Linux Desktop Environments

What DE do you use? (and what distro)
How long have you been using it?
What do you use it for?
Do you like it?
What's the best/worst thing about it?
General impressions/review?

>gnome (on openSUSE 13.2)
>A year or so now
>Home use
>Yes, better than kde definitely
>you can bring up all open windows in a grid to switch to them by moving your mouse to a screen corner (or other place that you set)
>worst thing is that customization is limited within the given gnome tools and programs
>It's the best DE for me so far. I don't really want to rice that much-- and out of the box usability is most important to me.

Other urls found in this thread:

packages.gentoo.org/packages/kde-frameworks/kinit
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Mate (Ubuntu 16.04)
>How long have you been using it?
2 days
>What do you use it for?
shitposting
>Do you like it?
yes
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
best: it just werks
worst: no thumbnails/icon view in file picker
>General impressions/review?
is good

I'm thinking of creating a Linux only DE that exclusively depends on systemd. Thinking of forking a wayland WM for it since writing a brand new WM is really boring and time consuming.

Do you have any suggestion about WMs?

>What's the point of a new DE
Freedom, mainly. However I wanted to become an LxQt dev. But LxQt people really care about modularity and portability. I don't want to build a modular DE, I want to have a proper Desktop Framework like GNOME/KDE/GNUstep etc.

>What will distinguish your DE from the other DEs
+Centralized control panel (Inspired from YaST)
+Built in appimage/snaps sandboxes with GUI frontend
+DE Framework will include a productivity daemon (email, reminder, android/iOS/Desktop sync tool etc)
+A notification panel
+Qt based
+Follow freedesktop standards as much as possible
+Depend on one standard init system: systemd (This is for ease of maintainance and making a meaningful control center)
+The most feature rich yet fast file manager ever

is there any fucking file picker that has thumbnails?

every file viewer/browser has one in fucking linux. no file pickers do

Dolphin

that is a file browser/vewer...?

QT file picker does :^)

No it doesn't. It's actually worse than gtk.

However KDE overrides the Qt file picker with that of their own

>+Centralized control panel (Inspired from YaST)
Pretty much every environment has its own control panel.

>+Built in appimage/snaps sandboxes with GUI frontend
I don't see what this has to do with your desktop environment.

>+DE Framework will include a productivity daemon (email, reminder, android/iOS/Desktop sync tool etc)
Other DEs have that too.

>+A notification panel
Every DE has one.

>+Qt based
There are Qt "based" environments and I don't see how that distinguishes yours, because people will still use software outside of your DE.

>+Follow freedesktop standards as much as possible
Other environments do that too.

>+Depend on one standard init system: systemd (This is for ease of maintainance and making a meaningful control center)
I don't see what this has to do with your environment. The fact that you go on about systemd so much probably means you have no idea what you're talking about and this will never come to life.

>+The most feature rich yet fast file manager ever
Nice buzzwords. I should have stopped reading this minutes ago.

gnome on openSUSE

that's the same as my xfce, you faggot
I want actual thumbnails

honestly I'd rather my filepicker just BE my file viewer.

Gnome
Been using it for a month
Looks good if you use good theme and icon pack

I'm considering installing manjaro KDE. Anybody used it? Is it compatible with wayland?

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xubuntu
>How long have you been using it?
2 years
>What do you use it for?
/wdg/, browsing, blogging, light sysadmin stuff
>Do you like it?
yes, I'd like it to be more flexible with 3rd party apps like gnome is
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
+ lightweight-ness, speed, customization
- poor (not too much) aesthetics, less application integrations compared to unity/gnome

>sperging this hard

everything does this, cunt
ye

>Pretty much every environment has its own control panel.
No, not really. Take xfce
>has no firewall control
>no control or printer daemon
>prefered application defines 2-3 xdg defaults
Think of a control panel with literally every single thing covered dconf-editor, cockpit (init daemon handler), backup etc. Think about the windows's device management. It covers /everything/

>I don't see what this has to do with your desktop environment.
Stability, mainly. I encourage isolated libraries so when some program maintainer decides to fuck shit up, I don't want my themes to get fucked. Furthermore I want to implement OSX's ~/Apps directory for the explicitly installed gtk/Qt apps so people can drag-drop and install/remove a software easily.

>Other DEs have that too.
Wrong in so many levels. Name ONE DE (apart from KDE with akonadi server) that has a synced daemon.
I know gnome notification doesn't actually notify about your emails, let alone reminders.
Orage is garbage and it has no integration with your email client.

>There are Qt "based" environments and I don't see how that distinguishes yours, because people will still use software outside of your DE.
Qt actually has many technological advantages over gtk or any other graphical toolkit. Qt is a complete package.

