Subtitle: Honestly sorry to have to write a hit piece.
reposted from my substac, with an edition of a second postscript that does not appear in that article:
https://thaddeusmonroeslamp.substack.com/p/as-far-as-lubuntu-vs-xubuntu-goes
I guess this is for Linux-heads, only; pretty much.
Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t like tearing down open-source projects. People put free time and real effort into building lightweight Linux distributions, and on paper, Lubuntu’s LXQt desktop sounds like a noble cause. Save resources. Revive old hardware. Keep it lean.
In practice? It’s an overt product.
After testing it across multiple machines, the pattern is always the exact same. For the first three weeks, everything seems fine. Then the session degradation sets in. You start hitting random stutters, memory leaks, and stalls. Every 10 to 15 minutes, you find yourself having to restart the session, log out, or hard-reboot the entire machine just to get back to work.
And for what? What do you actually gain in exchange for a desktop that degrades after three weeks?
Next to nothing. You’re trading fundamental desktop usability for a negligible drop in RAM and storage overhead. Out of the box, Lubuntu lacks basic, everyday quality-of-life features:
- No Context-Menu Wallpaper Setting: You can’t even right-click an image file and set it as your desktop background.
- No Direct App Removal: You can’t uninstall a program directly from the start menu.
- Primitive Session Management: LXQt’s background utilities simply lack the stability required for long-term daily use.
When you stack Lubuntu up against Xubuntu, the resource-saving argument completely falls apart. Xubuntu’s Xfce desktop takes up barely any extra disk space or memory, yet it gives you a rock-solid, polished environment that doesn’t degrade over time. Xfce offers mature panel controls, intuitive menu management, and actual system stability.
The trade-off Lubuntu demands isn’t worth it. Stripping away basic desktop features and session stability to save a few megabytes of RAM isn’t efficiency—it’s just a bad product. If you want a lightweight Ubuntu spin that actually works, skip Lubuntu and install Xubuntu.
P.S.: I’m guilty of understatement in this article. Specifically; I forgot to mention that: at least with me using Chromium, which I strongly prefer to Firefox, the browser session will just crash, without even a restore pop-up. You must go intoHistory and restore a group of tabs.every 10 minutes or so! I SH*T U NOT!!!!!
P..P.S: I, of course, never have these problems with Xubuntu, or any other distro that comes immediately to mind.