Poll: Desktop environments

[Trapper]

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Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

+1

[kmb42vt]

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Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

+1

Another +1 from me as well.

[bamm]

Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

+1

Another +1 from me as well.

And yet another +1 from me.

[cwwgateway]

Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

And another +1

[z06gal]

Back when KDE 3.x was en vogue, I was a straight-up KDE guy. Then the nightmarish initial release of KDE4 came out, and I made the switch to Gnome 2.x. After the abomination which is Unity was thrust upon us, I discovered Linux Mint. I have to say, Mint was such a breath of fresh air! When Mint 12 KDE came out, I thought I'd give KDE another shot. The current release of KDE has blown me away. It is fast, stable, and feature-rich. Never looking back. Many thanks to the Mint and KDE development teams!

I do have to point out something that I have seen repeated in this thread that annoys me -- the idea of "Windows wannabes". Look, if something works well, why change it? Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

brassman5,

I installed kde plasma desktop and upgraded to kde 4.8 after I checked out some you tube videos of the new kde in action. Well, my fan runs constantly on high with it. Have you experienced that? My temps usually run at about 27 to 35 with Cinnamon but it shoots up to 75 degrees on kde. Any ideas why? Thanks



Robin

[thenudehamster]

Horses for courses, it seems to me.

For reasons of my own I have three operational desktops and four operational laptops. All bar one dual boot into Windows (they came with it and I do still have some Windows specific apps which are essential to some activities) and Ubuntu. The odd one has Mint 12 with Cinnamon (1.2 as I can't persuade it to update to 1.4 yet).
All the dual booters have at least Unity and either Gnome and/or Cinnamon (though one feels like it has Gnome 3 despite only installing Cinnamon 1.4) and one has KDE as well. I've tried them all for various things and I come down in favour of Cinnamon for day-to-day use.
(I did have one machine with Xfce for a while but some hardware upgrades made it Unity/Cinnamon capable so it was updated. I've still got some older machines to sort out, so one or two may get get that too.)

Though Unity is an interesting redesign of the desktop, its default icons are way too big (even the smallest option is bigger than I'd like) and the Launcher bar is intrusive - and if you set it to auto-hide, it's not willing to reveal itself too easily. The main Dash is less than intuitive, and since they introduced Lenses all they've managed to do is add another step or two to finding what you want. For all that, sometimes it's a better interface than others.
KDE (4 - only version I've tried) may be the most capable desktop about, but for me it's maybe a bit too capable. Geeks, tweakers and twiddlers may find it marvellous, but I'm afraid it's not for me. Despite much effort I just found it too much work.

Cinnamon (1.2 anyway) is easy for me once I singled up and moved the main bar to the top of the screen; I now have easy to navigate menus, one-click applets for things if I want them, and a nice clean desktop. In some ways it's reminiscent of my old Atari ST with GEM, and Apple's System 7.5 and 8 which are what I cut my teeth on.
Maybe there's a moral there; I'm ancient - over 60 - and I find it a lot easier to work with the familiar than with the innovative but non-intuitive.

I stress, this is why MY setups work for me; I'm not decrying anyone else's choice, just explaining mine.
Your mileage may, as ever, vary...

[sc0tt10]

Cinnamon - Love it, used daily on my main desktop, very user friendly and intuitive
MATE - A great continuation of GNOME 2.3, which is probably my favorite DE of all, used on my Eee 901 with LMDE as I find it faster than Cinnamon on the same hardware.

Both excellent with distinct uses for each.

GNOME Shell - A royal pain in the arse.
KDE - More trouble than it's worth for me, I liked KDE 3.5, KDE 4 scared me away.
XFCE - A good lightweight DE, would use if not for MATE being far more familiar with it being based on GNOME 2.3 and all.

[ebuth]

I'm using a Compaq 615 as my second computer and have to run MATE on it. Gnome 2 is my forever love. Best DE ever designed! LXDE could be a replacement, but the battery monitor scrambles bottom panel, KDE runs but makes the laptop sound like a Boing 747 just before takeoff. I wonder about the temperature inside. Unity is garbage. You need four mouse clicks instead of formerly one. Where are the nice applets? Gnome 3 and Cinnamon scramble my whole desktop after a short time.
MATE is OK, but still many of the applets I liked to use frequently are missing!
That's Linux! 2010 it worked perfectly, but 2011 they have trashed in 3 months what they have built up within the last 10 years!
BTW: Accu capacity is about 3 to 4 hours with XP, it uses to be 3 hours with Ubuntu 9.10 it is now down to 45 Minutes with Ubuntu 11.10 and Mint 12. No difference. That's the gigantic progress of technology!

[Verix]

I just want to say, reading this thread has been both enlightening and enjoyable. There are some great posts in here that really expose the DEs at hand for their true abilities and weaknesses, and their use cases. This could be the best modern DE debate on the net so far. Admittedly, in the end it poses more questions than it answers, but that's only the natural outcome of truly successful debates. Keep it going!

[5oak]

I just want to say, reading this thread has been both enlightening and enjoyable. There are some great posts in here that really expose the DEs at hand for their true abilities and weaknesses, and their use cases. This could be the best modern DE debate on the net so far. Admittedly, in the end it poses more questions than it answers, but that's only the natural outcome of truly successful debates. Keep it going!

+1

[bimsebasse]

I do have to point out something that I have seen repeated in this thread that annoys me -- the idea of "Windows wannabes". Look, if something works well, why change it? Completely coming up with a new desktop concept for the sole purpose of "being a real alternative" is idiotic. Ford cars all have four wheels, seatbelts and a steering wheel. Does that mean all Chevys are Ford wannabes?

