my favorite desktops

[JasKinasis]

dwm wins hands down for me. I don’t need any fancy/shiny/pretty stuff. I just want something that will manage the windows of any applications I open and that will stay completely out of my way, so I can just get on and do things.

I’ve installed it from source via suckless.org’s official dwm GitHub. So updating is pretty trivial. And it only takes a couple of seconds to rebuild.

Modding it is relatively trivial too, as long as you have a bit of experience with C. Which I have plenty of! Ha ha!

And then there’s its concept of "tags", which is similar to virtual desktops, but not quite! It’s a bit more nuanced. And something that all other dwm-like tiling WMs have adopted.

And dwm uses almost nothing in terms of memory/resources.

 

[MattWinter]

From: https://www.enlightenment.org/about-enlightenment:

Enlightenment used to be a unique window manager, but is now quite an elaborate "graphical shell desktop environment". Actively developed since the 1990s, and now wayland enabled as well.

I like Enlightenment, too. I like a minimal desktop just to view pdfs, videos, or websites. It took a little trial and error, but I got it working on my 4-monitor setup (although now I need to unplug and re-plug one of them after rebooting in order to get it to work and I haven't figured out why yet)

 

[wizardfromoz]

(although now I need to unplug and re-plug one of them after rebooting in order to get it to work and I haven't figured out why yet)

Sounds like a support question my be in the wings, Matt? Arch is a big learning curve after something as OOTB as Mint, lol.

Wiz

 

[MattWinter]

Maybe. Not to get too far off topic, but I have a strong feeling it's hardware related. Everything was working fine until I tore everything down, packed it up, put it in storage, then drove it from Colorado to West Virginia and set it back up again.

I took care to label to which port each monitor was connected, so everything *should* be the same as far as software goes.

Right now it's not a big deal as I don't need to reboot the machine often and when I do, it just takes unplugging and re-plugging the hdmi cable to get it to come back on.

 

[wizardfromoz]

...then drove it from Colorado to West Virginia and set it back up again.

Climate change, affects everything.

I'll reboot to another distro, while you groan at that.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Late to the party - as usual! - but it kinda goes without saying that, as an avid Puppy user, the ROX-filer (with its 'pinboard')/JWM combo wins hands-down for me. I've never yet found a setup that it is quite as configurable.

Admittedly, it makes use of quite a bit of scripting, although considerable efforts have been made over the years by various Puppy community members to wrap all this stuff up into easy-to-use GUIs instead. But then, if we were to look behind the user interfaces of most DEs we would find great bunches of scripts anyway; JWM just lets the user access & edit these more directly than most.

Mike.

 

[Ziggi]

4. LXDE ( LXQT) LXDE was a good lightweight desktop and I used it for awhile but it's now pretty much defunct

You can find this misleading tired old mantra across many Distro and FOSS forums posted by the usual KDE suspects who believe inefficiency is something to brag about...
Might as well ask what is your favorite colour?

Try running that tired mantra past Arch or gnu-linux Trisquel, DistroWatch, LXLE, Loc-OS, SliTaz etc etc.
According to DistroWatch...
I like the LXDE desktop as I feel it does an excellent job of balancing user friendliness, performance and features.

https://imgur.com/a/XnArxCB

Enjoy the video

 

[kc1di]

You can find this misleading tired old mantra across many Distro and FOSS forums posted by the usual KDE suspects who believe inefficiency is something to brag about...
Might as well ask what is your favorite colour?

Try running that tired mantra past DistroWatch, LXLE, Loc-OS, SliTaz etc etc.

https://imgur.com/a/XnArxCB

Enjoy the video

The fact is LXDE is a great desktop, but there has been very little new development since the merge with qt in LXQT. That is unfortunate because it was the better of the two I believe. The last entry on their Blog pages was in Feb. 2021. Not much activity for almost 2 years now. Wish someone would take over the development but have not seen anyone yet.

 

[Ziggi]

Er - what development is needed - if it ain't broke don't try to fix it.
I don't see Arch or gnu-linux Trisquel, LXLE, Loc-OS, SliTaz etc etc complaining about anything to do with their desktop and for a totally independent assessment DistroWatch say - I like the LXDE desktop as I feel it does an excellent job of balancing user friendliness, performance and features.

It still does that, quietly and efficiently, as we write - today - and will do so tomorrow - and the next
It ain't dead it's alive and still kicking ass...

ps, think I have seen you on other forums posting the same mantra

 

[kc1di]

ps, think I have seen you on other forums posting the same mantra

Nope not me. Only came up on this one. Many others are saying it though. I'm not down on LXDE- one of the best DE's Infact I like it much better than LXQT.
But have been a longtime XFCE User here. I am active on the following forums PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu, Mint and Debian. Occasionally visit others but don't recall ever mentioning LXDE on any of those. Enjoy your Holidays.

 

[Alexzee]

Tried KDE when I was running Slackware, hated it-
I think KDE is so customizable that it overwhelming.

