EDE: Small and Fast Desktop Environment (2014)
Mood
supportive
Sentiment
positive
Category
tech
Key topics
desktop environment
linux
open source
A 2014 post about EDE, a lightweight and fast desktop environment, has been shared, sparking interest and discussion among HN users.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
1h
Peak period
34
Day 1
Avg / period
34
Based on 34 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
11/14/2025, 12:51:23 PM
4d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
11/14/2025, 2:14:37 PM
1h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
34 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
11/15/2025, 12:19:11 AM
4d ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
XFCE can be themed to be almost identical to XP.
If we go retro then I would go for a MacOS 9 look. Like what this user achieved: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/tsric2/xfce_color...
Edit: nevermind, I see this is relatively "ancient" software. Last release over 10 years ago :)
Will take it for a spin on an old computer though
I mean, an end to experiments and variants and improvements. We all know how it should be and anything else is wrong.
I would like that.
I personally am very happy with my sway setup - it works fantastically for me but most people would honestly hate it. That's ifne - I wouldn't force anyone else to use it.
I think there is/was a lot to like with the Win9x interface that I feel advanced a lot through to Windows 7 even. I think the current taskbar in windows is relatively nice too, but the start menu itself has taken a few steps back. I'd like to see Cosmic get a bit closer to the taskbar, but keeping it's application menus and settings, which get better with each iteration imo. There's still something alien about the spacing on the dock's corners though.
Be forced to use Gnome because some royal 'We' decided that's what a DM should be? No farking way. Force someone else to use KDE because I think Gnome is kinda awful? No. Give up on low-resource desktop environments because Gnome or what ever is The One True DE? Sorry...no.
I would not like that.
XPde was a similar project, but with a Windows XP look. Their site seems dead, though I'm sure the software could be found out there somewhere https://web.archive.org/web/20070825005617/http://www.xpde.c...
If anyone says "that's outdated crap", Siag supports RTF, and the spreadsheet module could just use plugins written in Scheme with incredible features related to number crunching. Printing? PostScript and PDF, problem solved.
TIHI, but I can definitely see places where this would be useful. Based on the name, I thought it was just Enlightenment/E rebrand or something.
It's based on FLTK, and although the effort to create FLTK 2.0 faltered and died a few years ago, last year there was a new point release, FLTK 1.4, the first in 13 years.
I wrote about it almost exactly a year ago:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/26/fltk_14_released/
(In researching that I discovered that apparently it's not pronounced "eff ell tee kay" but "full tick".)
Since then it's got up to 1.4.4, and they're working on FLTK 1.5. And yes it supports Wayland now.
So maybe it's time for a new release of EDE to go with it. :-)
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