What desktop environment do you guys use?

alexakasloth · 30 Dec 2014 at 19:48

XFCE as the crouton guide recommended it as a lightweight enviroment compared to unity. Glad I installed it as I've found Ubuntu to be ace.

BahBah · 30 Dec 2014 at 22:17

Gnome 3 on Arch

lamboman · 30 Dec 2014 at 23:16

stopper said:
Just switched to cinnamon 2.4 for my Backbox4, massive performance increase over xfce for gaming and especially Wine gaming. Even though I hate the UI I will stick with it until xfce catches up.

BTW, whats with the "*buntu"? I can understand why with *nix, but not Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu...that's why. The first four are simply difference desktop environments (Unity, LXDE, XFCE, KDE). The rest are the "weird" ones that aren't typically used for desktop installations (or simply don't go with the *buntu nickname, like Ubuntu GNOME).

Truth be told I'm not a huge fan of any of the standard environments in their standard form, purely because they don't get the balance of keyboard shortcuts, snappiness, and quick search features for me (hate to sound biased but OS X does this extremely well). Unity and GNOME come close but they're too far from the norm for my liking. XFCE with some bits would probably be the best "traditional" choice for me, from installation with no changes Cinnamon ranks highest though. Pantheon is far too barebones.

Really want to try i3 and Budgie though.

Edward78 · 31 Dec 2014 at 04:23

Cinnamon now. but recently started missing Gnome. I have Mint though & I hear Gnome is not liked by Mint. Next Winblows reinstall I might install Ubuntu.

Crowze · 31 Dec 2014 at 09:06

Sp00n said:
XFCE

stopper · 31 Dec 2014 at 11:20

lamboman said:
Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu...that's why. The first four are simply difference desktop environments (Unity, LXDE, XFCE, KDE). The rest are the "weird" ones that aren't typically used for desktop installations (or simply don't go with the *buntu nickname, like Ubuntu GNOME).

So the star refers to the different DE's, surely that should read "*ubuntu" then?
Am I being too pedantic?

JGJones · 31 Dec 2014 at 16:31

Unity. Works pretty well really, in fact I love it.

Edward78 · 31 Dec 2014 at 16:35

stopper said:
So the star refers to the different DE's, surely that should read "*ubuntu" then?
Am I being too pedantic?

You can still choose Gnome as DE at install on Ubuntu right?

OhEsEcks · 31 Dec 2014 at 17:03

Edward78 said:
You can still choose Gnome as DE at install on Ubuntu right?

I don't think so. You can install any DE you want over Ubuntu (or any distro) though. The various spins are just so you don't have half a dozen DEs over the top of each other.

Some distros also do a better job of implementing DEs. Fedora for Gnome, OpenSuSE for KDE, Xubuntu for XFCE.

I still use Ubuntu Gnome over Fedora though, because I'm stuck in my ways with Debian package management.

Edward78 · 31 Dec 2014 at 17:16

OhEsEcks said:
I don't think so. You can install any DE you want over Ubuntu (or any distro) though. The various spins are just so you don't have half a dozen DEs over the top of each other.

Some distros also do a better job of implementing DEs. Fedora for Gnome, OpenSuSE for KDE, Xubuntu for XFCE.

I still use Ubuntu Gnome over Fedora though, because I'm stuck in my ways with Debian package management.

Cool, ok I heard Mint doesn't like Gnome really though.

Rroff · 31 Dec 2014 at 17:18

Don't really use Linux for a desktop environment any more but when I did I used Debian with Fluxbox/Blackbox WM based on a customised version of KDE (kind of a hybrid of KDE and Gnome features).

Smit · 2 Jan 2015 at 07:51

KDE running on openSUSE

wengole · 4 Jan 2015 at 06:07

XFCE on Manjaro

melvis · 4 Jan 2015 at 09:12

Gnome shell on fedora

OhEsEcks · 4 Jan 2015 at 19:10

melvis said:
Gnome shell on fedora

I've been running this a couple days to give it another chance and I'm smitten. *.rpm package management still seems weird to me, but, yum is great and easy to use (printed out a cheat sheet with lots of stuff to replace APT commands) and it even has rpmorphan to replace deborphan.

Also, Gnome 3.14 is so much better than (I think it was) 3.8 on Ubuntu Gnome LTS. Let's see how much they break when the next 3.1x version rolls around \o/

Pvt_Ryan · 4 Jan 2015 at 19:29

generally just the terminal but when i have to i prefer xfce

MTA99 · 4 Jan 2015 at 22:01

wengole said:
XFCE on Manjaro

melvis · 5 Jan 2015 at 08:07

I've been running this a couple days to give it another chance and I'm smitten. *.rpm package management still seems weird to me, but, yum is great and easy to use (printed out a cheat sheet with lots of stuff to replace APT commands) and it even has rpmorphan to replace deborphan.

tbh rpm is one of the few things i dont like about fedora

give me good old debs anyday, i do like the standard and up to date packages though without the ubuntu specific patches that bring on strange dependencies (seriously ubuntu who makes parts of gnome depend on qt5?!?)

stopper · 5 Jan 2015 at 14:12

I removed the ugly cinnamon 2.4 yesterday, I only installed it for the fixes in screen tearing.
Had a dig around the net for a few hours and found out that the reason for tearing was down to the built in compositor, so I disabled that and installed compton, set it to start at login, and now I'm running the much nicer xfce again, but totally tear free.