this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
25 points (85.7% liked)
Linux
48318 readers
900 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Okay. There's a difference between a Desktop Environment and a Window Manager. There are lots of Window Managers, but not that many DEs. Ive played around with a lot of them, and I thought I'd share my thoughts:
Hopping around to different DEs can be fun, but at the end of the day, the trick is to find one that has a workflow that works for you, or use KDE and make the workflow you need.
ETA: Somehow, I forgot to mention Mate. Basically, it's an updated version of Gnome 2, which, to me, is an uglier and more awkward to configure XFCE. It's not for me, but a lot of folks really love it. It's so cool that we have a choice, and can be different!
I'll add Trinity to the list. It started as a fork of KDE 3.5.
I haven't tried Trinity, mostly because KDE 3 was a bad experience for me. It's certainly an interesting project, though.
I tried it on my play-puter and while it was certainly nostalgic, it wasn't enough to make me switch from Plasma.
I use Trinity as a daily driver, although I may be the only person on Lemmy who does. My Unixporn post
TDE has packages for (as far as I know) all major distros, although only two very minor ones (Q4OS and ExeGnuLinux) use it as the default DE. It is very much a traditional desktop environment designed for a keyboard+mouse setup, so if you have a touchscreen, it may not be for you.
That link definitely doesn't go to unixporn for me.
Someone forgot to put the unix in the porn.
I have checked out screenshots of trinity and to me it looks sorta dated and weird... Unless you know of a distro that has a pretty version? Lol it is a different feel for sure
Also Budgie!
I have nothing against Budgie, I just haven't used it. It looks pretty nice, though 😀
I don't use Budgie either, just adding to this excellent and very detailed list of DEs.
The thing about budgie I've noticed from screenshots is that the environment looks vastly different on each distro that supports it. IMO solus looks way best, but at the moment solus is up in the sir lol
Thanks a lot!!! And any and tweaks to the environments can be done simply with the distros tools and settings or is there more to configuring appearance than that? Just because as I noticed. Two different distros could have a gnome desktop but look vastly different, sometimes almost like completely different desktops. Thats the part I dont quite understand.
Well, if you want to know what Gnome is supposed to look like (I mean the "default" setup) check out Fedora Workstation. Anything that looks different from that is modified. Several other Distros ship with a default Gnome desktop as well - OpenSuse Tumbleweed/Leap, Arch's default setup, Vanilla OS, et al.
Gnome is actually one of the more difficult to modify. By default, there's light mode, dark mode, and... that's it. However, you can make some pretty radical changes with extensions and user themes. While it's fairly easy to add extensions, user themes take a bit more more work to get going, and require some knowledge of CSS to make.
Does that answer your question?
Yes it does, thank you. So if the desktop is "officially" supported by a distro, they should all relatively look the same?
Not exactly. The Distros can make lots of changes. Ubuntu officially supports Gnome, but has a bunch of preinstalled extensions and settings tweaks that change the look and feel.
If you want to know the "official" look of Gnome, as I said, check out Fedora. By default, I'm pretty sure the only enabled plugin puts the Fedora name in the bottom right corner.
In fact, if you want to know what the most plain, standard setup for any major DE is, check Fedora's spin: Fedora KDE, XFCE, LXDE, and so on all start very vanilla on Fedora.
Ahh ok so this is basically my point. I've done a lot of distro hopping and noticed some distros GNOME or KDE or whatever, desktops look way different from other distros using the same desktop. I have no clue what goes into such customization and I'd rather not install a lesser know, possibly unstable distro just because of their specific spin of a DE, ya know? I suppose I need to learn more about customizing environments myself, but don't know where to begin, other than the obvious built in settings you can tweak
There's also NsCDE, the modern version of CDE
An updated CDE? Well I'll be truing that out for certain!
Never heard of this, I'll have to look into it and cde for that matter
NsCDE is my desktop on Slackware, Slint, Void, and OpenBSD. I guess I'm most comfortable with it.