>Other environments do that too.
False. KDE and GNOME stuck to the freedesktop but cinnamon, budgie, pantheon fucked shit up.

>I don't see what this has to do with your environment. The fact that you go on about systemd so much probably means you have no idea what you're talking about and this will never come to life.
I don't want to start a flamewar here. Although not a single person has "won" me in regards to systemd debate with me up to date.

Anyways, logind, bluetoothctl, networkd, systemd-mount, systemd-resolved, acpid can be utilized through the control centre effectively thanks to the standard init system.
You can have a proper power management control for the first time (through GUI)

>no printer control

localhost:631

Nice control center

>xfce
>a couple of years or so
>web browsing / Thunar on VMs locally and my server
>looks like shit but it's good on machines with poor graphics
>looks like Windows XP / Gnome 2. Application search isn't in the main menu button
> It's a fucking DE, it's lightweight and stays out of the way while I run a web browser. I do all my work in tmux.

what more do you need?
it does more than shitblows printer setups do

>what more do you need?
Something that doesn't require a browser to print
>it does more than shitblows printer setups do
You wish

>want to print
>no printer setup in control panel
>"hurr durr go to localhost:420/query?=topkek"
autism

you don't need a browser to print anything.
I don't have to wish, it does do a lot more.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
KDE Neon Dev Edition (Based on Ubuntu but it's its own distro)
>How long have you been using it?
about a week
>What do you use it for?
shitposting, learning python and C
>Do you like it?
I enjoy it, it's essentially just ubuntu so it just werks
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
The Plasma DE, it is quite simply the best (and surprisingly non resource hungry) environment i've used in a long time
>General impressions/review?
it's pretty good :^)

what?
>want to print
>click print and done

windows:
>want to print
>click print
>not responding
>open up printer icon in corner
>doesn't work not responding
>can't get it to cancel
>have to google how to manually turn off printer spooler
>still doesn't turn off
>restart
>computer still trying to print
>cancel it uinstall printer
>reinstall it
>finally prints

I see you haven't even added a printer there. Care to explan how are you going to set up CUPS without going to localhost:631?

You don't have to shill Linux here, I already use it. And it is true that there is no real printer setup center in Xfce like windows

Uhh no you don't? I have 4 printers added. It says "manage printers" there's no list on the page I screenshotted, you stupid fuck.

Still waiting for the part where you explain how you set up printers in CUPS without using a browser

I'm not shilling anything. Simply making the point that you don't need a shitty desktop program when a web server is hosted b y the program which works better than any alternatives on any other operating system. You don't need internet to access it. It's as accessible as any desktop program is. There is literally no convince difference.

Why would you need to? Windows could do the exact same.

>No, not really. Take xfce
Xfce has a settings window.

>>has no firewall control
So you're going to also write an iptables front-end? Do you know how much work that takes? Take a look at firewalld. Only a complete fool would do that and it's way out of scope for a desktop environment.

>>no control or printer daemon
Same as above.

>Stability, mainly. I encourage isolated libraries so when some program maintainer decides to fuck shit up, I don't want my themes to get fucked. Furthermore I want to implement OSX's ~/Apps directory for the explicitly installed gtk/Qt apps so people can drag-drop and install/remove a software easily.
That has nothing to do with a desktop environment. That's on the distribution layer.

>Name ONE DE (apart from KDE with akonadi server) that has a synced daemon.
That is almost out of scope for a desktop environment. I don't even know what you mean with a "synced daemon", but I can tell you that you're way better off using a standalone program for that.

>False. KDE and GNOME stuck to the freedesktop but cinnamon, budgie, pantheon fucked shit up.
I don't use the latter environments, but components from them. They all seem to respect freedesktop standards. My file manager, Cinnamon's, respects the XDG directories for example.

>Anyways, logind, bluetoothctl, networkd, systemd-mount, systemd-resolved, acpid can be utilized through the control centre effectively thanks to the standard init system.
Those are components under the systemd roof. Stop calling it "init system", because it's not just an init system. Also, at least one of those things isn't related to systemd, acpid.

I don't even know why I'm bothering with this, because this will never happen and even if it did, it doesn't affect me in any way. Do you have a logo yet?

Speaking of file pickers, is there one that allows pasting network locations like in windows?

>"Xfce has a settings window."
>Not reading the rest

>firewalld
What's wrong with it?

