Poll: Desktop environments

[bimsebasse]

The only real difference I can see between the Cinnamon panel and the Gnome-shell panel is that Cinnamon shows open apps in the panel. And, a Gnome extension does that, in any case.

The panels are very different - in Cinnamon it's a busy place for applets and system tray icons you are meant to interact with and configure whereas in Gnome Shell the panel merely holds the indicators and isn't designed to be populated with anything or configured though you can add third-party extensions.

Try a very simple task like reordering 2 panel indicators in Gnome Shell. Then try the same in Cinnamon.

(I'm a Gnome Shell user and this was not a Cinnamon fanboy post, but there are many differences between the two and it irks me to see posts suggesting otherwise. Cinnamon doesn't have the unified overview, calendar/online accounts integration and the extensions site - Gnome Shell doesn't have built-in configuration and it's quite limited what you can do in that area with gnome-tweak-tool or extensions)

[buzzingrobot]

The only real difference I can see between the Cinnamon panel and the Gnome-shell panel is that Cinnamon shows open apps in the panel. And, a Gnome extension does that, in any case.

The panels are very different - in Cinnamon it's a busy place for applets and system tray icons you are meant to interact with and configure whereas in Gnome Shell the panel merely holds the indicators and isn't designed to be populated with anything or configured though you can add third-party extensions.

Try a very simple task like reordering 2 panel indicators in Gnome Shell. Then try the same in Cinnamon.

(I'm a Gnome Shell user and this was not a Cinnamon fanboy post, but there are many differences between the two and it irks me to see posts suggesting otherwise. Cinnamon doesn't have the unified overview, calendar/online accounts integration and the extensions site - Gnome Shell doesn't have built-in configuration and it's quite limited what you can do in that area with gnome-tweak-tool or extensions)

Why be irked? It's just software.

I like Gnome-Shell, too. But, since I have Cinnamon configured much the same as I'd configure Gnome-shell, there's no reason to change. It hasn't occurred to me to reorder panel indicators. I never tweak things much at all beyond adding my own wallpaper. You're right about the overview, calendar, online accounts in gnome-shell, but those are pieces I forget because I don't use them. As long as I can put a few applets/extensions in the panel and a dock on the left, I'm OK. I can do that with Cinnamon (with Plank as the dock) and with gnome-shell (kill the Dash and add a dock via extensions.) I don't manipulate applications that are running via the panel, so their presence there in Cinnamon is only a visual distinction as far as I'm concerned.

[Mushorwell]

I have been running LMDE Cinnamon on my 32bit 1.6 ghz Amd athlone processor, 3gb ram machine. Although I like Cinnamon very much, it doesn't quite agree with my driver as it often shows its lag when playing videos/ watching movies, especially fast paced action films with a higher frame rate. I have even tried disabling the effects and still there isn't much change. Also when scrolling I can see the lag as opposed to lxde which is much smoother. Ironically, KDE seems to handle the videos much better than Cinnamon. It however may not necessarily be an issue with cinnamon itself but may be rooted in the gnome shell as GS has the same problem. Gnome fallback seems to actually be unaffected by the problem but I don't like it's huge fonts especially with the menus.
I am therefore forced to leave Cinnamon for other lighter DE's. I tried xfce which I really like and would have settled with if it isn't for the frequent freezes it has often resulting in me having to logout and login again in order for it to work . I therefore went on to try openbox, KDE, Enlightenment and lxde. Enlightenment is amazing, it's near perfect except that I cannot seem to find a way to install the other emodules as well as ecomorph in order to enable ecomorph I also have a little problem with the inconsistency with the gtk apps, usually giving them the ugly redmond widget style. Guess some of these problems are due to my ignorance to the WM, I would therefore appreciate any hints or links to threads that may be be useful on this. With openbox, everything is so simple, I quite like it but am not sure I would be prepared to use it fulltime, KDE is probably the one I was most likely to choose, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the options and settings, what makes me distance it however is the inconsistency with gtk applications. While some can be set to adopt the oxygen look and can even be enforced using a gtk-theme-changer, some of the applications seem to look not work and adopt the redmond widget stye instead which does not look good at all especially with a sleek KDE desktop. Lxde is nice and simple, though I really miss some of the cinnamon applets like the weather applet etc for which I cannot find an equivalent applet on lxde. I am however gathering an interest in tiling window managers namely awm, I have previous experience with xmonad which I quite liked, very good, fast and straightforward. I am therefore considering getting awm as long as I can get a setup that will allow a taskbar of some sort (most vids I have seen with awm have this) that can make it easier for me to find some applications I cannot remember the names. I also want to ask whether it would be still possible to theme the window widgets so I am not stuck with the redmond look (though at this point I honestly wont mind if everything looks the same as long as awm can be setup on LMDE to be fully functional. I would appreciate any enlightenment tips as well as those for awm among the problems mentioned in my post. If my post is going off topic I don't mind it being relocated to a more relevant thread if there is one, otherwise I can make a new one simply for this.
Lastly, I would like to thank the linux mint team for all their great work especially with cinnamon and their latest releases (which probably were their biggest challenge yet.) I hope that cinnamon will continue to be improved and gain new features as well as improvements on its stability and speed. Hopefully it will also improve as gnome shell gets faster and more stable as well, and please if the global menu is to be implemented to cinnamon, please can it rather be done like in unity (macbook style) rather than the dropdown menu used in gnome 3.4 D: I see it more as a drawback as it isn't really consistant with the whole shell feel. The whole idea of gnome 3 was to depart from the traditional dropdown menu-type that gnome 2 had, and yet now an unnecessary dropdown menu has been reintroduced to the shell. Anyways, that is just my 2 cents, the global menu in GS 3.4 are ugly and waste space as opposed to those in unity which are embedded in the taskbar.

