Poll: Desktop environments

[xenopeek]

Re-voting is not allowed on this poll. It is still open for voting for anybody that hasn't voted yet.

[nerbiyoso]

I voted for KDE but started giving me some issues after, so I'm now using LM Lisa LXDE and I find that is very good, I'm starting to like it even more than KDE, Gnone or Unity, so I wish I had voted for LXDE in the first time!

i wish more will notice this. 1 LXDE vote lost for not trying it In distrowatch, Lubuntu > Xubuntu/Kubuntu. doesn't it mean LXDE > XFCE/KDE? and now, LXDE Mint might not be available for Maya. so sad there's not much LXDE love here. thank god, there's still Lubuntu for us...

[cwwgateway]

i wish more will notice this. 1 LXDE vote lost for not trying it In distrowatch, Lubuntu > Xubuntu/Kubuntu. doesn't it mean LXDE > XFCE/KDE? and now, LXDE Mint might not be available for Maya. so sad there's not much LXDE love here. thank god, there's still Lubuntu for us...

I disagree. First of all, distrowatch isn't accurate. Second of all, Lubuntu isn't the only LXDE distro, Kubuntu isn't the only KDE distro, and Xubuntu isn't the only Xfce distro. Magiea is in 6th place and it's a KDE distro, and openSUSE is a half KDE distro and it's in 4th. The highest distro that has LXDE as default is Lubuntu in 12th. I'm pretty sure that that proves beyond resonable doubt that KDE is more popular than LXDE if you're going to go by distrowatch. Also, there are 117 distros that offer a KDE edition, there are 87 that have Xfce editions, and there are only 53 that have LXDE editions. Finally, Mint's audience isn't the same as any other distro. Distrowatch shows data from the entire linux community. This poll shows data from the Linux Mint audience. This audience isn't very interested in LXDE, so the developers want to put more resources into things they are interested in. Personally, I like the LXDE edition, but I'm not very sad to see it go. It means that every other Mint edition will be better, and it means that we'll have an Ubuntu based Xfce.

Also, I've decided which Mint editions I'm going to use from now on - I'll use LMDE Cinnamon (once the Update Pack 5 comes out), and I'll install LMDE Xfce on my old Gateway desktop.

I'm also very interested in new Ubuntu based distros coming out at the moment. Zorin OS has Zorin 6 RC out and it uses the Zorin DE, which is basically AWN when you use the Windows 7 or Windows XP looks and it uses Gnome-panel (the fallback mode) when you use the Gnome 2 look. Also, Pinguy OS 12.04 RC will be coming out on the 22nd with a heavily tweaked Gnome Shell 3.4. Mint 13 RC is out with MATE and Cinnamon (but you all knew that ). Finally, Ubuntu 12.04 itself is out and it has Unity, which has become pretty stable and more customizable. I think that Gnome 3 was kind of a defining point for all of these distros and more - each distro looked for alternatives and was able to make what they wanted. Personally, I think that all of these distros are as good or even better than they were before Gnome 3 (although that can be argued on and on).

[nerbiyoso]

First of all, distrowatch isn't accurate

OK.

[heavy metal]

R.I.P. LM LXDE!

[FiReSTaRT]

R.I.P. LM LXDE!

What happened? I actually like LXDE. I'd have no issues with using it on a low hardware spec machine and I use it for work now. I could tweak it to be a pretty decent personal desktop environment without too much work. I'd take it as a low resource usage alternative and just cut XFCE (which I like, I just think LXDE is a better solution - less resource-hungry).

If I could change my vote in the poll, I'd take out GNOME Shell, include Cinnamon and LXDE. Might even take out XFCE. Found Cinnamon to be generally less buggy, less resource-hungry (at least with my setup) and better looking now that I found the right GTK themes (my recommendations are Dark Cold for those who like blue and Dark Mint for those of us into green

Cinnamon wish-list:
1) Natively allow moving the top panel down
2) Allow us to set window margins in case the windows don't snap to panels

[RobertLM78]

One of the appeals for me is that Mint with Gnome 3, (which is dispised by so many I see now), is NOT a Windows wannabe; where it seems like both MATE and cinnamon are trying to go back to Gnome 2, or become Windows clones. When I first tried Linux a decade ago, I used KDE, but I prefer the new Gnome now, for the reason I stated. If Mint is going to be an alternative to Windows 8, then IMHO Mint's desktop should be a true alternative, not just a "Windows wannabe."

You make a nice point here about how different Gnome-shell is from Window$ (one of the reasons it was my first favorite desktop after making the switch to Linux), but I honestly think that the panel or "taskbar" as it is called in Window$, is one of the most helpful tools of productivity ever thought of for the computer - it really speeds up task switching, and from a glance at the panel, you can see exactly what applications you have running on that workspace. So you should really try Cinnamon if you like Gnome-shell, it's got a lot of the features you're talking about, plus, a panel for task switching (I really find the zoom out overview of Gnome to be quite distracting, and if there's a lot of similar looking windows open, it's hard to tell what's what).

[baptiste]

I've used LXDE, but not fond anymore of using it on mint 12 main edition. dedicated lxde edition is excellent, or using it installed on text-mode ubuntu.

I'll be using MATE, I've switched to my ubuntu 11.04 partition and find gnome 2 to be excellent after cleaning up the bars again. and fast and full-featured.
mint 13 rc's MATE is awesome, doesn't seem buggy, applets are back (fish, xeyes, weather etc.)
especially awesome is how you can choose between three menus : mint, gnome 2 and xfce-like, and put them anywhere!
so I have no complaint against mint's menu anymore.

