A DE as lightweight and functional as XP GUI

[FFighter]

No DE I've used to date had the stability and responsiveness of XP GUI while having the same set of features and flexibility.

Gnome feels much more bloated and the rendering speed also much slower. I like Gnome, but it does feel like buggy software most of the time for me.

So, I wonder, is there any DE that could be compared to XPs GUI in terms of stability/performance and functionality?

[zmjjmz]

XFCE is my best bet.
LXDE is second.

[FyreBrand]

There are a lot of lightweight DE's and XFCE is my favorite.

[SunnyRabbiera]

XFCE is pretty good, the only thing that sucks about it is there is no decent menu editor

[cardinals_fan]

Xfce and Icewm are both like XP to some extent. KDE 3.5 can be fast.

[days_of_ruin]

The xp gui is less stable then Nitro.

[madjr]

No DE I've used to date had the stability and responsiveness of XP GUI while having the same set of features and flexibility.

Gnome feels much more bloated and the rendering speed also much slower. I like Gnome, but it does feel like buggy software most of the time for me.

So, I wonder, is there any DE that could be compared to XPs GUI in terms of stability/performance and functionality?

add an anti-virus, anti-spyware and a few M$ updates and BAM u got bloatware.

my Dual core lap with 2gb memory is struggling with win XP at the moment.

i installed it only 2 months ago, but i think i'll need to reformat and then install it again 2 months later.


i know gnome is not the speed demon, but at least it doesn't ever get more bloated or slow once you install it.

also gnome can be a bit faster if you remove one of the panels, remove some applets, remove tracker, etc.

anyway like others mention you can try xfce or lxde

also i heard some other distros have faster bootup time and better performance than ubuntu.

[FuturePilot]

I don't think the responsiveness issue is a desktop environment related issue. Sounds more like a graphics driver or Xorg issue.

[cardinals_fan]

add an anti-virus, anti-spyware and a few M$ updates and BAM u got bloatware.

my Dual core lap with 2gb memory is struggling with win XP at the moment.

Whoa. XP should run OK with 2 gigs. Ditch the antivirus.

[zmjjmz]

Get a better Antivirus.

[zachtib]

Whoa. XP should run OK with 2 gigs. Ditch the antivirus.


Get a better Antivirus.

Yeah, what AV are you running. I haven't used XP in a while, but AVG was always my AV of choice, because it was free and lightweight. Norton, on the other hand, would bring my system to it's knees.

[techrush]

Ive found enabling compiz really makes the gui a bit more responsive and it certainly helps with the redraw issues that GTK seems to suffer from. If you don't like the effects just disable them and use the rendering only.

[phrostbyte]

I'm going to second the video driver issue. If your drivers aren't doing hardware acceleration the responsiveness will terrible no matter what DE you use.

Anyways if you want a "XP-like" DE, there is IceWM. There is also this http://www.xpde.com/ but I don't think it is actively maintained anymore.

[lisati]

Yeah, what AV are you running. I haven't used XP in a while, but AVG was always my AV of choice, because it was free and lightweight. Norton, on the other hand, would bring my system to it's knees.

I agree: both my current machines came with falvours of Norton installed, a brand I liked back in the days when I used an MS-DOS machine. But on XP they tended to make the machines sluggish - I ditched the anti-virus for AVG, and the other stuff from the Norton stable has alternatives as well.

[madjr]

Whoa. XP should run OK with 2 gigs. Ditch the antivirus.

it's not really the antivirus that am aware off

i use avast and is pretty light compared to norton/macafe

anyway the msft updates, spyware, registry errors and stuff has made it sluggish.

i use XP normally (much less than ubuntu), but the more you use it the more it breaks...

the XP wm is only lightweight "at first".

some stuff are slower in linux (like flash) and firefox freezes or crashes, so you may "think" that gnome is buggier but these are not gnome's fault.

metacity is a lot less buggier than before.

[K.Mandla]

Moved to Desktop Environments.

[atomkarinca]

I think you should give LXDE (http://lxde.sourceforge.net/) a try. It's still under heavy development but it gets the job done.