Hi all. For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good looking and functional. Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. Or maybe it was just the Kubuntu implementation. But I found that it wasn't working for me. So I experimented for a while. Yech. I found GNOME to be something of soap opera that required a whole set of sub-choices (GNOME 2? GNOME 3? Mate? Unity? WTF?). My first GNOME experiences (with the default position of icons moved from the sensible bottom to the left) seemed more like an exercise in social engineering (ie, what the devs wanted dumb users to do) rather than any real attempt to make my computer less intrusive in the path to doing Real Stuff. And then I discovered Linux Mint and its wonderful little Cinnamon desktop. Yeah I know it's gtk based and has big chunks of GNOME in it, but its look-and-feel seems less ... disruptive. It's served me well for much of this decade. But I still miss KDE. So I've been having another look. I've been reading that prefer the Linux Mint version over Kubuntu, and that it's still big but now much speedier. I know it's technically possible to have both KDE and Cinnamon physically installed on my Mint desktop. But I've also been reading that the two systems are so different in default ways of doing things that switching between them is an invitation for grief that will bork things. Most of the forum stuff I've read says that it's much cleaner to do a reinstall. Has anyone else here played with systems that can casually switch between KDE/Qt and GNOME/gtk? Is anyone here using current KDE? Thanks! - Evan
Mageia 6 supports over 25 desktop environments and window managers. You can load them all, and then go from one to another. The most commonly used are: Plasma, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce, LXQt, Mate, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Gnome (Wayland), and a variety of lightweight managers. You can load all desktop managers at installation time, and then choose any one at login. You can also install a desktop at will. So if you want the speed of a lightweight, say LXDE, go for it. If you want to play with other desktop environments, do so. If you want to compare them, do so. Duncan
Hi all.
For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good looking and functional.
Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. Or maybe it was just the Kubuntu implementation. But I found that it wasn't working for me. So I experimented for a while. Yech.
I found GNOME to be something of soap opera that required a whole set of sub-choices (GNOME 2? GNOME 3? Mate? Unity? WTF?). My first GNOME experiences (with the default position of icons moved from the sensible bottom to the left) seemed more like an exercise in social engineering (ie, what the devs wanted dumb users to do) rather than any real attempt to make my computer less intrusive in the path to doing Real Stuff.
And then I discovered Linux Mint and its wonderful little Cinnamon desktop. Yeah I know it's gtk based and has big chunks of GNOME in it, but its look-and-feel seems less ... disruptive. It's served me well for much of this decade.
But I still miss KDE. So I've been having another look. I've been reading that prefer the Linux Mint version over Kubuntu, and that it's still big but now much speedier.
I know it's technically possible to have both KDE and Cinnamon physically installed on my Mint desktop. But I've also been reading that the two systems are so different in default ways of doing things that switching between them is an invitation for grief that will bork things. Most of the forum stuff I've read says that it's much cleaner to do a reinstall.
Has anyone else here played with systems that can casually switch between KDE/Qt and GNOME/gtk? Is anyone here using current KDE?
Thanks!
- Evan --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On 31 July 2017 at 13:11, <dbmacg@look.ca> wrote:
Mageia 6 supports over 25 desktop environments and window managers.
You can load them all, and then go from one to another.