[heavy metal]

Why eliminate LXDE Mint versions? Why not maybe, if linuxmint developers can't keep pace with other Desktop Enviroments and want to focus on one or two DE I propose this, make one XCFE version on LTS like it is likely to happen, and the next ubuntu release make an LXDE version of linuxmint, then the next release make an XFCE and the next release an LXDE and so on... get the point, or have to be more clear???

[xenopeek]

Actually, the developers are focussing on 4 DEs; Cinnamon, MATE, KDE and Xfce. All four to be released as an edition of Linux Mint 13, and except for KDE all already released as an edition of LMDE (I'm not sure about plans for KDE on LMDE).

Just to share an alternative, Clem has just added a tutorial on how to respin your own Linux Mint edition (http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918). So anybody with a bit of know-how could make an LXDE respin of Linux Mint. So even if the Linux Mint developers do not have the time to make an LXDE edition of Linux Mint, a committed user could make a LXDE respin happen

[baptiste]

excellent!, this is now support for the community that can lead to unofficial release, as lubuntu was. this can lead to a lxde 64bit variant.

I'm sure a linux mint ubuntu xfce will be good but I quite love lxde, only lxde is in a perpetual state of "could fix and add a few things to become lxde 1.0".

if I have some time I'll want to play with it if only for creating a "linux mint nihil" ISO, with no desktop.

[900i]

Used to use Gnome 2. Trying LXDE at the mo, not struck on Mate or Cinnamon.

[zerozero]

Just to share an alternative, Clem has just added a tutorial on how to respin your own Linux Mint edition (http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918). So anybody with a bit of know-how could make an LXDE respin of Linux Mint. So even if the Linux Mint developers do not have the time to make an LXDE edition of Linux Mint, a committed user could make a LXDE respin happen

thanks for the heads-up Vincent sounds like a nice summer project.

[KBD47]

When Mint 12 LXDE came out I did a full install, but with just a small amount of tweaking I broke the desktop. To save that install I went ahead and installed the LXDE desktop from synaptic package manager. I added the xfce4-power-manager, indicator-weather, and psensor for temp, I added those along with a volume icon to the startup session to get them in the panel at startup, and I think I might have added xfce4-notifyd for notifications, and had a great running system. It just takes a few minutes to add the LXDE desktop, and to tweak it a bit. All apologies to the Mint devs, but you can make, in my opinion, more usable LXDE desktop yourself by just adding LXDE to Mint 13 and tweaking it.
kbd47

[monkeyboy]

Thats the joy of Linux. If you want to change things up to make it your own it can be done and you can even get help from other Linux folks while you are doing it. You don't have to whine about it till somebody does it for you or till some marketing type decides its time to sell a mod to you. Oh joy.

[baptiste]

LXDE edition is useful to make a slim installation. space may be at a premium if you install on a very old hard drive or on limited flash. for exemple an eee pc without hard drive has a 4GB flash + 8GB flash, I installed mint 12 lxde with / on the 4GB (ext2) and /home on the 8GB, the user is in love with it.

or you save on memory use and disk access. I had trouble on my PC with mint 12 + added lxde. gnome 3 components still running I believe, gnome-terminal as the terminal emulator (it adds features but is heavier), most annoyingly fonts too small and gtk theme imperfect.
to be fair I was slowed down a lot by chromium and its very high memory usage. it was a quirky lxde, slow and I had an ugly wallpaper. but trying the same from a mint 13 MATE may work better, probably.

[BostonPeng]

Just to share an alternative, Clem has just added a tutorial on how to respin your own Linux Mint edition (http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918). So anybody with a bit of know-how could make an LXDE respin of Linux Mint. So even if the Linux Mint developers do not have the time to make an LXDE edition of Linux Mint, a committed user could make a LXDE respin happen

It is soooo tempting to put together a release with LMDE + KDE but Tux knows there's no way in Blue Heaven I have the time it would take to put that together. Which is a bloody shame because I bet a release of LMDE + KDE + Bespin (my current configuration) would be a killer release.

(if this ends up being a dup please forgive me. I'd love to know what the frak it's taking me so many tries (6+?) to submit this damned post. I jeep getting time out errors and when I refresh my post is gone. Thank Tux for being able to copy it before I hit the damned button.)

[allypink]

Liking what I see with cinnamon. Got up and running on my old Dell inspiron 1300 laptop. Runs quiet nicely (once I had fixed the hibernation issue) http://askubuntu.com/questions/111669/hibernate-missing-from-power-menu-and-when-i-press-laptop-power-button
Was running Mint 12 with cinnamon now have 13 up and running and may have found the replacement for Mint 10 on my desktop.

[Carl H]

I've tried out MATE and although I like the look of it, what I find very irritating is that a load of the apps have been renamed, e.g. GEdit is now Pluma, and 'sudo gedit' seems to be a hard habit to break.

I've also tried Unity from the Live CD that came with this month's Linux Format mag and it seems alright, though there's going to be a bit of a learning curve. It seems to be trying to look like MacOS, but it doesn't behave like it.

From what I've read so far, Cinnamon doesn't play well with the ATI graphics card in the new PC I've just bought so I'm not going to even try it.

I suspect that XFCE will be my preferred desktop before much longer.

[AlbertP]

@ Carl H: Cinnamon used to have problems with the ATI/AMD proprietary driver but most issues are fixed in recent Catalyst 12.x versions. Mint 13 has a newer fglrx driver in Additional Drivers which works fine for most people (Mint 12 had an old one which failed), and if that does not work installing the latest driver from http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx is pretty easy. That way it's usually fixed. Also you can run on open-source radeon driver (i.e. not installing catalyst/fglrx) and it'll also be fine if your card works well with that.