Endeavour OS Allows Multiple Desktop Environments?

So, if this was installed, this will allow installation and choice of 10 multiple desktop environments in one menu? And if so, does it allow more? For example, I would love to test AwesomeWM and QTile and have them choices, if possible.

Positive vibes!

At this time the installer comes with XFCE and doesnā€™t let you choose any other DE.
The upcoming (online) installer will let you choose ONE DE to install.

Once EndeavourOS is installed you can can install further DEā€™s. As many as you wish. You will be able to choose which DE to run on your login page. Logout, choose another, bam! :wink:

Check this wiki page on how to install some DEā€™s. Check the ArchWiki for even more ā€¦

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Endeavouros is working on a net-installer with multiple choice of desktops. But i afraid gona be doable desktopā€™s. & Baseā€¦ But like Awesome & Qtile i hardly believe it wil come. But never say never but for now net-installer would give a good baseline to install. But is stil in development it will be announced when it is ready.

Oh sorry, I seem to have understood you wrong.

I donā€™t think adding exotic Window Managers to choose from at installation is very high on the devs agenda. Probably never will; too much to configure, imo.
Youā€™ll most definitely have to install them manually yourself. (Just by knowing them I assume you know how to do this - :wink: )

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Thatā€™s awesome that one can do this. On Manjaro, they state it may cause problems / be risky. For example, you could have two Skypes. Or, one Gnome version and a KDE version of something else! This is the distro Iā€™m on now. However, Iā€™ve read they ā€œhave bloatā€ and Iā€™m sure it makes it clunky. Am I correct in this?

In fact, Iā€™ve tried Manjaro and i3 in a virtual machine and the right click screen options in i3 went in circles!

Oh and in regards to having all desktop environments, Iā€™m sure that would also make the ISO huge. Of course, I meant installing these myself / oneself. :smiley:

on some point is always finickle , dont know how to explain in english. on some point you cannot please everyone as install wise, but its stil linux we can always share experiences and go other way back to accomplish in the other way. Thats what linux is. :slight_smile: Is not what you get you must stick to it etherway. but with some energy and help we can always turn te tables :slight_smile:

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Thanks for that clarification. The VM install, for me at least, seemed to be a breeze for Endeavour OS. I will soon install it on my real box. I like the concept and philosophy of this distro. Arch never had a graphic installer and sometimes, the community can be unfriendly, at least thatā€™s what Iā€™ve read in blogs / articles online, taking things with a ā€œgrain of saltā€ each step of the way!

In fact, Iā€™ve installed arch in the past with no flaws, however thereā€™s more to learn nowadays. This is what I like about Linux in general. Iā€™m constantly learning something new!

Thereā€™s a distro / DE for everyone, it seems. And thatā€™s a good thing, I feel.

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in theory it is possible - there is a distro out there with 70+ different window managers. But itā€™s not recommended because the dotfiles might conflict in some way. So if you want to try different things remove the configuration files after your done and before you move to the next experiment. Iā€™m not saying it WILL happen but it has been KNOWN to happen

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found it

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all these wmā€™s are more or less configured the same way so there wonā€™t be any conflicts beween dotfiles. But you will get a feel for how the different wmā€™s behave. Just go with bspw already - youā€™ll never look back :joy:. The regular route is i3 for beginners - then maybe herbstluftwm or dwm - then xmonad or bspwm. Xmonad needs you to know some basic haskell while bspwm is 8 lines of bashscript. so it s easy to change bspawmā€™a begavior if you know how to write bshscript or know how to copy paste others. My config started out like 8l lines and now itā€™s more than 50. So thereā€™s been some additions over the time Iā€™ve used it. And I dont write script - I see something cool and just c/p. That said - having 2-3-4 different enviroment will not cause any issues. Iā€™m talking if you have 20-30-40 different then it can happen -cause that is a lot of configuration filea - dotfiles

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That Linuxbbq distro seems to be interesting. The only problem is that the latest update was in 2014! Iā€™m supposing it was too much for them and lots of people who leave projects have situational circumstances where they canā€™t develop any further (i.e. and sometimes others get tired of doing the same project, as well). Iā€™m surprised the project hasnā€™t been forked, however.

