Recently I’ve acquired an Asus eeePC 4gb Netbook. The Netbook had some funky version of Linux preinstalled which ran everything as the root user with no authentication. Talk about a disaster ready to happen! After installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix I noticed some lag in the Remix user interface which brought up the question, which Linux desktop should I be using?

Gnome was obviously the default desktop I tested because it came with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Gnome is cool and all but I had to test the other two mainstream desktops as well, KDE and XFCE.

KDE4 installed without a hitch and booted right up but the KDE Plasma desktop environment was just a tad too much for my little Netbook. The system was usable and worked fairly ok but was still a touch on the laggy side, laggier than Gnome for sure. KDE4 looks really cool on the Netbook but I would sacrifice some looks for a lag free desktop experience.

KDE4 on my Netbook.

XFCE would have to be my topic pick and is still the Linux desktop environment I am using on my netbook. The desktop looks good and runs really smooth with no laggy window moving at all. All I did to install the XFCE desktop was open up a terminal and run sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. This will install everything you’ll need for your netbook desktop. XFCE also makes your desktop seem a little bigger, I think that is because I could change the height to 21 pixels high, the smallest before you cut the text in half.

My XFCE Netbook Desktop.