[Solved,must read] need guidance in choosing DE

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yonnie
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[Solved,must read] need guidance in choosing DE

Post by yonnie »

I've looked at the different DE guides and I don't see a difference. Well, the Xfce one wasn't available in English so I didn't bother to look at it. Short history summary:
Many years ago it was just Linux as in Redhat or Debian. I ran RedHat back then. Then I found Debian was a lot cheaper and I preferred to use Gnome, then it went away. Then I moved to KDE, then the powers that be made the menus illegible, so I'm deciding which to move to next. Ran LXDE on the older stuff I had
I have a need to use Wine for some business apps that are only available for windows and I need to run GoogleEarth too. Everything else is Linux or forget it.

I don't like having to switch distros all the time, Linux Mint seems to be pretty good and I've been running KDE, KDE is going away so now what? Cinnemon, Mate, Xfce, which one when all three appear to be the same. Do you know what a PITA it is to be used to running something and all of a sudden it doesn't work anymore? I went through this with Geda, spent hundreds of hours drafting and designing to find the library's would change and all my drawings wouldn't load or print anymore.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by Pjotr »

Much depends on your system specs. CPU, amount of RAM, video chipset, that kind of things.

And on whether you're a lover of bling-bling, of course. :mrgreen:
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by yonnie »

have no idea what bling bling would be unless you refer to windblows. I just want a stable easy to use DE that will remain available as a workhorse, as in SunOS, used to really love that one. The main princess I have about KDE was it used to have nice easy to read menu's, now you can't read them, especially when you launch LibreOffice, the menu's become a blur and screwed-up.
How do you tell the difference between the different Linux Mint DEs and pick one.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by MintBean »

The short answer is - try the different DEs. It's all about look and feel so it's personal preference. The other option is to stick with KDE, either by moving to another distro, or installing it on top of Mint when official support ends years from now. A community member will give instructions and it will only be a couple of lines to cut and paste in the terminal.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by yonnie »

Not interested in spending the hours of investment of time I don't have, just to discover the LM flavor I spent time on doesn't do the application I might need a month from now. Do all the LM flavors do essentially the same thing? They all seem to look alike. How do i even tell which one it is that I am running right now?
This is not a whimsical thing for me, for I don't want to go through the effort of installing this, then that and then something else. That is nonsense! My time is valuable to me
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by JerryF »

yonnie wrote:Not interested in spending the hours of investment of time I don't have...
If you create a Live Multi USB drive with the three different DEs, you can try them and see which you gravitate towards.
yonnie wrote:...Do all the LM flavors do essentially the same thing?
Yes.
yonnie wrote:How do i even tell which one it is that I am running right now?
Run System Info. Or in Terminal, run inxi -S.
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Solved Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by yonnie »

thanks
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by JerryF »

Forgot to mention---I wouldn't count on Wine for running your business apps. You might be lucky and they will run. Wine is good, but just that---good, and is a hack. I use TurboTax every year and can't get Wine to run it, period. That's why I have a virtual machine of Windows.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by MtnDewManiac »

yonnie wrote:Not interested in spending the hours of investment of time I don't have, just to discover the LM flavor I spent time on doesn't do the application I might need a month from now.
I think you might be operating under a misconception, here. Your choice of desktop environment does not restrict you in terms of which applications you can or cannot run. KDE uses a different toolkit than Xfce/GNOME/etc., true - but you can install the alternate one. Actually, this part should be taken care of for you when you install the application (if, in fact, it uses the other toolkit).

I haven't liked KDE for years, so my default setup never has the Qt (KDE's) toolkit installed to begin with. When I still had a functional optical drive, my optical burning application of choice was always KBB. When I ran Synaptic Package Manager, typed KBB into its search box, and then chose to install KBB...

...the Qt toolkit was automatically installed along with KBB.

I'm not the one to explain the technical whys and hows of a thing. But, basically, when you install something, it will include a list of "required things" that must be installed for the application to properly install and function. The installation process is sophisticated enough to recognize this.
yonnie wrote:Do all the LM flavors do essentially the same thing?
Yes. Analogy: All automobiles do essentially the same thing. Buy the one that you like the best without worrying that you'll have to walk to the grocery store (unless you end up purchasing a Ford, of course).