Being able to load multiple desktops onto a single system isn't the issue. I can do that under Mint. So I'm not interested in the theoretical "you can do this". I would like to find out if anyone has actually tried swapping KDE to/from GNOME and whether it worked or not. - Evan
Evan, as I had said in the lightning talk at the August meeting, I just moved from Ubuntu 16.04 to Kubuntu 17.04 on three computers. I had first tried installing the KDE environment on top of Ubuntu 16.04. While there's lot of chatter that it's easy to do this with Synaptic Package Manager, I highly recommend against this. The installation of KDE caused a problem "Unity greeter doesn't show other desktop environments, yet allows login to Unity" that I reported with the Ubuntu lightdm package <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/1686130>. Since Canoncal is ceasing development of Unity, this problem wasn't going to be fixed. The better way to handle mutliple desktop environments is to have separate root partitions for each Linux distribution that you're going to install. This is relatively easy with an xBuntu manual installation. I first had to move \home onto its own partition, and found that the KDE Partition Manager (booted from a Kubuntu 17.04 live USB) worked <https://ingbrief.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/gparted-fails-kde-partition-manager-succeeds/> when GParted (booted from an Ubuntu 16.04 live USB) did not. With this success, I've just had some free time come up, so I'm going to do some more disk partitioning to have multiple Linux distros on the same physical disk(s). Across the xBuntu distros, using the same \home and \swap partitions will work. Since the different partitions have different roots, it does mean reinstalling some of the same packages multiple times (e.g. LibreOffice could be at different versions for different distros). I am new to KDE, having using Gnome and then Unity on Ubuntu since 2008. I made the change after some research, including a watching a talk by Jonathan Riddell on KDE Neon at the FlossUK Spring Conference 2017 on Youtube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I29GsxYNlPk>. I like that the KDE community has revamped their development methods, with rapid releases under continuous integration. Practically, however, I do use GTK apps and want some stability, so I've gone with Kubuntu rather than KDE Neon. I had tried the Cinnamon desktop on top of Ubuntu 14.04 some years back. The results weren't consistent with the experiences related by others. My suspicion is that Mint Linux with Cinnamon is better integrated than just installing Ubuntu and putting on the Cinnamon desktop. On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 31 July 2017 at 13:11, <dbmacg@look.ca> wrote:
Mageia 6 supports over 25 desktop environments and window managers.
You can load them all, and then go from one to another.
Being able to load multiple desktops onto a single system isn't the issue. I can do that under Mint.
So I'm not interested in the theoretical "you can do this". I would like to find out if anyone has actually tried swapping KDE to/from GNOME and whether it worked or not.
- Evan
--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
| From: David Ing isss--- via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | The better way to handle mutliple desktop environments is to have separate | root partitions for each Linux distribution that you're going to install. Golly, that sounds like overkill. Or buggy distros. Or buggy Desktop Environments. I'm using Fedora 26 on this notebook. After I read this message, I installed KDE (alongside the standard Gnome desktop). Fedora has a lot of Desktop Environmants that you can choose to nstall. sudo dnf group install 'KDE (K Desktop Environment)' I then logged out, told GDM to make my session KDE (or maybe Plasma, I don't remember). It doesn't seem to be a problem. What symptoms should I be looking for in Desktop Environment clashes? I generally gave up fussing with desktops in the late 1980's. I got tired of "investing" and then having my choices washed away by the Next Thing. So I'm not too discenring and may have missed some problems. Fedora supposedly supports a bunch of Desktop Environments and I have no reason to doubt this. My son has some complaints about a light-weight Desktop Environment (LXDE?) and sound on an old Fedora. So not every DE works equally well.
Hugh, the question from Evan was about experiences. Evan's original question was about having both KDE and Cinnamon on Linux Mint. I haven't replicated that situation directly, but am close with Unity and KDE on Ubuntu. While the majority of voices on the web seem to be believe that Ubuntu + KDE Desktop (installed via Synaptic) --> Kubuntu, my experience is that that isn't 100% valid. I'm finding that Kubuntu (and its associated bundled products) are sufficiently different from Ubuntu that the practical way for coherence is to keep them separate. As an example, KDE Connect finds my Android phone practically out of the box on Kubuntu. In theory, installing KDE Connect installs on Ubuntu from Synaptic, but then I couldn't configure it to connect, and discovered the many bug reports of people not getting that to work. I don't have enough experiences with Fedora to comment on that. And, I suspect the fans of Arch are snickering about whether the desktop environment can (or should) be fully decoupled from the underlying infrastructure. The fact the KDE team seems to do development first on KDE Neon continuously, and then Kubuntu into 6 month releases, speaks to how complicated packaging the distros can be. On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 4:01 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org
wrote:
| From: David Ing isss--- via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| The better way to handle mutliple desktop environments is to have separate | root partitions for each Linux distribution that you're going to install.
