Desktop Environment Preferences

[woodsmoke]

thanks for the comments about LXDE. It was just a thought.

The other thought was to completely strip away all applications that I don't "normally" use, but thought that might take quite a while./

And the comment about the "press-hold" is a great piece of information!

woodsmoke

[Dutchman]

I'll throw in my two cents for what it's worth. I've used KDE almost since it was created, starting back in '97 or '98 somewhere (I really don't remember exactly when I first started). If I was to try and sum up why I've stuck with it so long I would have to say it's the whole of KDE, not just the interface. It's the applications that integrate so well in it. Take Kate for example, there's no better GUI editor out there IMHO. K3B sets the gold standard for working with CD/DVD stuff. Ktorrent, Okular, Konsole, Ark, Gwenview, and one of my favorites that I use daily, Dolphin. They're all excellent programs on their own, and I get the added bonus that they integrate so well into the desktop and with each other. And then, to echo what has already been said by others, there's the desktop itself, and it's wonderful configurability. I can make it look and behave any way I want to. But for me, it's the stellar apps that really makes KDE my desktop of choice.

Over the past year or so I went out and tried many of the other desktops now available, Gnome, Unity, Cinnamon, XFCE, MATE, RazorQt, etc., etc. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded, or maybe too set in my ways, but frankly none of them had the same feeling of integration to me that KDE does, and none of the bundled apps came close to their KDE equivalents. But then, that's my feelings. I too think claydoh hit it on the head: what works best for you is the best DE. Try some of the others, see if something else feels or fits your use better. Then you'll know which is the right desktop for you.

[dibl]

This thread got me to thinking .. not a good thing.. about starting with an lxde install and adding only kde, calligraphy suite , firefox ( I need some of the extensions) amarok, gimp a very few utilities like ksnspsot glables etc and stopping with that, only adding others as the need arises. Comments?
Woodsmoke

Woody, I have a little Toshiba NB205 netbook that kind of sags under the weight if I install KDE on it. So for the last year it has been running Debian (siduction) with LXDE. But, I really, really like Dolphin far better than pcmanfm, so I installed Dolphin, which did drag in a fair number of qt packages. But the little guy really runs nice, and Dolphin is right there when I need it. So there's an idea for you. Chrome browser, and/or Iceweasel also run fine on it.

[Detonate]

I started my Linux experience with KDE3 on Fedora 4. I stayed with it for a long time, and it worked great, but later I switched to Kubuntu Hardy Heron, which I still think was a great distribution. The main reason I switched was because of the repository hell with Fedora, and I quickly found that I much preferred apt over yum. Over the years I have tried many DE's but I keep coming back to Kubuntu. The main reason is this forum. I am currently running four distributions, Kubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, and Xubuntu 12.04. I like them all, but Kubuntu is my favorite. I often install other distributions just to satisfy my curiosity. So far none of them has stayed very long, but Mint was a keeper for quite a while.

[Jose Manuel]

I tested all desktops that exist in Linux, I stay away with KDE, without doubt is the best Linux desktop that exists, If I have to give a list, the list for me would be:

1) KDE, 2) Gnome 2, 3) Mate, 4) Cinnamon, 5) Unity, 6) XFCE, 7) LXDE, 8) Gnome 3.-

[james147]

I tested all desktops that exist in Linux

How accurate is this statement? Are you sure you have tried them all?

KDE Software Compilation, Razor-Qt, GNOME (Cinnamon, Unity are gnome shells), Xfce, LXDE, ROX Desktop, Étoilé, EDE, Enlightenment, (and all the window managers: awesome, Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox, IceWM, Ratpoison, wmii, dwm, xmonad, WindowLab, and Ion)

to name most of them at least the common ones. (vim users might want to look at ratpoison ) have you tried all of these?

[jlittle]

You don't mention twm, which I used 20 years ago, but is still the default X window manager. I remember with fondness as it was a cure for the bloat of Motif, and didn't have that dumbed down Mac feel.


Regards, John Little

[james147]

You don't mention twm, which I used 20 years ago, but is still the default X window manager. I remember with fondness as it was a cure for the bloat of Motif, and didn't have that dumbed down Mac feel.

Yes I did. Which shows how hard it is just to list all of the window managers/desktop environments let alone trying them all out

So far my list of the ones I have tried (well, not so much tried, but used at some point even briefly) is:
KDE(3.5, 4.0-4.10), Razor-qt, GNOME (2, 3, unity), ratpoision, twm, xfce, lxde, enlightenment, openbox, fluxbox.

But I only really like using KDE, mostly due to its familiarity (it was my first and most used DE), its customisability (I can get use to other DEs but they piss me off when they don't do what I want how I want), and the fact it looks so dam nice, or can easily made so (this is an important point to me I really don't like the 2000s (or older!) look some of the light weight DEs have).