Xubuntu with LXDE Inspired by Knoppix

I was toying around with Knoppix Linux earlier this week and was very impressed at how well it ran on some older machines. But alas, the current version doesn’t seem to have any notion of “persistence” so rebooting became a bit tedious – you start completely over each time.

Now, to be fair, the target for Knoppix is probably not folks running it as a primary operating system (aka OS). It makes a great bootable CD/USB utility or rescue platform though.

Upon reflection, I realized I was going about things all wrong. I want an OS that runs well on old machines but can still run modern apps. To that end, I’ve had reasonable success over the past couple years with Xubuntu^[1]. Wouldn’t it be interesting to use Xubuntu with the same LXDE window manager that Knoppix 6.0.1 is using?

Turns out that is very easy to do.

I dusted off the trusty old ThinkPad laptop (still rocking a Pentium 2 and just shy of 300 MB RAM) and loaded a fresh copy of Xubuntu 8.10.

After running the obligatory updates, I fired up Synaptic Package Manager – not the “Add/Remove…” applet – and searched for LXDE.

Selected lxde for install, took all the dependencies and … that about sums it up. Click a few checkboxes and wait for the downloads.

Logged out, chose LXDE from the log-in screen’s Session list and I now have a bit more responsive old laptop.

I have a bit more testing and experimenting to do, but so far I’m very pleased with how well this works. It works great and [subjectively] feels faster this way.

[1] Previous Xubuntu mentions

Possibly Related posts:

1. Quick Followup on Knoppix 6.0.1
2. Another Laptop to Toy with Xubuntu
3. DSL to Zenwalk and back to Xubuntu
4. The Linux for old stuff quest: Xubuntu
5. My Xubuntu Laptop Has Sound!