Golly, that sounds like overkill. Or buggy distros. Or buggy Desktop Environments.
I'm using Fedora 26 on this notebook. After I read this message, I installed KDE (alongside the standard Gnome desktop). Fedora has a lot of Desktop Environmants that you can choose to nstall.
sudo dnf group install 'KDE (K Desktop Environment)'
I then logged out, told GDM to make my session KDE (or maybe Plasma, I don't remember). It doesn't seem to be a problem.
What symptoms should I be looking for in Desktop Environment clashes?
I generally gave up fussing with desktops in the late 1980's. I got tired of "investing" and then having my choices washed away by the Next Thing. So I'm not too discenring and may have missed some problems.
Fedora supposedly supports a bunch of Desktop Environments and I have no reason to doubt this.
My son has some complaints about a light-weight Desktop Environment (LXDE?) and sound on an old Fedora. So not every DE works equally well. --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On 2017-08-01 09:05 AM, David Ing isss--- via talk wrote:
Hugh, the question from Evan was about experiences.
Well, you're certainly going to have a lot of different experiences with separate root partitions: each one needing to be kept up to date, having to remember that you need this package in that install, weird things happening to ~/.config (if it was shared amongst several desktops), … I just did the Unity → Gnome switch in advance of Ubuntu 17.10. Gnome's gone worryingly minimalist (but naturally, no faster¹) recently: locked modal dialogues (o hai Macintosh System 6) that can't be moved out the way², a top bar with nothing useful in it², a file manager with single, locked file type associations³, a desktop lock/login manager that expects you to swipe the mouse up the desk³, no application menus unless they implement the tiny ‘≡’ menu³, browser-based desktop integration so tight that if a Gnome Shell application hits a JavaScript problem and locks, your system (incl networking) locks up³, and a virtual-desktop pager than doesn't preview screen contents so you have to frantically page through all your desktops to find the window you want³. It still works better for me than KDE, though. Stewart --- ¹: I just realized that the computer I had 30 years ago had roughly 0.00312% the processing power, 0.000191% the RAM and 0.0000356% the disk storage of the machine I have now. Yet that old machine could power on and be inside a word processor (admittedly, running from a 16 KB "sideways ROM") less than two seconds later ²: fixable with tweak tool ³: not fixable, AFAIK.
On 01/08/17 04:01 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Fedora supposedly supports a bunch of Desktop Environments and I have no reason to doubt this.
My son has some complaints about a light-weight Desktop Environment (LXDE?) and sound on an old Fedora. So not every DE works equally well. --- The Fedora folks care about desktops, so they support a lot, not demanding that they meet any requirements, so as not to exclude things. That' alas, allows them to run some pretty broken stuff (;-))
--dave (currently on fc25 xfce) c-b -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
On 07/31/17 12:27, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
Hi all.
For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good looking and functional.
Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. Or maybe it was just the Kubuntu implementation. But I found that it wasn't working for me. So I experimented for a while. Yech.
I found GNOME to be something of soap opera that required a whole set of sub-choices (GNOME 2? GNOME 3? Mate? Unity? WTF?). My first GNOME experiences (with the default position of icons moved from the sensible bottom to the left) seemed more like an exercise in social engineering (ie, what the devs wanted dumb users to do) rather than any real attempt to make my computer less intrusive in the path to doing Real Stuff.
And then I discovered Linux Mint and its wonderful little Cinnamon desktop. Yeah I know it's gtk based and has big chunks of GNOME in it, but its look-and-feel seems less ... disruptive. It's served me well for much of this decade.
But I still miss KDE. So I've been having another look. I've been reading that prefer the Linux Mint version over Kubuntu, and that it's still big but now much speedier.
I know it's technically possible to have both KDE and Cinnamon physically installed on my Mint desktop. But I've also been reading that the two systems are so different in default ways of doing things that switching between them is an invitation for grief that will bork things. Most of the forum stuff I've read says that it's much cleaner to do a reinstall.
Has anyone else here played with systems that can casually switch between KDE/Qt and GNOME/gtk? Is anyone here using current KDE?