The other possibility without having conflicts, I later discovered, is having different accounts for each desktop environment. If it is a local system, one could call it <first_name>-<desktop_environment_name>-user, so for example, I could be david-xfce-user and that would tell you exactly what DE the account uses (i.e. or even david-xfce would work, too).

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yup itā€™s kinda old but it still works just fine. I downloaded it a few months ago so a friend of mine could try different window managers.
I tried it myslef too and like I wrote earlier they have configured all wmā€™s more or less the same way so it doesnā€™t give you the real feel of all wmā€™s Some of them are just fine - but others have so many more possibilities that are excluded. Like herbstluftwm and i3 and dwm kinda felt the same in linuxbbq but in real life they are quite different from each other. but it gives you a feel for what you can achieve - and itā€™s possible to look at the config files and see how the wm is configured.

for example if you look at bspwms config file it seems kinda sparse https://pastebin.com/SXydmu4X

but itā€™s very easy to add your own tweaks to it - this is mine - still kinda simple but it does what I need.

Bspwm is kinda special among wmā€™s as it does only one thing - handles the window placement and its behaviour. You need another program - like sxhkd for your keybidings. So something like this;

If youā€™re iterested in window managers I can recommend linuxbbq cream but keep in mind they are just scratching the surface of what is possible to do with 'em

i do believe if people woud share there dot files like

dotshare.it

or even on github is always nice to share :wink:

personal i3wm or bspwm works the best if you configured by your self at the end.

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all wmā€™s are best when you configure them yourself. Usually thereā€™s just an example file to get yo started.

dotshare.it have been kinda dead the last months - not as much activity as it used to be.
Github is great for finding dotfiles though - I have mine on github so I can easily set up new computers with the exact same set-up. And ofc redditā€™s unixporn which is the holy grail of dotfiles

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Thanks for the info! Are you implying thatā€™s it best to test it in a VM, or in a live distro?

Something I love is how you stated the level of these WMs. Iā€™m surprised thereā€™s not a tutorial out there demonstrating how one should ā€œgraduateā€ to different WMs. Or, to clarify which WMs are for beginners and others intermediate / advanced, unless I missed something.

The ArcoLinux team, for example, seems to believe you should start out with XFCE, then learn Openbox and later i3. Later, he has you experiment with other DEs and WMs. I feel the reason he starts you in XFCE is that he chooses a minimal DE, however it leaves the user not knowing thereā€™s other minimal alternative choices, such as LXDE. Heā€™s just giving you the burger and you customize the sandwich (i.e. like McDonalds). However, there is ArcoLinuxD that you can choose whatever you want (i.e. like Subway). Also, from what Iā€™ve seen so far from his videos, he doesnā€™t explain that there is a difference between a WM and a DE. Thereā€™s also classifications of WMs, such as Compositing, Stacking, Tiling and Dynamic WMs. Some DEs can simulate Tiled WMs, such as the KWin Tile project for KDE, if you choose KDE as your DE.

However, I do like that he treats his Arch variant as a way to learn up to the ā€œarch wayā€ of doing things. A downside to Arch is all the time it takes in installing it! Endeavour OS makes it easier by having itā€™s own installer and youā€™re still running ā€œvanilla archā€ with an ā€œextra push,ā€ as I like to call it.

