Which desktop environment or WM do you use?

jonathan183 · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2011 Posts: 318

IceWM

keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 568

I use i3, but I like OpenBox and Enlightenment, as well.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

I find it interesting that KDE and and other are the most popular options with 14 while gnome is at 5. Gnome and KDE are supposed to be about on par with each other and the most popular choice.

Apparently, Gentoo's users are not too fond of Gnome.
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

mrbassie · l33t Joined: 31 May 2013 Posts: 772 Location: over here

@The Doctor

...hmm I wonder why.

Yamakuzure · Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 9:21 am Post subject:

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

I was using gnome for a period after I first came to gentoo in 2004, but have been using openbox for about 7 or 8 years now I think. Been meaning to try out E17 though (or E18/19 or whatever it'll be when I try). Tried the old E16 before some years before E17 released, but it never clicked with me.
_________________

greyspoke · Apprentice Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Posts: 171

I switched to Gnome3 about a year ago to see what all the fuss was about (not just the Gnome fuss, the systemd fuss as well). I quite like it, but I don't use most of the DE integration thingies it has. I used fluxbox before and that was fine.

Z12 · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2014 Posts: 7

It seems awesome is not as much popular as i thought. I use it though.

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I used to be like early KDE and Gnome for a while, but I moved away from Gnome mostly because of how Gnome 3 looks when came out. KDE for me just takes too long to compile, or was for my old computer (usually was a 24+ hr compile for KDE). So I've moved to XFCE for now, and will probably stay with this one for a while; unless some other WM catches my eye.

EmaRsk · Apprentice Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 158 Location: Italy

From time to time I try some niche WMs like musca or i3, but I always fall back to Openbox. Every other WM I tried had some tiny something that got in my way.
Not that I use the WM that much, actually: I usually use each window full-screen in its own virtual desktop, and with Openbox I can create and destroy desktops easily.

seoneal7 · n00b Joined: 04 May 2014 Posts: 13

Spectrwm for tiling (desktoppy)
Pekwm for stacking (lappy-toppy)

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

ShanaXXII · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jun 2014 Posts: 283 Location: Canada

I use dwm
Was the first DE/WM I used and I stuck with it.
I have tried others and am open to try new ones

Atmmac · Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:58 pm Post subject:

KDE since 2007. I do miss 3.5 sometimes although 4 has come a long way since the 2008 disaster. Looking forward to plasma 5.

steveL · Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 6:50 am Post subject:

Dr.Willy · Guru Joined: 15 Jul 2007 Posts: 547 Location: NRW, Germany

Dorsai! · Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:03 pm Post subject:

swathe · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2011 Posts: 73

i3 for me.

10w.st · n00b Joined: 03 Jul 2014 Posts: 12

Used every one of them at some point, each has a good side and a bad side.
Cinnamon looks nice, but lacks some configuration options. Gnome also sometimes looks nice.
I like the gdm from mate, couldn't get into the rest of the DE though, it's just like gnome 2.
KDE is the most configurable one and the one with most features, but is huge. Has a great filemanager.
XFCE I liked before there was compositor, which I didn't like. Fast and stable, but filemanager lacks a feature or two.
I've seen razor too, very lightweight and small but I dislike the xml config. Best used with fluxbox.
Compiz is a great design tool, but for any gpu intensive work is too resource hungry for a wm.
Other is what I currently use, is a combination of flux, gtk2 and qt4.

ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 3256

truekaiser · l33t Joined: 05 Mar 2004 Posts: 801

lxde for the moment. The only thing I am missing from enlightenment is a cpu-freq front end that allows setting both speed and governor.
Xfce's doesn't work and gkrellm's only allows you to set the speed while setting the governor to userspace.

schorsch_76 · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2012 Posts: 450

other Windows Manager/desktop: i3

I really like the slim, fast and keybinding driven WM.

sitquietly · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 6:59 pm Post subject:

Like so many other Gentoo folk I voted for the Other category. My "other" is fluxbox / rox. I think the poll conflates two dimensions of the "desktop environment": window manager and file manager. It seems to me that it takes the two working together to approximate the power of the unix shell. I realize that a lot of us, especially Gentoo experts, use the window manager as a pretty way to open a shell. Ranger makes a great DE. I get a lot done in konsole or roxterm.

I love some aspects of Gnome; they at least promised to make it a "shell", but it falls short of even the "shell" power of rox filer. For example, let's say I have a rox window showing my FreeBSD documentation and I want to open the file "handbook.pdf". In my setup if I click on the icon it will open in mupdf, which is VERY fast and has excellent font rendering. But for now I want to open it in okular: since rox is a shell environment it integrates nicely with the shell so I just type the following sequence to open my file in okular: /ha<TAB><ESC>;okular<RETURN>

In other words rox has a minibuffer in which I can type shell commands that operate on the selection. It has modes (think vim) for traversing the file system using the keyboard and for entering shell commands. The sequence above used "/" to enter the "file selection" mode, ESC to exit that mode, and ";" to enter the shell command mode. These are my own key assignments.

OK, too much detail but I hope that it gets the bare idea across that the file manager defines my working environment. My workflow and my view of the system remains pretty much unchanged whether I use fluxbox, openbox, kwin, or xmonad for the window manager.

KDE's Dolphin file manager comes in second for me. It is possible to open a shell in a panel and have the shell's PWD track the directory shown in the "files" (icons) panel. It's very nice.

So my request is THIS --> Someone give me a modernized rox filer like file manager that is modular (does not require kde, gnome, systemd, etc.) and provides
o A panel with full drag and drop support for apps (.desktop files), files, mount points, urls, applets.
o A desktop background showing minimized windows (and everything the panel can show).
o Ability to assign a keyboard shortcut to any icon on the panel or desktop.
o A simple Finder-like window that shows the files as icons with thumbnail previews.
o For extra credit give me a Gnome-like handling of the Meta key that shows me the workspace overview and leaves my cursor in a search/launch box.
o For extra credit allow me to have a mini-panel, a "shelf", in the filer window (maybe as a "tool" in the toolbar) that changes as I traverse the directory tree, hence always showing the apps that I use in different sections of the system, in different projects, right there "on the shelf" of my file manager.
o Use either gtk3 or qt5 but nothing else.

ROX already provides most of this and is the best DE I can come up with for now...

keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 568