Disadvantages to using Lubuntu on a modern PC?

Question

I understand Lubuntu was designed to be run on slow (older) PC's - but are there disadvantages in using it on modern/fast PC's - eg. it not being able to take full advantage of modern/fast hardware?

Lubuntu is just the Ubuntu base system (maybe with some customizations) plus LXDE as preinstalled desktop environment. The hardware support etc. should not be affected by whether you use e.g. Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu or whatever. It is just that LXDE is a desktop with comparably low resource requirements and therefore runs better on older hardware than big and complex desktops like KDE would do. — Byte Commander, Jul 02 '17 at 18:01
@ByteCommander I'm not sure how that's even close to a duplicate. Also, answers go in the answer box, si vous plait — cat, Jul 02 '17 at 22:26
by the way somehow nobody has yet mentioned LXDE stands for Lightweight X Desktop Environment -- but that's all it means — cat, Jul 02 '17 at 22:27
@ByteCommander indeed and the answers to that one are mostly about drivers as well where as this one has little mention of it — cat, Jul 02 '17 at 22:31

score 11 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Things works a little bit different from what you are thinking ...

People suggest Lubuntu for slow computers, because Lubuntu itself does not requires a lot of resources to get up and running.

But Why?

Mostly, that's because it uses a desktop environment named LXDE.
LXDE is famous for less resource needs, it does not provide any special graphical effects in contrast of other other options like "Gnome Shell", "Plasma Shell" (KDE), etc. it also includes a lot of alternative programs that requires less memory and processing power for your day to day jobs so you can run it on almost all kind of systems.

It's worth to mention that LXDE itself uses a window manager named OpenBox which is highly customizable, fast and light which makes LXDE to inherit all of these and beside all that fast lightweight applications it will be one of the best choices for slower computers.

I like to use pure OpenBox myself and pick exactly what I want, anyway...

They are the same thing

However it does not matter whatever it's Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian or any other GNU/Linux distribution that you are using, they all are using the same Kernel (Linux) which manages everything and assigns resources to the applications.

A good example can be memory allocation in Linux systems, if you search about it you will find out that Linux (Does not matter which distribution) uses almost all of your memory for buffering and caching purpose to increase performance.

Programs uses as much as needed from available resources for their computational process, in my opinion it's even a good choice to use a lightweight distribution, cause it leaves us with more available resources for other process.

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 03 '17 at 08:14

No disadvantages when using Lubuntu on faster PCs

Lubuntu is considered a great distribution for slower computers because it uses a less computationally intensive graphical interface (LXDE = Lightweight X desktop environment instead of e.g. Unity on Ubuntu). For many tasks it also provides different, more lightweight programs, e.g. AbiWord instead of LibreOffice for text editing.

As Lubuntu is based on Ubuntu, it uses the same Linux kernel which handles all the operating system related tasks like drivers, file system management and networking. You will therefore not experience any disadvantages compared to different GNU/Linux distributions running the same kernel, even when running Lubuntu on faster PCs.

Possible usability drawbacks

As Lubuntu has a different focus than other distributions (lightweight and fast instead of beginner friendly like Ubuntu) it could be argued that this results in worse usability. A faster PC is able to handle handy features like the Unity Dash and its file search which is missing in Lubuntu to make the distribution smaller and faster. The usability comes down to personal preference though.

Simply using the same iteration of the Linux kernel doesn't speak heavily to differences of experience since drivers are installed and enabled independent of kernel version and it's largely not kernel features you notice. good answer though — cat, Jul 02 '17 at 22:29

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Less pretty

No, I'm serious. most of the additional resource consumption of the Gnome and KDE desktops comes from cool looking things like animations and alpha blends which look great (depending on how the theme appeals to you).

Useability tweaks

There are some things like the screen magnifier, onscreen keyboard, screen reader, braille interfaces, macro recording and the like that some prefer are standard in Gnome/KDE but have to be setup manually in a lightweight environment.

Idle time

Most computers are overpowered for what they are used for and spend most of their time idle, so if you have a fast computer that does not have an animated dog to steal your characters when you press delete, the computer spends that much more time waiting for your bidding. Now admittedly newer computers are more power efficient than older computers so this seldom affects your power bill.

So if you like the look of LXDE and don't miss the standard tweaks or prefer your own and you devote your spare cycles to folding@home or the like, have fun and do what you want.