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I must say I agree on that route. it kind of makes sense to start out with something like xfce then go for a standalone window manager like openbox or fluxbox or pekwm - and then one can step into the world of tiling window managers. Tiling is totally different from anything else. My first week on a tiling wm felt weird and everything was awkward - I decided to give it a month though - and 5 years later I have never looked back :wink: I will not take anything away from i3 because it is a great wm but a huge part of its popularity I believe is because of the documentation which is superb. So for anyone new to tiling there is no place better to start even though herbstluftwm and bspwm have more intuitive configurations IMHO. But they lack docs so you need to read manpages. For anyone interested in trying i3 I always recommend this 3 part series on youtube i3wm: Jump Start (1/3) - YouTube which is great. He explains everything very good and someone totally new will be able to follow this guy. Highly recommended if youā€™re interested in i3. Live distro vs VM? Well Iā€™d think I would choose a VM here cause it would give me a wm untouched by anyones idea of how it should be - so I could make it my own. But thatā€™s just my personal prederence. Bspwm is considered for more advanced users even though itā€™s no more difficult but it has almost no documentation whatsoever. And Xmonad you need some basic haskell skills as the config is written in haskell. DWM you need to patch and compile and some rudimentary knowlwdge of C is a plus. And awesome is written in lua so some basic knowledge of lua is a plus if thatā€™s your choice. So to sum up - from easy to hard - openbox - i3 - herbstluftwm - dwm - bspwm - awesome - xmonad. I have not really given xmonad a real chance as Iā€™m so happy with bspwm (and Iā€™m clueless about haskell) but Iā€™ve used all the others for at least a couple of months each.

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one last thing - in most wmā€™s you need yo edit the configuration files to change whatever you want to change. In bspwm and herbstluftwm one can change things on the fly.

just made a 2 min vid to give you an idea of what I mean

Explore -discover -and have fun :smile:

Thanks for the elaborative post. Itā€™s giving me some ideas on how to progress through the WMs.

In fact, once I learn these WMs, I would love to teach my discoveries to Linux users, when possible. I donā€™t know of any school or course online that teaches about this stuff and programming the WMs. I may be wrong!

I should also state that Iā€™m a developer.

The great thing about these WMs is that they can integrate with the DE of their choice. Is my thinking correct on that?

The i3wm videos you mentioned will definitely be checked out. Thereā€™s another WM I didnā€™t mention that is relatively new and that is QTile, QT in short.

In fact, thereā€™s a guy on YouTube I follow, DistroTube, whom experiences different WMs, as well as certain distros and gives insights. Iā€™ve learned a great deal from him. There are others, as well, such as BigDaddy Linux.

By the way, I know the C language, so I may feel right at home with DWM. In fact, DT likes DWM, as well.

The video you submitted to YouTube is collosal on what you can do with BWSPM. Thatā€™s ā€œthe daddyā€ I will learn at some point. Are there other advanced WMs as that?

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Well all DEā€™s have a window manager or else it wouldnā€™t be possible to do aything with the window. So those whoā€™s into minmalism kinda likes to use standalone wmā€™s - but Iā€™ve seen i3 been used as the wm in KDE instead of KWIN. But then thereā€™s other things to pay attention to also - like composting which KDE handles on iit own - so if you switch to i3 - you need something like compton. A window manager is kinda the most basic form of a gui - more minimal and weā€™re talking tty. But yes -you can use different wmā€™s in different DEā€™s. YOu can also make a complete DE from only a window manager - it all depends on what you add to your enviroment. Openbox with a nice dock will for many users look like a DE while it is just a basic window manager.

Tbh I donā€™t like Distrotube - nothing dramatic - Iā€™m just not a fan. He gives too much wrong info IMHO. But Iā€™m not a big fan of YT at all - I like to do myself instead of watching others have all the fun :wink: Break - learn - fix -repeat :joy:

If you know C you will understand the configuration file at once - but DWM takes pride in being very minimalistic - so to get it to a point where itā€™s usable as a daily driver one need to add a few patches. As it is - I donā€™t like it at all - itā€™s just too barebones. But with a few patches - itā€™s kinda nice.

The only other wm that comes to mind that can change things on the fly like bspwm is herbstluftwm - itā€™s some sort of cousin of bspwm in many ways - but also very different. They both get controlled by thse sockets - bspwm got bspc and herbstluftwm got herbstclient which allows you to type what you want to do in a terminal and it changes instantly - in i3 and others you need to edit the config and restart the wm (or config) for changes to take effect.

