Are you considering which Linux Mint DE to install on your system? Generally, I'd recommend that you burn a live-CD of each Linux Mint offering and spend an hour or so playing around with each one. All you need are some blank DVDs and access to a DVD writer.
For me personally, it all comes down to how productive I can be at using a particular DE and a good metric that at least hints at this is how well drag and drop is implemented at the DE level. If done right, a good drag and drop implementation frees you from having to type unnecessarily and makes possible a highly productive mouse-based workflow that doesn't require that you rely heavily on cut/copy/paste. A good drag and drop implementation also means that you can create powerful shell scripts which you can then use to edit files simply by dragging them onto a launcher. For example, if I have 10 or so files that need to be edited a particular way, rather than manually edit each one of them using the text editor, it's often much easier to just edit a "pipe" that's used by my generic file editing script and then drag each of the files to be edited onto a launcher that runs that script...
A recent post prompted me to do some testing of the various DE's and below are the results. Just so you know, I'm not particularly experienced at using any of these DE's with the exception of MATE (pronounced "Mah-Tay"), which I use daily. Therefore, the test results for the other DE's may reflect my lack of experience with them. If a test result is wrong, someone please leave a comment so everyone can be better informed.
The Tests
Following are the individual tests that were performed:
1: Are you able to drag a file or folder across workspaces without issue? This is an absolutely essential component of drag and drop, IMO. Virtual workspaces are almost useless without it.
2: Can you somehow cause the window that you'd like to drop the file onto gain focus (mid-drag) even though it's completely hidden by another window? After all, what good is it to drag and drop a file if you have to abort the drop simply because the target window is covered by another window? This is a must have.
3: Can you drag text between applications? This is perhaps the most fundamental requirement of a DE's drag and drop implementation. Although terminal apps are notorious for not allowing you to copy their text via dragging, it's rather surprising to find that even some file managers (not to mention other apps) restrict your ability to drag the contents of their text controls! Although technically, all of the DE's tested met this overall requirement, one has to consider just how practical it is when the very app you're attempting to drag text from just happens to be one that restricts this ability. This capability shouldn't be an option, IMO.
4: Assuming that you can drag text between apps, are you able to drag the text to your text editor window and choose the correct open tab to drop the text onto simply by hovering the text over it? Again, the benefits of dragging text between apps is kind of lost if you're unable to switch tabs automatically by hovering the text over them. A must have.
5: Assuming you have a file open in your text editor, if you hover the text near the bottom edge of the text editor window, does the text automatically scroll so that you can find the exact location to drop the dragged text? Again, the benefits of dragging text between apps is kind of lost if this doesn't work. Another must have.
6: Can you drag text into the terminal app? Linux power users like to point out how working at the terminal is the way to go for performing certain tasks and they're absolutely right about that. Being able to drag text into the terminal just makes it that much better. A must have.
7: What happens when you drop a file onto your terminal app? Does it enter the file's path for you? This is a really convenient way to avoid having to type long file names when entering commands into the terminal. A very nice to have.
8: Can you drag multiple lines of text into the terminal or just a single one? Being able to drag a single line is great but dragging multiple is like icing on the cake. Simply select and drag/drop the multiple lines as a group and they'll get run as though you had entered them one at a time. Another very nice to have feature.
9: Can you drag a file (or folder) onto an application launcher on the desktop and will the underlying app or script take it as an argument to run with? Having this capability means not having to open a terminal window just to run a script that takes a file (or folder) as its argument. Instead, you can simply drag the file/folder onto the launcher on your desktop. No typing is required. For me, this is yet another essential feature of a good drag and drop implementation.
10: Can you drop multiple files (or folders) at the same time onto the application launcher on the desktop? Like with #8, this one too is icing on the cake. This capability is great for conveniently processing 10 or 20 files at a time. A very nice to have.
11: Can you drag selected text onto the desktop? Is the drop rejected or is a file created whose contents is the text that was dropped? On the surface, this might seem like a useless feature however, Before realizing that my DE already had a built-in dictionary app, I actually made use of this capability in a script that allowed me to quickly obtain the definition of a word via the internet. In a two-step process, I dragged the selected word or phrase to the desktop which resulted in a text file containing that text and I then dragged that file onto a launcher on the panel that performed a dictionary look-up using http://dictionary.reference.com. Sometimes the needed functionality isn't built in to the apps that you use and it's nice to at least have the option to enhance them externally using shell scripts. The drag and drop aspect here just makes the whole thing a lot more practical. Granted, for most Linux users, lack of this particular capability shouldn't be a deal breaker but again, it's nice to know that you could effectively drag text onto a launcher if you needed to do so and this is how it's done.
12: Can you drag a file (or folder) over an unfocused tab in the file manager and that tab then gains focus thus allowing you to drop the file there? Again, drag and drop of files kind of loses its benefit if the correct tab of your file manager must always be focused ahead of time so, it's great being able to change the focused tab "mid-flight". A must have.
13: Assuming #12 is yes, are you also able to drop onto the subfolders of that tab's folders? Yet another very nice to have feature.
14: If you're dragging a file from the file manager to the desktop but the desktop is covered by open windows, can you hover over the "show desktop" icon on the panel to uncover the desktop so that you can drop the file? Again, not exactly a "deal breaker" for me as I typically have 8 workspaces open and at least one of them isn't so covered in windows that I can't access the desktop.
15: Can you drag a file onto a launcher on the panel? This is essential unless the DE you're using is able to do #14 in which case this capability isn't so important. That said, this is a lot more convenient workflow than having to first hover over the "show desktop" icon in order to ensure that the launcher on your desktop is uncovered.
16: Can you drag selected text across workspaces without issue? Like #1, this capability is absolutely essential to have.
The Test Results
Note: All DE's listed are of the 17.1 release and the three most important apps used in these tests--the text editor, file manager and terminal application are the ones that were installed by default.
Code: Select all
Test Cinnamon XFCE MATE KDE
1 N Y Y Y
2 Y Y Y Y
3 Y 1 Y 2
4 Y Y Y N
5 Y Y Y Y
6 Y Y Y Y
7 Y Y Y N
8 Y Y Y Y
9 Y N Y 3
10 Y N Y 3
11 Y N Y 4
12 Y Y Y Y
13 N Y Y Y
14 N N Y Y
15 N N Y Y
16 N Y Y Y
1 Generally, yes. However, I couldn't drag text from the file manager's address bar.
2 Various apps failed to allow text to be dragged at all, including the file manager!
3 I couldn't determine how to make this work so this might be a "Y".
4 The drop was accepted but it created a note, not a file.
The clear winner here is the MATE DE. So, does this mean that MATE is necessarily the right DE for you? Not at all. What's right for you likely depends on a lot of factors. Drag and drop just happens to be a real important factor for me (and it's partly why I chose MATE in the first place). That's not to say that I won't consider other Mint DE's in the future. One day I might consider installing Cinnamon on my laptop, but in order for that to happen, the Cinnamon developers first need to devote some attention to items #1 and #16 (and hopefully #15 as well).
Best of luck in deciding which DE is right for you and welcome to Mint!
P.S. And yes, this forum response was drag and dropped.
