXPanel Task Bar icon size
The icons of running applications do not match the set
Icon size
in
Panel Settings
>
Geometry
but are 4px smaller which makes some of them blurry. To have clear looking 32px icons in the Task Bar the set
Icon size
has to be 36px which would blur the icons of the rest of your active Panel Applets. To get around this create additional panel(s) and have them collectively make a single continuous looking panel by adjusting the Alignment and Margin in
Panel Settings
>
Geometry
.
Fake transparency in LXTerminal
Newer versions of the
VTE terminal widget library
require a compositing window manager for background transparency. The unmaintained, legacy GTK 2 version of VTE has fake transparency, where the desktop background image will show through the terminal. It you prefer fake transparency, the GTK 2 version of LXTerminal can be installed with the
lxterminal-gtk2
AUR
package.
LibreOffice theming does not work
LXDE overrides the
SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN
environment variable used for theming LibreOffice in
/usr/bin/startlxde
. Change the line in that file to set the theme.
Upstream bug
See also
LXDE (Sourceforge)
LXDE forum