>same as above
See >That's on the distribution layer.
Uhm no, not necessarily. I don't encourage users to install qBittorrent with the package manager. I encourage them to download the appimage to the ~/Apps directory. DE will handle the rest (making it executable, creating menu shortcuts and crating appimaged update entry)

>Nemo respects xdg
I know. However cinnamon's "preferred applications" only defines a handful of defaults.
For example you don't get to chose different players for mp3 and flac

> Those are components under the systemd roof. Stop calling it "init system", because it's not just an init system.
I don't see how that's even relevant to the
conversation.

oh
>That is almost out of scope for a desktop environment. I don't even know what you mean with a "synced daemon", but I can tell you that you're way better off using a standalone program for that.
1. What is this "scope of a desktop environment" you keep referring to? What happens if I don't give a shit about your scope of a DE?
2. What is a synced daemon? Here is an example. It's called kinit (KDE)
packages.gentoo.org/packages/kde-frameworks/kinit
It's a part of the desktop framwork. It calls akonadi server, which is connected to Kmail, Korganizer and KDE connect.
KDE connect syncs your phone notifications, texts, contacts with your desktop.
GNOME also has a thing called online accounts that syncs your stuff with your DE.

I change like every 2 seconds. Right now I'm comfortable with Ubuntu MATE, having regained an appreciation for 2000s style taskbars for switching between windows and the nice simple application menu they had in them days.

I use KDE.

I have been using it for 5 years.

It is okay.

There is a lot of things that are really great
about KDE. The window manager is good, the default tools are great, but the most important thing is the launcher.
Krunner is just better than the other launchers I have tried.
Worst part is the desktop. Since the update to 5, the widgets are not useful, ie the calendar doesn't tie in with korganizer, the battery widget doesn't display percentage etc.

My general impression is that it makes other solutions seem like hacked together hobby projects which is overrated by the fact that most of the users are developers of the system.

>I encourage them to download the appimage to the ~/Apps directory.
That is out of the SCOPE of a desktop environment. No one will use a desktop environment which touches things outside of its scope, especially when it's regarding a distribution's core scope.

>For example you don't get to chose different players for mp3 and flac
Wrong, see the webm.

>I don't see how that's even relevant to the conversation.
It's relevant because you seem to lack basic knowledge about the things you're talking about. It's like a car mechanic wanting to build a new car and not knowing what tires really are.

> What happens if I don't give a shit about your scope of a DE?
Nothing. People might refuse to use it and it's way more complicated to create it.
I am not talking about the kinit stuff, because that does sound acceptable.

> Openbox (crunchbang++)
> 3 days
> do stuff
> best thing , minmalist and beautiful
> worst thing , long configuration
> love it

>But LxQt people really care about modularity and portability
And you should too, otherwise you might as well design a DE exclusive to Fedora 25.
>centralized everything
He is the thing, something like YaST only works because their developers are also in charge of what gets put in openSUSE. Even if you depend on systemd (which won't do everything you want), you cannot guarantee that the daemons/package managers/etc you wish to control will have the same options across different distros due to differing versions and compile time flags.

>Wrong, see the webm.
You cannot define different defaults for audio files from the preferred application menu, you either
-edit xdg-defaults or
-edit MIME types or
-chose a different type from the context menu whenever you come across a specific file type

>It's relevant because you seem to lack basic knowledge about the things you're talking about.
Clearly you didn't even know what sync daemons are before coming to this thread. How about just stop trying so hard to look tough, user?

>scope of a DE
Freedesktop doesn't define any scope of a DE

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Apricity OS with GNOME3
>How long have you been using it?
I’d say over a year, though I’ve used for quite a long time Arch (Apricity’s base) before that
>What do you use it for?
Development, college, every day stuff.
>Do you like it?
A lot!
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
>best thing
Apricity is made to look good from the start, I really appreciate it
>worst thing
It was quite a huge mess when they changed their Apricity-specific repos, took me some time to finally fix that

Just to clarify, this is how easy it is on windows.

Wouldn't crating simple front ends of systemd config files and dconf /g-settings values solve most of the problems?

You do have a point there. I can't stop a user from using a different init

That takes 4 hours to download and upload thanks to the glorious 30 y/o legacy windows codes. Use drag and drop

>fedora gnome / rasbpian i3
>3 or 4 months / a week
>general use / pi-hole, python, octave, LaTeX
>yes / yes
>looks good but takes some configuration / fast n easy, no issues
>it's good / it's good

Hey, g, there was that chart picture regarding how much does an OS consume memory, and top was Debian with xfce, I believe. Could anyone post it?

MATE on both mint 18 and Kali..just like how it is,does what I want it to.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xfce (Gentoo)
>How long have you been using it?
a week
>What do you use it for?
browsing, shitposting
>Do you like it?
yes
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
just werks
>General impressions/review?
its good

I wanna say Mate, I usually break it in about 10 minutes though.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
XFCE (mainly, sometimes CDE) on deepin

>How long have you been using it?
Since last year's summer, after removing Windows 10.