If you don't want to create and boot into the various live versions of Mint in order to decide which one you like the best, and - as appears to be the case - your motivation is simply the wish to be able to use your computer, then I suggest you go with the Xfce flavor of Mint. I have (in the past) used KDE, GNOME, MATE, and Xfce (and I have "played" with Cinnamon for a brief period of time). At no point with any of them did I find myself unable to accomplish a task (at least insofar as it could be attributable to my choice of DE - my level of technical ignorance in terms of linux OS is in no way relevant here, lol, and I would have experienced the issues stemming from that regardless of which DE I was using). So. All of them do what I need a DE to do...

...Xfce does nothing that I don't want it to. When I turn my computer on, my task is not to use the computer; that is just how I perform the task. My task is to check my email, browse the world wide web, type a document, read an ebook, view a video, listen to music/podcasts/live news, et cetera. And that means that an ability for my display to suddenly begin showing rain hitting it, a set of windshield wipers appearing and squeegeeing off said rain is not helpful. Neither is having the ability to write on my display (via my mouse) in fire. Or, when I minimize an application window, to see that window fold itself into a virtual paper airplane and fly itself to the Window Buttons area of my lower panel (and back again, when I maximize it later). I also have no use for the ability to view and manipulate my multiple virtual desktop screens as if they were different sides on a virtual cube. In outer space. While the interior of the cube is an aquarium filled with cute virtual fish.

In fact, given my attitude about the purpose of a computer - which, again, is to make it possible for me to do a thing, instead of becoming the thing that I do - you would probably agree that all of those things I listed above (which, if I remember correctly, are possible in linux :roll: ) are a hindrance to me.

When I walk from my living room into my kitchen, lol, I do not want to have to notice my dining room floor each and every time I set foot upon it. I don't want to find myself stopping to notice just how firm that wood feels, how glossy it is (or isn't), and that, considering that it was installed in a house during the time when said house was built pretty much single-handedly almost 100 years ago by a man who - to be charitable - I will state probably shouldn't even have been allowed to build a small and simple cabin out of Lincoln Logs when he was a wee lad... has held up well.

No, I do not wish to have to do any of those things. I just want to actually make it to the kitchen instead of ending up flat on my back in the basement ;) . So I use Xfce.

You can visit the YouTube website and type the names of various DEs into that website's search box one at a time, and then view some of the videos that are listed in your search results. But be aware that even the simplest linux DE can easily be customized in a great many ways, so you'll tend to see the desktop environments' after they have been changed to suit their individual users.

I just did a quick search. Here is a video that covers Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, GNOME, and Plasma:

Code: Select all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBz5A-fqnb4
It's not my video and I did not view it, so I don't know how much it could help you.

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MDM
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Schultz
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by Schultz »

Since you say you liked Gnome, why not try Mate, which was forked from Gnome.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by Termy »

Do you realise that you don't need to switch to anything for a very, very long time still? Years, in-fact. You're still on an LTS platform. If you'd like to stick with KDE, there's always Ubuntu with KDE. Mint is by far not the only distribution of Linux which offer a KDE varient. By the time KDE is gone in the Mint world, I imagine somebody will have come up with something. At the very least, I'm sure you could install Ubuntu with KDE, then install the Mint repositories and see how that works. I dunno; maybe leave that to someone who cares to try it out, if you're not up for that.

Mate is based on GNOME2, which is a whole different beast from GNOME3.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by Hoser Rob »

yonnie wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:49 pm Not interested in spending the hours of investment of time I don't have, just to discover the LM flavor I spent time on doesn't do the application I might need a month from now. ...
That sort of thing happens but it's not usually DE related, it's because of system updates and the lack of backwards compatibility in Linux in general.
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Re: need guidance in choosing DE

Post by yonnie »

Thanks for some very good and thoughtful inputs, impressed!
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