Awesome is another wm - that is pretty awesome on how one can make it look. But Iā€™d rather learn klingon than give lua another try. I had headaches for weeks lol. Also they all differ on how they tile the windows. You have different automatic schemes or you can control it manually - you preselct where you want your next window to go and the split ratio. So thereā€™s a lot of things to dig into. But if you start out with something like i3 Iā€™m confident youā€™ll get the hang on it pretty quick. Anyhow - good luck and have fun (thatā€™s the most important part)

Iā€™m learning a great deal here!

This is probably off topic, however from what Iā€™ve read about KDE as a DE, is that it is great for customization. It has more features than say a DE like XFCE. Some users might not like all those options and prefer something like XFCE. For me, itā€™s the workflow! For example, I see why Erik Dubois uses Sublime Text for his programming editor, as Sublime is a great programming editor with a speedy workflow. Itā€™s also one of the fastest editors, as it was written in C, if my understanding is correct.

I can see what you mean by DT. Yes, he 's opinionated about what he reviews. Itā€™s also that Iā€™m a visual type of person and if I see a visual way of doing things, I can just rinse and repeat! Thereā€™s a lot of false information out there about lots of things and one has to take things with a grain of salt.

Another off topic is that it will be awhile before I know enough about Linux to tackle something like Gentoo, or even Funtoo these days. By the way, I tried! I failed when I got to customizing the kernel. Thereā€™s just so many options in compiling the kernel! Some day, I would like to re-tackle that, as you can create a very customized and optimized system, despite the long time it can take to build it. I have seen posts on Reddit, for example, that said ā€œI did it! I finally installed Gentoo!ā€ or some such comment. I have also read where others have said itā€™s a great distro for development (a.k.a. a developerā€™s distro due to compiling everything using Make files). However, any distro can be great for development, if you know how to use the tools

Update: I should add the downside to break - learn - fix - repeat is that itā€™s a longer battle, in the long run (i.e. and from my experience)! I enjoy when someone has tackled it and learn at least something from that person (i.e. or group of persons), even though information maybe biased. As long as Iā€™m learning and experiencing! Indeed, in the end, itā€™s about having fun.

And by the way, thereā€™s a book ā€œProgramming Lua, 4th editionā€ to tackle learning Awesome WM. I didnā€™t know if you knew that.

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I totally agree on the KDE issue - itā€™s not something I recommend to someone totally new to Linux - the get lost in all the options one have. Something like XFCE or Gnome is better for someone totally new to Linux. Still configurable but a little less of everything. I think itā€™'s important that new users get a smooth and comfortable experience when they first try it. Then they will get the taste for Linux and will probably start distrohopping in no time. I switched distros all the time before I discovered pacman and fell in love with it. I first experienced it with Manjaro but soon got a vannila arch install of my own. The hunger for learning new things never seems to stop so once I had settled on Arch i started switching wmā€™s - and soon enough I discovered the wonderful world of tiling wmā€™s which was totally unknown to me. But now Iā€™ve kinda settled down for a while. I have my arch and my bspwm and nothing beats the experience it gives me. I can still try out some new wmā€™s once in a while but take 'em for a little spin - Iā€™ve already found my $HOME :wink: and I want leave unless I have to - might move to bspwc once its stable though - itā€™s bspwm on wayland.

If you ever have any questions regarding wmā€™s just send me a private msg and Iā€™ll be happy to try and help. Iā€™m no guru though but have some experience after using only tiling for years now.

edit:
Regarding Gentoo - itā€™s 2019 so why would someone want to compile everything? And if you really want to you can do so in Arch too using ABS. If i ever were to switch distro I would skip Gentoo and rather do a LFS (Linux From Scratch) I actually set out to try LFS this summer but the weather kept me outdoors so I kinda lost interest in the project. Might pick it up again when the winter sets in and I spend more time on the computer again. Would be really nice to do a LFS for the learning experience. But my LFS would be more or less like Arch already is - but still - it would be a nice thing to achieve. Just for the experience itself.

Hmmm, now you made me hungry to see what bspwm can do. Iā€™m settled with i3-gaps (not using gaps at all :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: ), but why not to try something new. Did you share your bspwm desktop in that ā€˜share your desktopā€™ topic? Iā€™d like to see how it looks.

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