There really shouldn't be a difference between Mini and LXDE since they are
the same thing...but for whatever reason Mini uses more ram and take longer
to come up after login. I have no idea why. Its probably not a lot more ram,
but on an old system it is very noticeable since you don't have the ram to
spare.
Openbox is faster than LXDE, LXDE uses Openbox actually. The difference in
marginal though.
I use the terminal a lot and I can say that that works very well. Another
window manager I have used is DWM, which is made by the same people behind
Surf (suckless.org check them out if your into minimalist computing). It is a
tiling window manager. That is very snappy.
Surf is really just the most minimal UI built around the Webkit engine, that
what takes much of the overhead away. The trade-off is that it is a literal
window to the internet with no options. It doesn't have an ad-blocker (but
you can kill javascript which gets most of them), no tabs, no bookmarks, etc.
I have found it has made me more productive though because I have to fully
engage with whatever I am looking at and don't have the option to run a game
or a stupid news site in another tab.