Thanks!
- Evan
--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
I have been a long time KDE user and am using the latest KDE from Debian stretch. I find it frisky enough for my desktop purposes. My desktop has a four core i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz, which cpuinfo shows as being loaded to 1.77 Mhz. Any complaints I have are more with the applications that run on KDE, most notably video editors such as openshot, kino and Kdenlive. I suspect that any instability is due to memory loss. I only have 8 GB on the system. Sometimes I find that chrome does not allow me switch to a new tab. A shutdown of that instance of chrome plus a restart and reopen of "recently closed" under history lets me continue. Besides that, I have noted that after 1-2 months of continuous operation, KDE may lose "cut and paste" ability from consoles to completely graphical applications. Another problem that rarely occurs is loss of "ALT TAB" for application switching. I treat these occurrences as signal to "apt-get dist upgrade". Things that KDE has learned to right IMHO are managing upgrades without losing audio device configuration or window treatment settings. I used to have to invest time to restore these after some upgrades but this problem seems to have faded. Disclosure: I run XFCE on the family media center (lightweight + 4 second boot to myth + no passwords). I run gnome on my laptop, when kde has a hissy fit with the bumblebee implementation of my video hardware. -- Michael Galea
On 31 July 2017 at 12:27, Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Hi all.
For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good looking and functional.
Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. Or maybe it was just the Kubuntu implementation. But I found that it wasn't working for me. So I experimented for a while. Yech.
I found GNOME to be something of soap opera that required a whole set of sub-choices (GNOME 2? GNOME 3? Mate? Unity? WTF?). My first GNOME experiences (with the default position of icons moved from the sensible bottom to the left) seemed more like an exercise in social engineering (ie, what the devs wanted dumb users to do) rather than any real attempt to make my computer less intrusive in the path to doing Real Stuff.
And then I discovered Linux Mint and its wonderful little Cinnamon desktop. Yeah I know it's gtk based and has big chunks of GNOME in it, but its look-and-feel seems less ... disruptive. It's served me well for much of this decade.
But I still miss KDE. So I've been having another look. I've been reading that prefer the Linux Mint version over Kubuntu, and that it's still big but now much speedier.
I know it's technically possible to have both KDE and Cinnamon physically installed on my Mint desktop. But I've also been reading that the two systems are so different in default ways of doing things that switching between them is an invitation for grief that will bork things. Most of the forum stuff I've read says that it's much cleaner to do a reinstall.
Has anyone else here played with systems that can casually switch between KDE/Qt and GNOME/gtk? Is anyone here using current KDE?
This doesn't answer your question. That said, it may be of interest given your reasons for leaving KDE. There's a group of people who created a fork of KDE when it went to version 4 because they thought KDE 3 was better. It's called "Trinity:" http://trinitydesktop.org/ -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
For about the mid-nineties to the late aughts, I was a heavy-duty KDE fan. The integration and customization was what I needed, it was good looking and functional.
Then it started getting more bloated and slower, seemingly outpacing the increases in CPU speed and decreases in RAM cost. ...
Back about 25 years ago when I was first in a position to run X (xterminal on my desk against one of the Unix servers at Geac), Drew Sullivan gave me a copy of his .fvwmrc (which was already several years old at that point) to get me started. That's survived bunchteen system upgrades (including the advent of fvwm2) and me periodically poking at it to add things like an MP3 play/pause hotkey. Still exactly the same RGB values for active-window and inactive-window, though. The really nice thing is that all the increases in system speed have played to my advantage rather than some software-bloatmeister's, and I've gotten away with still running shockingly-underpowered hardware (this netbook has only 128 times as much RAM as my first *ix system, so only about 1/16th what one would want as a minimum buying a computer today). So I recommend fvwm, lightweight configs, and not constantly leaping on the latest thing and losing all your finger macros. -- Anthony de Boer
participants (9)
-
Anthony de Boer -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
David Collier-Brown -
David Ing isss＠daviding.com -
dbmacg＠look.ca -
Evan Leibovitch -
Giles Orr -
Michael Galea -
Stewart C. Russell