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Can somebody clear this up for me please? I always thought LXDE comes without a compositor or an element that is present in other desktop environments (DE's) that causes other desktop environments to degrade desktop performance. If it was the case, LXDE would beat any DE in terms of gaming performance in any test but it doesn't seem to be the case - see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1210beta_desktops&num=1

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Openbox

Bucic
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1 Answers1

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The tests were conducted by "Frames per second - More is better" and LXDE beats most of the DE's, aside from certain situations (sometimes XFCE beat it, also a lightweight option), and -

...the only non-default run was the specified KDE SC 4.9 run when using the easily-exposed option of automatically suspending desktop effects for full-screen applications

Which gave KDE quite an advantage.

This article does confirm that you made a way better choice than Unity, as:

In no test did the Unity desktop yield the fastest performance with nearly every time the default Ubuntu desktop being left in last place for performance.

[Source]

Mateo
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    OK, OK, but, putting XFCE aside, LXDE should never loose to KDE, right? Because the recent advancement in KDE performance comes from the fact that they are able to disable KDE compositor (KWin) while LXDE has no compositor by default, right? – Bucic Dec 01 '12 at 09:56
  • @Bucic I'm confused by that as well. Would be great if someone could clear that up. – Glutanimate Dec 01 '12 at 15:20
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    I think is has to do with the advancements with the compositor that is responsible for the speed, is that the video or game is still going through the compositor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager Since you are used to seeing the compositing only used for flashy effects that slow down the system, It seems It can actually improve video quality and performance (espasally since they have the option to " automatically suspending desktop effects for full-screen applications" not disable the compositor as @Bucic said. – Mateo Dec 01 '12 at 20:58
  • http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1889034 "1. Don't be scared from a previous experience with it" – Mateo Dec 01 '12 at 21:01
  • About stacking window managers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacking_window_manager – Mateo Dec 01 '12 at 21:15
  • So, as I understand it, window manager being compositing is not bad per se. Second - it IS possible that LXDE (with Openbox - a stacking windows manageer) gets behind KDE (with KWin - a compositing windows manageer) in the future. Please correct me if I'm wrong. – Bucic Dec 02 '12 at 11:08
  • It is possible, http://askubuntu.com/questions/211291/using-lxde-with-kwin-window-manager – Mateo Dec 02 '12 at 19:13
  • Please don't hesitate to edit the answer with any info regarding LXDE gaming performance and how it may perform in the future (e.g. important development info). – Bucic Dec 12 '12 at 23:29
  • Sure, If I hear anything I'll report back. – Mateo Dec 13 '12 at 00:06