I still use LXDE, the predecessor to LXQT, on my daily driver: a Thinkpad T420 (~12 years old) with 8GB RAM.
Low resource usage is the main reason I use LXDE. I often need to run several (4+) VMs, each of which can eat up to 2GB RAM. (These are headless VMs running specialist networking software). When running all of them I need to be really, really careful not to use up all my RAM because if I do, my system just freezes. Everything is stuck - cursor, clock, applications, etc. At this point my only choice is to reboot.
I don't know if this is due to a poorly-configured system (isn't swap supposed to prevent this?), but it certainly makes me much, more aware of memory usage.
It's also nice to be able to use the same base system (Debian + LXDE) on my modern T420 as well as a Pentium 3 laptop with 128MB RAM. I don't think I'd be able to say the same with KDE or Gnome!
That's interesting! I have a thinkpad t420 that's very likely similkar age to yours, and also ran into the issue you described....but my issue manifested while running Linux Mint 19.something....At which point i had been fed up with Mint (for other reasons, so this was the final straw)...so tried - an loved! - Lubuntu. That machine runs beautifully on Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (since when this version came out in 2020). In fact, after moving away from Mint - and gotten other machines - i was going to convert this old thinkpad into a terminal-only sort of server (you know, headless, baby)...But Lubuntu - well specifically LXQT - runs so damn fast and smooth on it, that i kept the desktop environment! I've since added another 8GB, so this machine rockets all things i throw at it with its 16GB...and i credit Lubuntu, specifically LXQT for that blazing speed and rock solid stability (yes, yes, i know the stability is ubuntu, and yes, yes debian all underneath)...My point being: as nice as KDE, Gnome, etc. might be, and as low resource hungry as DEs like XFCE, folks should not dismiss LXQT. It might be closer to feature set to XFCE, but wow, does it run lightweight, fast, and solid!
I clicked through eager to see LXDE curbstomp all comers but alas it was not included in the results.
I use LXDE because it responds when I click its widgets. Every other desktop environment, by comparison, has a noticeable lag when responding to user input- despite using more memory. Wassup widdat?
LXQt (uses Qt) has replaced LXDE (uses GTK3), and is in the results. LXDE's latest release was Feb 2021, while LXQt's was a month ago. The creator of LXDE, Hong Jen Yee, has abandoned it for LXQt because he was dissatisfied with GTK3. I have to wonder how much more work will get done on LXDE.
> LXDE's latest release was Feb 2021, while LXQt's was a month ago. The creator of LXDE, Hong Jen Yee, has abandoned it
I'm aware LXDE's creator has abandoned it but LXQt is laggy compared to LXDE, which does everything I need it to, so I will continue to use the latter.
I am also fine with a lack of releases since for my purposes LXDE is complete and I find alternatives that receive more regular releases inferior.
Future development work on LXDE seems likely to occur in the GTK3 port.
Although again, I don't consider LXDE to require much development since it is ideal as-is. Once the wheel is round there is no need to add corners just to say it is being developed.
On SSDs heavy swapping is still somewhat bearable. But I assume on your system you only have spinning disks, so your only option is to reboot, or to leave the system alone for a while until it recovers. Unless you want to go in an configure a more aggressive process killer in case of OOM (and also zram/zswap could help if you or your distro haven't configured those yet in the base installation).
Low resource usage is the main reason I use LXDE. I often need to run several (4+) VMs, each of which can eat up to 2GB RAM. (These are headless VMs running specialist networking software). When running all of them I need to be really, really careful not to use up all my RAM because if I do, my system just freezes. Everything is stuck - cursor, clock, applications, etc. At this point my only choice is to reboot.
I don't know if this is due to a poorly-configured system (isn't swap supposed to prevent this?), but it certainly makes me much, more aware of memory usage.
It's also nice to be able to use the same base system (Debian + LXDE) on my modern T420 as well as a Pentium 3 laptop with 128MB RAM. I don't think I'd be able to say the same with KDE or Gnome!