[bimsebasse]

There is a Cinnamon 2D session now (in development release, not in the stable channels) which may help users with poor graphics support

[kmb42vt]

@Mushorwell - There's also the option of trying LMDE with the MATE desktop environment (or the Linux Mint 13 main edition with the MATE desktop) . Since it's a fork of Gnome 2.32 and does not require 3D graphics it might solve your problems.

[baptiste]

I've looked up ecomorph to know what it is, and development has stopped. such is the problem of a window manager in "perpetual beta" as I've read somewhere.
http://code.google.com/p/itask-module/wiki/Stuff

if you want to change gtk style have a look at lxappearance, it's part of lxde but as any lxde component it can be installed separately. it's a must when using minimal window managers or setting up your own environment.

[Mushorwell]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I did try MATE but did not like the big fonts when I change the default theme, I don't know if there is a way of fixing that. I will try to see if I can fix this, I am otherwise getting a liking to lxde, it's so light and fast! Srolling on windows is so smooth I'm just falling for it, I think I might stick with this for the time being, till a new update of cinnamon is available as well as the cinnamon 2D. I am otherwise still looking into eventually moving to a tiling window manager like awesome, I have heard so many great things about it and have had experience with xmonad which is also pretty good. Has anyone else tried awesome on LMDE? It's a real shame about enlightenment, its such a great window manager in its premature state and has got so much potential, I really hope it does pick up.

[ingeva]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I did try MATE but did not like the big fonts when I change the default theme, I don't know if there is a way of fixing that.

There probably is. I have seen nothing of the sort.
I prefer MATE, because it has very good, functional launch panels, like Gnome Classic. One click to start a program - and it's configurable.

[Mushorwell]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I did try MATE but did not like the big fonts when I change the default theme, I don't know if there is a way of fixing that.

There probably is. I have seen nothing of the sort.
I prefer MATE, because it has very good, functional launch panels, like Gnome Classic. One click to start a program - and it's configurable.

Ah, I have sort of resolved my issue with MATE and must say it works pretty much like gnome 2. It's a very good fork and I actually like it now. I however gathered enough courage to get awesome wm and I must say, that is the winner for me!! I installed it simply expecting a tiling window manager that I would use when I'm in the mood to show off my geekyness but after a little struggle with it's installation and managing to add it to my repos, I finally got it running. Even with no configurations it's almost fully functional, very simple to use and to my surprise has got really good mouse support it even functions partly like fluxbox. Unlike xmonad, it has some kind of taskbar with it already and I merely have to just launch the nm-applet and synapse and I'm ready to roll. It's a real pleasant surprise I think I'm actually going to be using this a lot more than any other wm. Just now following tuts on configuring it (not that there's a lot that I want to add, it's already near perfect!! )

I've looked up ecomorph to know what it is, and development has stopped. such is the problem of a window manager in "perpetual beta" as I've read somewhere.
http://code.google.com/p/itask-module/wiki/Stuff

if you want to change gtk style have a look at lxappearance, it's part of lxde but as any lxde component it can be installed separately. it's a must when using minimal window managers or setting up your own environment.

Thanks for the tip with lxappearance, it works wonders!!

[squeezy]

I have to say that during the past couple of months I've become very fond of GNOME Shell. It finally clicked with me how to use it and now I find it very appealing. I like to add a few extensions for appearance sake, like removing accessibility icon which I don't use, but otherwise I use it pretty much stock.

[EdWh]

From- EdWh
X58x Gigabyte M/B
Intel i7 4 quad 3.20 Ghz
12 gb Muskin ddr 3 2100 mhz
2- 1 tb WD Sata 6 Hdd, win7, Mint split in half.
Psu 750 watt
Hd Cooler Master 2 fan
Nividia GE Force 550 Pci 16x 3d

I switched from Ubuntu a year or so ago to Mint 11, works great easy inslall, great boot on dual boot Win7 and Mint 11 to both system on 1 tb Hdd split in half. Used manual partition installer on Mint 11 all went well.