>What do you use it for?
Pretty much everything, from shitposting to virtualization

>Do you like it?
Yes, but sometimes i think that the customization options are too user unfriendly.

>What's the best/worst thing about it?
Best: Lightweight, so running applications have more RAM available.
Worst: I can't really find a complaint, but i'd say that customization is not really intuitive.

>General impressions/review?
10/10 it works without crashing

Gnome is ok , but they really should add an option to snap to quarters of screen, like you can set up in unity/compiz and basically every other DE and windows.
An configurable grid would be cool, i would love to split the screen into three vertical windows for example, like on i3. I bet ultra widescreen users would appreciate this too.

And the top bar is basically useless, could be a global menu like in unity desu. But other than that i really like gnome.

Now harder question:
Which filepicker allows you to move, rename and delete files while picking like explorer in windows does?

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Gnome on Arch
>How long have you been using it?
Been using gnome for 10yrs now
>What do you use it for?
Work, programming, web browsing, multimedia shit
>Do you like it?
Yeah
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
Worst: a decent amount of shit breaks with each new release, and gnome devs are hell bent on removing old features.

Best: gnome does gain some cool features with each release, and it's the most polished and supported de. For better or worse, gnome is the closest to being the "standard" Linux desktop.

>General impressions/review?
People like to shit on gnome, a lot of it is granted, but it's still easy to customize gnome just like the 2.xx days.

I just finished testing Cinnamon on top of Ubuntu Core. Everything works except the screen tearing. Muffin is just not as good as Compiz for composite.

I guess I am going back to Unity after this.

> What DE do you use? (and what distro)

Fedora Xfce

> How long have you been using it?

Like six years or something

> What do you use it for?

Work, games, web browsing, emails, standard shit

> Do you like it?

Love it

> What's the best/worst thing about it?

Best: fast, light, simple, customizable

Worst: takes some effort to make it look good

Muffin has major screen tearing issues. It'll randomly get fixed through LM's updates then get broken the next day. Some sessions you'll have no tearing other times it'll be great.

It's why I switched to Mate from today onwards. That and the response speed of windows.

cinnamon (now running in an ubuntu), 2 years, it looks great. Use for everything, regular shitposting on Sup Forums to agentspeak programming

Everything works fine, no screen tearing in videos. It is only noticeable in firefox.

I was talking about when moving windows in particular. Windows will tear and jitter as you move them with Muffin as you WM.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Lumina (PCLinuxOS)
>How long have you been using it?
1 year
>What do you use it for?
Software development/web browsing/listening to music
>Do you like it?
Yes.
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
Best: no bullshit, fast and lightweight.
Worst: won't let me show only the windows in the current monitor in the taskbar.
>General impressions/review?
Niggers tongue my anus.

Is there a way to replace it with Compton or Compiz?

On Cinnamon? Yeah, you can probably install Compton from a repo (it comes as a default option on Mate though) and change your default WM in the settings panel.

Compiz is a bit easier because its already available on Cinnamon. I'd imagine it a bit difficult to configure though because you'll need to tell it which windows to ignore from controlling (e.g. shit from the Cinnamon panel, etc).

lol.. there goes an hour of my free time. Mate Marco allows to switch between Compton and software composite if I recall. My next project.

It only took me 30 minutes last night (after 4 days of backing up data to my NAS)

God's speed.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xfce with i3
>How long have you been using it?
5 months
>What do you use it for?
Devving, browsing the web.
>Do you like it?
Yes very much so.
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
I STILL sometimes press $mod instead of ctrl when trying to copy paste. It's less frequent but it happened today again. Luckily my mod+C isn't bound to anything so all that happens is that I type a C instead and get confused about the old paste when I go to the new place to paste.
>General impressions/review?
Feel I don't use i3 to its full potential. Mainly because applications themselves don't have the best keyboard interface. For terminal/editor/browser everything works fine but most applications other than that rely far too often on you remembering which element on the screen is hot. So you hold tab until you find it and then start navigating.

gnome is the only decent de

>extensions crashing

ChromeOS. Whatever desktop environment it uses is fine by me. I fucking love and enjoy the fuck out of it.

Is a DE/Toolkit agnostic file picker possible?

yes. KDE

Unity is what I prefer on my desktop and laptop.
XFCE is what I use on low power machines

The only other DE I thought was good enough to switch from Unity was KDE 5, I've just been waiting for Neon to get more stable. I'll probably try it out on a VM soon.

