When comparing LXDE vs Enlightenment, the Slant community recommends LXDE for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like desktop environments for convertible laptops?” LXDE is ranked 9th while Enlightenment is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose LXDE is:
LXDE is a simple desktop without a lot of bells and whistles, this allows it to remain lightweight which helps conserve battery power and maintain its speed of use.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Energy saving and extremely fast
LXDE is a simple desktop without a lot of bells and whistles, this allows it to remain lightweight which helps conserve battery power and maintain its speed of use.
Pro Simple and straightforward menus
LXDE utilizes a XP like menu which is straightforward and familiar to many users.
Pro Nicely balanced between speed, stability and features
Pro The most lightweight desktop environment
LXDE is by far the most lightweight desktop environment, even topping XFCE.
Pro You can setup LXDE with the same look across different machines easily
Most of the configuration of LXDE is read from files. Consequently, you can store and manage these files in the same way you might manage other dotfiles, meaning that you can setup LXDE to your liking on a new machine very quickly and easily.
Pro Uses Openbox
Pro Designed for cloud networks
LXDE works well on lower end devices such as cloud computers or netbooks. it is able to do this because of its low CPU and RAM requirement.
Pro No programming experience required to configure the environment
Configuring the environment of Enlightenment is done through a UI, so no prior knowledge of coding languages or editing of config files is needed.
Pro Beautiful interface
Enlightenment offers a beautiful interface with eye candy: it can be themed easily to the user's liking and includes an optional compositor.
Pro Highly customizable, easy customization
There's a ton of settings stacked into a quite compact settings menu that is easy to navigate.
Pro Tiling or stacking
This Wm can handle both.
Pro Havn't found a WM that beats e16 in 20 years.
I've been using e16 for about 20 years and tried quite some other WMs, but always returned back to e16. It's fast, doesn't use much resources, is highly customizable and is rock solid (I cannot remember it crashing). It's combination of simplicity and beauty is unmatched.
The default theme on e16 is kinda disappointing. Try B-42 or Dark-One.
Be careful if you enable Composite. It works flawless, but you can screw your menus when playing around with the transparent settings in the settings menu. Making a backup-copy of your .e16 preferences beforehand might save you some trouble.
Pro Quick mouse-driven menus
Enlightenments menu is easily and quickly accessible by left-clicking anywhere on the desktop.
Pro Fast and good with battery life
Great for laptops.
Pro Virtual desktop previews
Enlightenment allows for virtual desktop previews within its desktop widget for switching desktops within its thumbnails.
Pro Unique workspace set ups
You could have a screen cluttered with panels and another with none.. A feature that is easy with enlightenment.
Pro Lots of themes available
There is a large selection of themes available for the Enlightenment window manager, meaning that customization to one's preference is very straight-forward.
Pro Easy on ressources
Doesn't use much RAM and doesn't hog your CPU.
Pro Lightning fast
Startup of e is lightning fast -- as it is during working with the WM.
Cons
Con Doesn't look very well out of the box
But it is very customizable.
Con Deprecated
Development has moved to LXQt.
Con Ugly and horrble UX
Con Development has slowed
LXDE is slowly reaching End of Life, but will still receive new updates as long as GTK +2 is in use.
Con No compositor
In order to keep the system light weight and CPU/GPU non intensive LXDE forgoes a compositing program, because of this there will be screen tearing. Though a compositor like Compton can be added for those that want it.
Con Only halfway to GTK+3
Most of Xfce's components were built in GTK+2 and the upgrade process to GTK+3 was very slow due to the lack of manpower.
Con Uses GTK
Nowadays, GTK is designed primarily for use with GNOME and with only GNOME in mind. Trying to do anything else with it results in needlessly hacky, unattractive programs.
Con Openbox doesn't support Wayland
Con Problem with log in
"The session is locked" message is a frequent problem when working with Lubuntu.
Con Sub-menu does not change direction when out of space
When you right-click for the menu in the right part of the screen but there is insufficient space for the cascading menu, you have to interrupt your selecting and move your pointer to touch the right edge of your screen - this manually moves the menu over to the left a little bit, so it has space. If there is a sub-menu, you have to once again move your pointer to the extreme right edge of the screen, for it to move over - and so on, for each level of sub-menu.
Every other OS and app/program in the world today, simply changes direction to where the sub-menus cascade. Whether that be upwards because it's too close to the bottom (we see this in the selection menus in our browsers in forms, or to change sides as we are accustomed to in all programs). This is logical, universal, expected behavior. But not in e17.
Con Not many themes for enlightenment
... and most of them are not really beautiful. For example, a Dark-One on e16 has a simple and clean look and is really beautiful (if you like dark themes).
Con More than a WM now
There are more applications and tools available than on xfce or lxdm.
Con Ugly default theme
The default theme is rather ugly so it's necessary to apply a new theme as soon as you install Enlightenment.
Con Minimal set of utilities
Enlightenment only comes with the bare essentials, meaning there is little that can be done upon first install in comparison to other more fully featured desktops. This does, however, leave all the customization of what apps to install up to the user, which may be a plus to some and is directly comparable to most other bare bones Window managers.
Con e16 has to be compiled from source
e16 packages seem to be no longer available in any distro. So you should at least be able to handle compiler warnings/errors and fix them, which in most cases is installing missing libraries.
Con Backlight and bluetooth can be hard to set up
There seem to be issues with some DRM laptops.
Con Non-tiling
Overlaps and spaces between windows are both pointless.