Cinnamon run's fantastic on my Mint 20.3 install so no complaints there.
XFCE and Gnome work best for me and they are my favorite desktop environments.

 

[Ziggi]

Tried KDE when I was running Slackware, hated it-

Yes - I don't buy into that pinky purple hype either
some pro testers linked via DistroWatch say...
PCLinux KDE desktop theme is unique to say the least, with a dark theme and highlights that go for all-out color clash rather than tasteful minimalism. Think ’80s Doctor Who, and you’ll get the idea.

Unsuitable for professional use…!

PCLinux KDE - compositor is disabled by default, so expect screen tearing. After enabling compositing the system’s RAM footprint went up from 410MiB to around 1 GB or 1000MiB RAM if you prefer. While itsFOSS report 670MiB RAM used.

 

[CrazedNerd]

PCLinux KDE - compositor is disabled by default, so expect screen tearing. After enabling compositing the system’s RAM footprint went up from 410MiB to around 1 GB or 1000MiB RAM if you prefer. While itsFOSS report 670MiB RAM used.

I suppose that would make KDE a bad choice for a laptop then, it doesn't really matter if you have 8GB of ram or so, i figured it's normal enough to have that much now adays with RAM being at it's relatively low prices.

One thing i've come to appreciate about KDE full is that every icon is now single click instead of double click, which speeds things up a lot...

 

[Anawilliam850]

Thank you! I didn't know much about this

 

[Ziggi]

i figured it's normal enough to have that much now adays with RAM being at it's relatively low prices.

Already had discussion on the billions of poor people on Planet Earth you have conveniently forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant .
Then the Environmental issues of scrapping a perfectly good Linux Laptop with 2GiB RAM... Oh Dear... I will get told off again if I get into the politics whereas others freely fly political flags of war
Let me know if there is any everyday task you think can't be done with 3GiB RAM

One thing i've come to appreciate about KDE full is that every icon is now single click instead of double click, which speeds things up a lot...

Here we go again - can I let all the world know - again...
With standard LXDE setup it just so easy...
See first item ...

 

[CrazedNerd]

lready had discussion on the billions of poor people on Planet Earth you have conveniently forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant

I never said that...and i agreed that it works to take up less ram on a laptop. I was just talking about desktops.

 

[pedro.de.marco]

I'm just too busy testing all of them. for older times ubuntu unity 12.04 was beautiful when switching from windows.
Then XFCE got catfish search and the right click option got "open terminal here" . I liked the deep blue color of everything in XFCE and when I heard Mr Torvalds prefers XFCE I thought I must give it a test.
I need to mention that Mr Torvalds prefers a room with no sound, specially no PC fan So he's still waiting for a beginner friendly ARM based distro with XFCE

Nautilus on ubuntu still had more features. I guess it could force rotate jpeg images , which I don't mind. MATE was nice and functional. didn't like the lagoon green Nowadays XFCE, MATE, Gnome (on ubuntu) r not much different.
Just customize fonts and themes and colors one by one and u will get a good mix.
Right now I'm also looking for mono space fonts on official repo-s suitable for terminals and IDEs. any recommendation on that will be appreciated.

 

[TheProf]

When I first switched to Linux, I was a heavy Gnome user, it was mainly because I found gnome to work much better for me with the nvidia drivers, at that time, I dont believe they had open source drivers yet, as it was quite recent nvidia started releaseing open source drivers, and with nvidia proprietary drivers and KDE it seem like a hit an miss. But switching over to AMD GPU over the last year, completely changed that perspective for me, as KDE became my main DE, I find it to be great with a lot of customizations. although I dont customize all that much.

 

[Ziggi]

LXDE​

If you have a system that can’t seem to run smoothly no matter what you do, or if you feel like you’re leaving performance on the table when you load up a heavier Desktop Environment, LXDE is for you. There’s a reason that Raspberry Pi OS uses LXDE for its desktop, and why it runs so well.

LXDE vs XFCE: Which Is the Better Lightweight Desktop Environment?

In the hunt for the lightest Desktop Environments, we pitted LXDE vs XFCE to see which of them is the better lightweight desktop environment.

www.maketecheasier.com

So not just my opinion about performance...
Why have slow heavy lard when you can have fast lightweight..?
Each to their own

Edit - Who says XFCE is lightweight anymore - any evidence...?

 

[Anawilliam850]

dwm wins hands down for me. I don’t need any fancy/shiny/pretty stuff. I just want something that will manage the windows of any applications I open and that will stay completely out of my way, so I can just get on and do things.

I’ve installed it from source via suckless.org’s official dwm GitHub. So updating is pretty trivial. And it only takes a couple of seconds to rebuild.

Modding it is relatively trivial too, as long as you have a bit of experience with C. Which I have plenty of! Ha ha!

And then there’s its concept of "tags", which is similar to virtual desktops, but not quite! It’s a bit more nuanced. And something that all other dwm-like tiling WMs have adopted.

And dwm uses almost nothing in terms of memory/resources.

I think Windows 10's built-in Snap feature may help you