7mo ago

Using any DE be like:

154 comments

I find having an operating system is bloat.
- Magnetised needle and a steady hand is all you need.
  
  undefined
  
  M-x butterfly
  
  I just use butterflies.

KDE is the best if you want customize without editing yaml or xml or you just new to Linux
XFCE, LXDE, MATE, & CINNAMON are the best if you have very old system but still want to have some customization.
I3, SWAY, & OPENBOX are the best if you feel need little bit challenge to customize
NO GUI (CLI) is the best if you feel DE is bloat or systemd is bloat or wanna feel like Hollywood movie hackers
- KDE has a really nice suite of applications and utilities. No other desktop environment really compares on that level (and Amarok is back!).
  XFCE &etc are also good if you are running lightweight hardware (not just old hardware) but still want a desktop environment.
  CLI is best for servers and remotely managed/headless systems.
  
  KDE has crazy complex apps like Krita, digiKam, KDEnlive, Kate, Konqueror, etc etc.
  They went more minimal and dedicated over time
  Amarok -> Elisa, Kasts
  Konqueror -> Dolphin, Falkon/"just use Firefox"
  I dont get why we have Gwenview, Kolourpaint, Spectacle edit and digiKam though, this feels absurd
  
  and Amarok is back
  Was Amarok gone?
  I used to use it maybe 16-17 years ago even though I used GNOME rather than KDE. It was the best music player I'd found on Linux.
  I'm finally switching back to Linux so I'll have to try it out again! These days I usually use Plexamp though.
- GNOME is the best if you have touchscreen desktop
  BUDGIE is the best if you want to feel like using windows 10
  
  I prefer KDE for touchscreens. What is it about GNOME you feel gives it an edge?
- I think latly, especially in plasma 6, KDE got as viable on old machines as XFCE and surly mint and cinnamon.
  
  I brought my KDE idle RAM usage down to 500MB just by using the GUI options that come with it. That's about the same amount a default Xfce or LXQt needs.
  
  Ever since KDE made their software more modular with Plasma 5 / Frameworks 5, a Plasma session can be cut down by a lot. Personally, I don't think it matters much because as soon as you browse the web, the RAM demands of the web browser dwarf that of even a fully decked out desktop anyway, but the options are there – perhaps for certain use cases that don't involve web browsing.
  
  Yes and no. They should really separate the fancy stuff from the base stuff. Like have a kwin-wayland-base and kwin-wayland-extras.
  I guess some other features are not easy to rip out, but having only simple animations etc would really make sense.
  I will try Plasma 6 on an Intel core Duo in some time though, exited.
  They have an issue with disabling not needed stuff. XWaylandVideoBridge, legacy app tray support, GTK global menu adapter, and other cool but edge case stuff is just always running in the background.
  Same for accessibility, GUI keyboard and Orca, even though they will be somehow dynamically loaded, they are not controllable transparently by the user.
- Fluxbox ftw!!
- I love being in control, I use neovim for this reason. But I remember when I bought my laptop I originally wanted to use awesomewm again as I was on my family PC but I remember spending so much time on basic features like brigness control and such that I moved to KDE insteadd which had these features out of the box. Am I missing something here? Or do people who use window managers actually implement every feature they need from scratch? No offense to anyone or any project, they are all awesome
- Do you think installing extensions is really that difficult on Gnome?
- Installing an extension by itself? That's easy.
  Finding all the extensions you need, actively maintained and quickly updated? Yeah, that's really difficult, depending on your needs.
- Cinnamon isn't that lightweight. You will probably find KDE uses less resources.

After decades of using different window managers, fixing broken configs with major updates, fretting about multi monitor config etc I started using GNOME. It might not look as sleek but I’m a lot more productive now.
In the end I’m just glad we have so many choices.
- I feel this, Gnome and it's opinionated workflow just "gets out of the way" in my experience
- I went with XFCE for similar reasons. I played with various DEs at one point but after a while I realized I mostly just need an icon to click on to start the application I want to use.
- the majority of people don't actually want choices though.
  