Aqua - best DE BY FAR.

>Although not a single person has "won" me in regards to systemd debate with me up to date.
You need to go back Poettering.

MATE(Ubuntu 16.04)
A week(just put it on my new Thinkpad)
I use it for ruby programming, school stuff, shitpost, watching cartoons/reading comics sometimes.
It is OK. Better than most.
Best thing, it is intuitive and easy to use, worst thing, nothing really.
Overall, it is nice. I used to use fedora, so naturally gnome was my typical DE, but when I got my Thinkpad in I thought I would give Ubuntu a chance now that they got rid of Amazon spyware, and unity is shit so I decided to go with Ubuntu mate.

No it doesnt. No, thats nit a substitute

Kde is pretty comfy, even if it's a piece of shit that artifacts.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xfce on openSUSE Leap 42.2
>How long have you been using it?
Two years or so
>What do you use it for?
Studying, web browsing, managing my small websites
>Do you like it?
Obviously yes
>What's the bes thing about it?
Its simplicity
>Worst?
Slow development

It's the best desktop environment for me so far. It's lightweight, it gives you no hassles, it's hugely customizable (and I appreciate that even if I don't usually spend much time ricing, mostly because by default it looks like shit), there are no integration issues with KDE/GNOME programs and I can switch between windows managers flawlessly

Do you mind sharing the wallpaper

...

Thanks a lot!

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xfce
Ubuntu
>How long have you been using it?
5 years, used Gnome before that and KDE before that again.
>What do you use it for?
Work
>Do you like it?
No, but it's the least worst alternative
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
It doesn't segfault like Gnome does occasionally. That's about it. That's setting the bar really low.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
xubuntu
>How long have you been using it?
like a year
>What do you use it for?
general computer stuff, no games, learning how2linux
>Do you like it?
yes. works well. some little bugs though.
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
best - light, responsive, generally don't need to do much configuring
worst - screen tearing, but the new nvidia drivers fixed that without having to use compton
>General impressions/review?
after using windows for my entire life and switching, i like it. the only reason i would ever go back to using windows would be for games, but i have no interest in games anymore....so, yea.

(OP)
>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
KDE, MATE
>How long have you been using it?
About two weeks with KDE, a few days with MATE
>What do you use it for?
Shitposting, work.
>Do you like it?
I really like KDE but my install broke recently, and MATE seems like a decent alternatives, but it has a lot of little quirks that annoy me.
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
KDE: really easy to use and navigate, everything feel connected.
It's bloated as fuck.
MATE: It's faster than KDE and has a decent menu.
Weird bugs and glitches, a little hard to customise.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
KDE in openSUSE Tumbleweed
>How long have you been using it?
A month or so for Tumbleweed, ~1 year for KDE (Kubuntu, KDE Neon, etc.)
>What do you use it for?
Everyday stuff
>Do you like it?
Absolutely
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
Best: As far as KDE goes, I can't point to one single thing and call it the best part. The integration of it all is great. As far as openSUSE, just how easily things work in this distro.
Worst: A few somewhat obtuse steps in setting up, for someone coming from *buntus at least. Even as the worst part, it wasn't particularly bad.
>General impressions/review?
On a distro level, openSUSE has been more "just werks" than any *buntu has been for me. By my standards, a couple extra steps in the install process and right after finishing installing hardly counts as complicated. I had constant wi-fi and sound issues with *buntus that aren't either are far less irritating (for sound) or nonexistent (for wi-fi). On a DE level, this is the best KDE experience I've ever had. The random breaking I could expect daily, even in Neon - fucking NEON - doesn't happen at all in openSUSE.

Sometimes KDE isn't connected enough. For example, you can't right click a binary and create a .desktop file on the desktop from the context menu.

Mind if I ask what you're using in that pic?

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
Xubuntu
>How long have you been using it?
About 4 years
>What do you use it for?
General computering
>Do you like it?
Yes. Every now and then I test out another distro, but I keep coming back to Xubuntu. I don't think I will ever leave it at this point.
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
Best: Simplicity of use; no feature creep
Worst: Thunar still crashes when attempting to rename folders
>General impressions/review?
I've found my home and am staying here

Elementary OS has a nice De. Here's an older screenshot.

>What DE do you use? (and what distro)
MATE, Debian Testing
>How long have you been using it?
Long enough
>What do you use it for?
To use my computer with a desktop?
>Do you like it?
Yes
>What's the best/worst thing about it?
That it feels like home for me, I have made it look outdated on purpose, but it does the job just fine and I love it since I used to be a GNOME2 user back in the day, so its comfy
>General impressions/review?
its good