DE Wars! Coming to a Desktop Near You

Resiliencia · July 11, 2019, 9:41pm

DWM
OpenBox

ringo · July 11, 2019, 9:46pm

dont its to far of xfwm4 atleast you get siome xfwm4 features, lxqt can work with kwin but hell lot depency, xfwm4 works nicely and lxqt does not need openbox special. i would say round level of xfwm4 does not differ but i like simplicity only yeat the sddm configation i need to take from aur like feathernote or featherpad but further is for me ok

VlPo · July 11, 2019, 10:14pm

My choice is KDE. Why? It is difficult to say, there is a whole range of factors…
About 10 years ago I tried Linux, but I didn’t have any success. And then I couldn’t work in KDE at all and preferred Gnome. But a few years ago I tried Mint and was pleasantly surprised at how much Linux has changed over the years. Worked in the environment Mate, because I thought my little laptop is weak for another DE. But more than a year of work in Mate decided to try Cinnamon, and was convinced that Cinnamon though works an essence more slowly, but is much more acceptable for me visually and the structure.
Then followed the period of the discoveries - is already a conscious choice of distro and DE. I started four systems at once in a virtual environment and performed the same actions watching the consumption of computer resources. Systems from the Ubuntu family were rejected immediately… Heard that Arch is a pretty light system and tried Manjaro. Not like… It is worth noting that I put one system with different DE and compared them in neighboring virtual machines. And already then KDE began to be beaten out in leaders both in appearance and on rather modest consumption of resources. Yes, in fact KDE does not load the computer so much.
And finally I met Antergos+KDE. Literally from the first launch, this combination has become a favorite for me. Fast operation, excellent appearance immediately after installation, quite moderate consumption of computer resources. Well, when I went deep into the settings of KDE and configured as it is convenient for me, it was understood that I do not want anything else.
I’m surprised to hear about the unstable operation of KDE. Of course, I don’t have that much experience using this DE, but in a few months of use, there hasn’t been a single glitch or problem. But Cinnamon in Mint environment had to be restarted 2-3 times a week due to errors and shutdown.
It’s also amazing to hear that KDE has so many settings and that’s bad. Why? This only makes it possible to fine-tune DE for themselves.
It is said that XFCE is a very customizable DE. That’s possible. But by default, XFCE is very nondescript and inconvenient to work with (for me), compared to what KDE gives immediately after installation.
I will not argue: the choice of DE is very personal. But I can say that on my small laptop with old Intel i3 + 8Gb ram + Intel SSD I don’t see any problems with KDE and just enjoy the work.
Well, on a large laptop with Intel i7 + 32Gb ram + 2xSamsung SSD, I’m sure EndeavourOS + KDE will work just like lightning
Perhaps everything written looks like a mess. Please forgive me - the translation into English “did” Google.

garybean · July 11, 2019, 10:41pm

…and so we agree to disagree. KDE Plasma suits me well.

(I reached 21 in '72)

sumguythatwrites · July 11, 2019, 11:11pm

Understood it with no problem. Thank you for sharing!

sumguythatwrites · July 11, 2019, 11:12pm

Slams cards on table I fold. You win.

sothis6881 · July 11, 2019, 11:13pm

I chose other because the answer is a little involved…Plasma is my first love, and will always have a special place in my heart due to the amount of customization available–especially when it comes to the power settings–but recurring issues with Baloo (particularly upgrading from 5.15 to 5.16) and video tearing have turned me to Gnome on my home desktop. I had just switched to Budgie for my work laptop, but just got a new one, so I’m back to Plasma.

fernandomaroto · July 11, 2019, 11:29pm

I guess i didn’t like plasma (kde5) because i actually liked kde4 some time ago.
I’m hearing a very good feedback about plasma these days. AFAIK even deepin developers are migrating some base stuff from gnome to plasma (like window compositor)

joebell · July 12, 2019, 1:18am

I’m a huge fan of Gnome’s dynamic workspaces and activities view.
Currently running Antergos on a 13 inch laptop and I tend to run a single window maximized per workspace. Really handy to just;

Hit ‘Super’
Start typing the name of an app
Hit return
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Down to move it to a new workspace (without having to know how many workspaces i need in advance)

Also handy if I get too many things on one workspace to hit super and get a neatly arranged overview of what I have open on my current workspace and quicky drag windows to new workspaces which get created on the fly.

I’ve tried KDE and really wanted to get along with it, but I really miss this feature in Gnome every time.

SPOFF · July 12, 2019, 1:53am

I’ve tried them all. Fluxbox was a favorite but it sees little development these days. (I do run Blackbox on the Windows XP kernel in a VM. It’s the only Microsoft compatible I still use.) In the past 4 years I’ve run i3 window manager, Cinnamon, and Openbox. Since EndeavourOS loads XFCE I kept it but have stripped XFCE so that it is functionally similar to Openbox. And I’ve added a few i3 tricks like j4-dmenu-desktop on a hot key.
gscreenshot_2019-07-11-214759

SPOFF · July 12, 2019, 1:58am

i3 is actually very easy to use. The config files are plain English and the documentaion is excellent.

sumguythatwrites · July 12, 2019, 3:02am

Might throw it on a VM and see what it’s all about.

Beardedgeek72 · July 12, 2019, 6:05am

That’s an interesting combo that seems practical; most seems to go the other way, adding kwin to both xfce and lxqt. I guess it’s the desperate need for wobbly windows…

ringo · July 12, 2019, 6:50am

i find keyboard window options fair enough kwin can also, but xfce is for me light enough and with gnome-menu-edit-qt just added those settings in the menu.

ricklinux · July 12, 2019, 12:13pm

Cinnamon because it works. It would be nice to have Mate here too but not if there are going to be package problems like there constantly was in Antergos. I never liked Gnome because it makes me think of Ubuntu. Everything about Ubuntu was always Gnome.

Jeannie · July 12, 2019, 12:39pm

Having been a long time Gnome2/Mate Compiz user I gave it up due to all the annoyances GTK3 introduced.
After some experiments with Gnome, XFCE and Cinnamon I finally settled with Plasma5. The look and feel my Plasma5 has is very close to what my Gnome2/Mate DEs had, without being affected by whatever joyful improvements the next GTK3 version will bring.
J.

ricklinux · July 12, 2019, 12:45pm

I find Plasma hard to figure out?

Simon · July 12, 2019, 4:06pm

Of the majority of DE personally only GNOME was unusable to me. Also reminds me of Ubuntu, some Android too. Cinnamon, although sporadically, with some extensions after a more important DE update, an occasional error may occur. I currently have it with the Eleganse theme. KDE 4 was quite interesting; 5 is good, but I do not particularly like the direction in which Plasma developers are going. XFCE, especially recently, looks promising.

Mr_Ecks · July 12, 2019, 5:13pm

KDE on my work station, and Deepin in the laptop.

I love to tinker whith KDE, but not so much when I use the laptop.

Beardedgeek72 · July 12, 2019, 5:49pm

I only recently started using Cinnamon for awhile and my ONLY problem with it (it is basically behaving like a more modern version of Xfce) is that they obviously are working from an older base of Mutter than Gnome proper; Gnome 3.32 is much snappier than Cinnamon right now. I assume that will change soon, though.