I have spent last 3 dayis attempting to install Mint 13 Cinnamon, 32 bit and 64 bit. All installs work but cannot find dialogue in Mint manual Partitioner to, point to home for files. so end up formatting second half of drive and letting installation pick the partition, which it does a terrible job . Put three additional partitions on drive, one a swap and the other two as a 7gb and a 3 gb with it appears the boot files on both. Does not install to the 400 gb. I located the dialogue on the old mint 11 with no problems.
The big problem is all Mint 13 attempts work ok until reboot, Grub is installed but will not boot to system, have to reboot and use recover option to reinstall grub files and when installed, click on resume boot and it loads system until next reboot and again will not boot until files are reloaded by recover mode. Does boot win7 ok.

Now I am not a guru of linux and not a newby either and do not want to get into a whole bunch of string commands, Miint 11 installed and worked right out of the box, mint 13 will not. Same machine same setup except grub on mint 11 is I believe 1.9, while on MINT 13 is 2.0.

How do you expect a newby to intall Mint 13 with all these problems. ?? I like mint 13 but if I cannot resolve, what is the point, as a matter of fact I would use Mint Linux and dump Windows 7 entirely except I use Acronis - Home 10 for cloning and Acronis - Disk Management for Hdd partitioning and for me there is nothing like it.
I have Hdd running under small hardware control interface as they are both SATA 6. I installed Gparted on Mint 11 and it will not even see the drives and even under Ubuntu, I could not work with gparted to do anything, even Microsoft gives Acronis software a 5 point rating so how can I do without it??

I give Clem and his team a salute for a fine system in Mint 13, but one does need to be able to work with it , without all these problems, I might even try to use the boot loader in Acronis to see if it can resolve my problem. Clem I understand the amount of work you and the team put in just give us a good install and please put some easy graphical hdd partitioners that work. Will bookmark this site and check back. Frustrated. EdWh
EdWh

[QuotidianMe]

I thought I'd like Mate, but it's still too rough for me. Puts me in mind of MetaCity, Ubuntu's fallback (or used to be, not sure about lately).

Cinnamon won't run on my older machine, and until it gets a window switcher (like Compiz rotating cube or XFCE window switcher) I'm not apt to install it on my newer machines either.

That would be my one big hope: shadows and a window switcher that I can change with a mouse. If XFCE can do it lightweight, maybe Cinnamon or Mate can too. If not, I'll take XFCE over Mate as a solid light workhorse. Its implementation on LMDE is faultless.

[bimsebasse]

Cinnamon has a window switcher.

[Mr. P-teo]

For me Xfce as its lightweight and makes the most of my low spec laptop. Sort of "Linux Mint Lite"

[Thme]

Needless to say I'm yet another xfce user. On mint LMDE before learning Arch linux I used Mate and have a great deal respect for it. the mate menu was nice but on my netbook it had many times a 5 second delay just pulling it up. On xfce I found the layout simple like having an organized context menu. Xfwm does an excellent job as a tiling window manager. which I believe is a reason thunar doesn't do tabs or dualpanes. playing around with the hotkeys I got a hot key for loading 2 instances of thunar side by side. same effect, just a different way of achieving it. Now I don't miss it anymore. I also like xfce's terminal. simple and fast but throw in tilda, customize it, and you'll have something both faster and less on resources than quake that works well on xfce.

[veggen]

playing around with the hotkeys I got a hot key for loading 2 instances of thunar side by side. same effect, just a different way of achieving it.

Actually, it's not the same effect. In dual-pane mode, the panes are aware of each other, so things like "move to other pane" are possible, and, as far as I know, this is not doable with tiled windows (without maybe relying on some heavy black magic). This is why I can't switch to single pane managers, and why I hate the new (3.5.4+) Nautilus so intensely. If Nemo reaches *any* usable state by then, I'm there. Otherwise, I'll switch to Marlin. Or maybe even SpaceFM.

[TLARbb]

I have just installed Mint 13 on two machines. I am using Cinnamon on the machine I am typing this reply (which happens to be booted into WinXP at the moment). I am still looking at which Linux I want to use for the long term. So far, of the distros I've tried, I like Mint the best. I had Mint 12 on my newest laptop until yesterday and have uninstalled it so that I may put Mint 13 on it.

I have another older dell with a Core 2 processor and not much RAM (2 Gb as I recall) that Cinnamon would not work on, so I have installed the MATE version on it and it is running okay, but pretty slow. Anyway, I like both MATE and Cinnamon, but will probably wind up with Cinnamon on the laptop (my best computer at the moment).

I haven't been real adventurous lately, but have Mint 13 on two machines.

EJ

[cjwelborn]

I like Gnome Shell, with the extensions, it's what I use on my "good" pc. But as for this older one that I am typing from now, it's gotta be XFCE. It runs smoothly, and looks great. I have not tryed Cinn or Mate, maybe one day I will, for now I love my XFCE and Gnome3.

[HartKnight]

Mainly Cinnamon, but MATE every so often.

[tancrackers]

Cinnamon is really good, but I wish it would support multi monitors better.