Linux Desktop Environments

[Kersus]

Years ago I quite disliked Gnome, but it's likely come a long way since it was nearly abandoned if not for Torvalds himself.

So this time around I chose KDE and it is quite dynamic and pretty. It's the hot chick with smarts without too much crazy.

I just installed Xfce and immediately loved it. It's not nearly as pretty as our girl KDE, but all the parts are in the right places. Not only that, she's more intuitive than KDE. Steam started working and I'm writing this through Midori.

I'm currently asking LXDE out and have my eyes on Openbox and a few other lasses. We'll see if I can juggle these women.

Wait, was the Midori or Midori?

[Kersus]

KDE may be too slow. Perhaps seeing this machine as a Twitter (need to be able to see multiple streams at once similar to Tweetdeck which is too slow in KDE) and blogging platform? That way I can run FEP and a Twitter RPG campaign from a nice portable laptop. Would be nice to get Steam working as well. Once I get my 10+ year old desktop back up and running, I'll dual boot W7 and some other Linux. Set it up to do all main things and use the portable machines to remote into it? Big ideas.... Peh.

[Kersus]

If not for the glare on the screen, this would be a great writing machine. I have been using it more regularly as it's far lighter than my main laptop.

So, it appears KDE has some issue that's gone on for years with the flickering screen. It's quite a nuisance and on this machine KDE is already a little slow. I still like the functions of KDE the best of all the DEs I've tried.

Openbox is one I'm going to play with further. Xfce is nice. It feels like a paired down KDE. LXDE isn't quite what I want. Believe it or not, I'm giving Gnome 3 a whirl. No flickering. My gosh it's vastly improved since I last used Gnome. It was such garbage back then. It's a little faster than KDE but not so much as the others I mention. I'm not sure it's really all that much better for touch-screen (which is the reason I gave it a go - reviews about how it's the best for touch) but it's working. I'll have to eat my own foot if Gnome ends up being my goto DE.

Openbox.... I like you.

[Oedipussy Rex]

Real men run Linux from the tty.

[Kersus]

OR, are you glad Unity is getting tossed out the window, er Desktop Environment?

"So I decided to be a little adventurous and compile the newly released xfce 4.10. I use Xubuntu primarily for three reasons: 1) convenience. Download and go, no real need tweak anything. It just works. 2) I prefer Thunar over most other file managers I've tried. PCManFM is also nice, but I lost some desktop integration when I installed it. And 3) I can't stand Unity. I'm not claiming that it's the work of the devil and I readily admit that I barely gave it more than a couple hours on my laptop, but the entire experience was frustrating. Never mind about the window buttons on the left instead of the right, I use keyboard shortcuts, or that it uses global menus instead of menu bars for each window. Annoying, sure, but not a deal-breaker. What did it for me was the inconsistent results of Dash searches, followed up with clicking on the button for the inevitable 120+ updates that always follow a fresh install and having no idea what files are being downloaded and installed. If I wanted this level of lack of transparency, I'd run MS Windows."~ June 2012

[Kersus]

Oh, and how did I stumble upon that tidbit? An old desktop that sat unused for years because of a power spike that blew through the most powerful surge protector available to me (Belkin sucks) because the neighbor had their Hydro turned off and I let them plug into my house when they decided to run their washing machine......  After some tests, the power supply was obviously the problem.  Years passed and eventually I bought a new PSU worthy of the old machine. I mean, I certainly couldn't buy a computer like that again, they still sell stuff nowadays that was obsolete years before I bought this decade old machine. When I bought it, it was just a basic PC. Nowadays it's considered a gaming rig. Anyhow, I procrastinated unplugging everything and plugging the new PSU in. Probably another year or two go passed. My girlfriend decides to do it for me and for kicks, tries the PSU that's currently dangling out of the case as I had unscrewed it, looked at the internal cables and found something else to do. She turns it on. It boots.

So today I opened Opera, which was not happy since it's an old version and most web sites wouldn't even load in it and many of the saved tabs were for web sites that went offline years ago. There was the thread I quoted above.... Small joys.

[Oedipussy Rex]

Am I glad Unity is going the way of Gnome2? First I've heard about it, but no. I tried it a couple more times for maybe half an hour each and still didn't like it, but then I wasn't all that big a fan of KDE, either. However, just because I don't like something doesn't mean that it lacks worth. What kinds of software innovations have, or would have, come about because of Unity? Canonical is a big deal in the Linux market (or at least was when I paid attention to such things) with the wherewithal to move and shake. I mean, they're the driving force behind the Waylands project, aren't they?

[Kersus]

“I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was, and now what I’m with isn’t it. And what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.”

Honestly, Ubuntu/Canonical came out of no where to me. I still feel like Red Hat is the big dog, but I don't pay much attention. I haven't tried any of the Ubuntu's since it first started.

I don't see them listed in Waylands but honestly, I don't know much about it. Ubuntu is, despite my tongue and cheek talk, pretty much the flagship these days. I hear Linux Mint a lot as well. Still using OpenSUSE though. I tried Geexbox but really didn't find it workable.

[Oedipussy Rex]

Not Wayland. Mir. Don't ask me how I conflated the two.

[Oedipussy Rex]

Now, I am sorry that Canonical will no longer be supporting Mir. Let's face it, when a system is more patch than base code, it's time to get something new, and that's been true for X since long before I ever knew what X was.