OpenSUSE Considers Replacing LXDE With E17

In an effort to make Enlightenment E17 available through the openSUSE installer and DVD, the lightweight LXDE desktop environment may be pushed away.

Tomas Cech has begun packaging E17 for openSUSE and is looking to offer it on the installer and DVD, but with the added weight, the extra desktop option will not fit on a DVD-sized image. As a result, he wants to rid the DVD of LXDE because "LXDE doesn't seem to be much alive."

LXDE could still be offered via the openSUSE packaging system but it wouldn't be found on the installation medium. Other possible choices are to simply not offer E17 on the DVD, totally get rid of LXDE, or fix the YaST installer so it could install alternative desktop environments over the network.

This matter is currently being discussed on the opensuse-factory mailing list. LXDE hasn't seen many major changes recently but the LXDE components are updated from time-to-time and in the past few months a few LXDE components have been ported from GTK to Qt. Meanwhile, late last year E17 was finally released after more than a decade of development and the Enlightenment crew has already begun work on E18.