I installed Mint LMDE 6 32bit, which comes with the Cinnamon desktop environment. I'd like to change to the desktop environment that Linux Xfce uses. However, as I understand, Mint has a custom theme of Xfce? Anyway, I want Xfce and the "theme" that comes with Linux Xfce.
I'm fairly new to linux, let me know if you need more info.
Change to "Mint Xfce" desktop environment from "Mint LMDE 6 32bit"
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Change to "Mint Xfce" desktop environment from "Mint LMDE 6 32bit"
Last edited by SMG on Wed Mar 06, 2024 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Moved to LMDE forum.
Reason: Moved to LMDE forum.
Re: Change to "Mint Xfce" desktop environment from "Mint LMDE 6 32bit"
Welcome DragonRider to Mint forums
mint-meta-xfce is not available in LMDE repos. So there is no easy way to install the customized version of Xfce by Mint devs used in main Mint.
Debian's way is installing xfce via task-xfce-desktop metapackage. Not recommended imho. It will install many xfce system apps alongside their Mint xapp equivalent. You have to work your way from scratch installing a minimal xfce environment and trying to reproduce the Mint customizations bit by bit. I tried that against a vanilla Debian system a while ago and I failed... My desktop never looked as polished and behaved as smoothly as original Mint. I can say the same thing about this guy here another user in a similar thread on this forum once recommended. "Switched to Linux" guy carried out a too basic conversion only.
mint-meta-xfce is not available in LMDE repos. So there is no easy way to install the customized version of Xfce by Mint devs used in main Mint.
Debian's way is installing xfce via task-xfce-desktop metapackage. Not recommended imho. It will install many xfce system apps alongside their Mint xapp equivalent. You have to work your way from scratch installing a minimal xfce environment and trying to reproduce the Mint customizations bit by bit. I tried that against a vanilla Debian system a while ago and I failed... My desktop never looked as polished and behaved as smoothly as original Mint. I can say the same thing about this guy here another user in a similar thread on this forum once recommended. "Switched to Linux" guy carried out a too basic conversion only.
Re: Change to "Mint Xfce" desktop environment from "Mint LMDE 6 32bit"
I wouldn't try it either, too many pitfalls.
I do think that Mint should offer LMDE with the Xfce desktop. For one, LMDE is good for older PCs, esp. 32 bit ones. So is Xfce, though I think that's more because of its low GPU requirements than RAM usage. You can pare down Cinnamon quite a bit now. Also, Debian doesn't change much over it's life cycle. Neither does Xfce so I think it's a better fit for Debian than DEs that get feature updates often.
Note that while LMDE 6, based on Debian 12, comes in 32 but but it's highly likely that Debian 13 will not have a 32 bit release. In which case neither will LMDE 7.
I do think that Mint should offer LMDE with the Xfce desktop. For one, LMDE is good for older PCs, esp. 32 bit ones. So is Xfce, though I think that's more because of its low GPU requirements than RAM usage. You can pare down Cinnamon quite a bit now. Also, Debian doesn't change much over it's life cycle. Neither does Xfce so I think it's a better fit for Debian than DEs that get feature updates often.
Note that while LMDE 6, based on Debian 12, comes in 32 but but it's highly likely that Debian 13 will not have a 32 bit release. In which case neither will LMDE 7.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
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Re: Change to "Mint Xfce" desktop environment from "Mint LMDE 6 32bit"
Thank you for your replies. In this case I will leave it as it is.