False analogy. Seatbelts are mandatory (not a design choice) and a car can't work without a steering wheel. Unity works fine without a window list or a traditional menu and so does Gnome Shell. A shell like Cinnamon is not "Windows wannabe" but definitely in its basic setup a very slight variation on the Windows 95 desktop. And neither Unity nor Gnome Shell were made solely for the purpose of being real alternatives (whatever that is supposed to mean), that claim in itself is "idiotic".

It's a bit frustrating how insensible and immature the Linux community is. One camp digging a trench at one side shouting "tablet!!" at things that evidently aren't (and +1ing everyone who shouts similar things how ever ill-informed or off the mark as long as it is against the other side) - and the worthy adversaries of predominantly Unity fanboys and Gnome Shell zealots digging another trench and shouting other silly things. Not a word of reason or anything sensible is exchanged by the two camps or between the two camps, yet it seems to make out about 95% of all Linux community communication. We must look like a giant day care center to outsiders. I wish Gnome 3 never happened because it has caused such an avalanche of complete drivel to flood places like this.

Anyway it is possible to like both Gnome 2, Unity, Gnome Shell, Cinnamon and Android, those all have their strengths and their uses, none of them are stupid, none of them "unintuitive" (please stop using that word about things that are painfully intuitive to thousands, blame your poor intuition or inflexible habit patterns. cheers mate).

[eco2geek]

Here's my two cents, FWIW. I am not a fan of Unity or GNOME shell. (If you are, great. I'm not, and I'm not going to use either of them, full stop.)

I thought that, when Ubuntu 12.04 was released, I'd be switching to Xfce, or maybe Cinnamon, as my main desktop environment. Then, lo and behold, Ubuntu included GNOME "Classic Mode" (aka "fallback mode") in its repositories; they fixed their "indicator applets" so they work with classic mode, and they sort of fixed the Ambiance and Radiance themes so they worked with classic mode (although Radiance looks better than Ambiance, and neither is without glitches). They also apparently did some work on Compiz in classic mode. So classic mode on Ubuntu 12.04 (with Compiz) is what I'm using now.

The things "classic mode" needs the most, IMHO, are the promise of long-term viability (although it sort of got that with its inclusion in an LTS release), and theme support. The underpinnings feel solid.

The problem with Mate is that I want a desktop environment that's fully compatible with the applets and applications that come with GNOME 3. Correct me if I'm wrong, but who's writing anything for GTK 2 any more?

[hellion22]

I have tried ubuntu with unity didn't like it at all was hard to navigate took longer to find what i wanted than it took to do what i was wanting to do once i finally figured out how to open the app.
linux mint 12 i have some of the same issues not real happy with the performance of kde or gnome3

Linux mint 11 has decent performance which i have adapted to since linux mint 10 seems to be buggy if linux mint 10 was still running as smoothly as it was when 11 came out i would still be using it

[Lasher]

I would honestly like to see Maya come with Cinnamon out of the box. All the other environments can be added by those who prefer them just like they have in the past. I've been running Mint 9 for the past year and will continue to for the next, yet have been playing with several environments in Ubuntu 12.04 and in it find Cinnamon more than adequete. It's Mint's baby, it has the majority of votes already, It's the Gnome 2 way with the GTK3 perks for the future. I was just talking to a friend about it in a local IRC chan the other day who uses Ubuntu. He was surprised you could just add a repo. I gave him the ppa and the next day he informed me he had moved all of his systems and servers to Cinnamon after testing it for about an hour (Like 10 or so PC's). That's a win.

Cinnamon gives Mint it's official 'this is how we do' it stamp. If all the Mutter could be replaced with Compiz it would be "Game Over Man". Just do it. Why are we voting?

[bamm]

I think Cinnamon has a lot of rough edges. Why two control centers, with the same icon at that? Can't they be merged? Why does the menu grow with too many favorites? Can't we just port mint-menu to Cinnamon? Why does minimize animation look like it's being closed? And why do theme changes only affect the panel? And it crashes too.

I think we should release a Cinnamon version but only as a technology preview. It is not good enough for an LTS release.

[bamm]

Why are we voting?

We are voting because not everyone has the same opinion.

[JanG]

What is this really all about?
Childish splash screens, screensavers and stuff?
Linux Mint, forget that nonsense.

Give Gnome 3 just a simple typical Mint flavor …
Put your energy into improving Gnome 3 as it is.
Forget Mate, Unity and Cinnamon.
Let Linux Mint is what it is, complete and out-of-the-box working.

I’m a fan of Linux Mint and I have ever donated.
Now Mint is not relevant here, it’s too fragmented …

I now work with Fedora 16 and Gnome 3 to the full satisfaction ..
What is currently the value of Linux Mint, I wonder …

[AlbertP]

Give Gnome 3 just a simple typical Mint flavor …
Put your energy into improving Gnome 3 as it is.

For us, improving Gnome 3 means adding a panel at the bottom, with a menu and window list, to make it look and feel like a traditional desktop. That's exactly what Cinnamon is about. If you don't share this view, you are free to vote Gnome 3 at this poll or install the gnome-shell package manually.

[JanG]

I don't share the view of keeping things as before. Time goes on, life goes on, things are changing...
Hold on to the past is a waste of time in my opinion.

I vote for Gnome Shell

[z06gal]

I don't share the view of keeping things as before. Time goes on, life goes on, things are changing...
Hold on to the past is a waste of time in my opinion.

I vote for Gnome Shell

That is great but not everybody feels the way you do