When comparing Hawaii vs LXDE, 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 Hawaii is ranked 19th. 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 Simple and clean
Every aspect of the shell has been crafted to fit together as a harmonious whole, in order to offer a consistent user experience.
Pro Designed for productivity
Loads and executes applications faster while preserving system resources.
Minimalist design that puts the workflow at the center, the workspace is not designed to be a show case of fancy 3d effects with applets everywhere but a mean to get the work done.
Pro Adheres to standards
Supports freedesktop.org standards.
Pro Low system resource consumption
Runs on netbooks and older computers, even some small ARM-based machines.
Pro Supports ARM-based mini PCs
Runs on Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 2, Wandboard and other ARM-based mini PCs.
Pro Very fast startup
The workspace loads in a couple of seconds.
Pro Easy to use
Pro Smooth subtle animations
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.
Cons
Con Not reached version 1.0 yet
A stable version has not been released yet.
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.