  They don't get a choice in that
  
  If they don't want to choose, that's fine by me. But why tf they didn't want choice? They could just stick to whatever is the default and let others who wanted different choice have their way.
- I agree, but only on multi touch trackpad, regular mouse and keyboard it's not great.
  
  What do you find not great about mouse/keyboard GNOME? All the gestures I know have pretty simple mouse and keyboard equivalents. So far I just gesture three fingers up/down/left/right, which I can do on a keyboard with super/alt-super-left/alt-super-right or on a mouse with hot-corner/corner-click/corner-scroll. If there's a gesture I'm missing out on please let me know, I always like to learn new tricks.

The KDE to GNOME should have been "imagine not having standard min max window titlebar buttons by default" with each following DE dunking on GNOME for the same reason.

Seriously, what degenerate thought this was a good idea. Even gesture spamming Mac users still have their standard GUI in case they want to use the mouse like a normal person or idk someone not fluent in computers wants to use the machine without feeling like chopping their hand off.
- I fully agree. Why do I have to install gnome-tweaks just to make the UI usable?
- Yeah the XFCE dunking of KDE doesn't even make sense these days - a fresh XFCE system has similar memory use to a fresh Plasma desktop with similar features.
  (To be clear: the only one of those dunks I actually feel was deserved was the dunk on gnome.)
- Middle click for minimize and double click for maximize

Honestly the lack of customizability is the least of my worries with Gnome.
Why the FUCK doesn't it have a SYSTEM TRAY without an extension?
Like it's one thing to be minimalistic and opinionated.
It's another thing entirely to opt out of basic system functionality that has been part of every OS since 1997. Like fuck.
Edit: Also how fun that this is how I find out Hyprland is cooked due to internet drama and 4chan bullshit.
- Hyprland's what?
  
  "Is cooked", meaning "Is in trouble" or "Is in some shit".
  Hyprland's dev got themselves into some internet fight because they associated themselves with a transphobe and Freedesktop people decided this was enough.
- Gnome has an alternative for the system tray now. Caffeine uses it, it appears as a button in the control center.
  That said, many people believe the system tray was a bad design decision, including Gnome.
  Personally I don't like applications going into the tray, I usually set them to quit when the window is closed where possible.
- This, and don't forget that gnome comes with their pre-installed email client called "Evolution" which you cannot uninstall because it depends on core elements of gnome.
- What do you need a system tray for? It has a drop-down control center on the top-right. That mirrors most of the functionality from a system tray that I would need.
  
  This kind of attitude is precisely what rubs me the wrong way about gnome.
  Like nevermind customization. I care about it because I am literally this. But most people just want their OS to work and get out of the way so they can get to doing work or playing games or looking at hentai or whatever it is their do with their computer and I get and respect that.
  It is true that Gnome's control center can do a lot of things. All the integrated system functionality is there, as is the stuff for applications that are made FOR Gnome.
  But the thing is. A lot of programmes that aren't Gnome-centered, that are DE-agnostic or even System-Agnostic? They expect a system tray, because every OS has had something like it since 1997, and implement functionality expecting it to be there, with some configurations and such only being accessible through the tray icon. And Gnome's general attitude to third party applications expecting something to be there is "fuck off, we don't care, the third party application should adapt to how we do things, but if you REALLY need this thing we decided is worthless, you can install this janky third party extension to get it I guess".
  My choice for 'gets out of the way' would be something like Cinnamon. In my experience, Gnome does the opposite of getting out of the way, as a lot of basic functionality requires third party stuff. So in order to get things to work, if they aren't specifically part of the Gnome ecossystem, you'll have to spend time tinkering, and it's not 'tinkering for fun because I like coonfing', it's 'tinkering out of necessity to get this thing to work properly' which is not nice.

Can someone fill me in about "Hyprland being banned from FreeDesktop"?
- It's just a young adult miss managing their community as they learn how to run a big project for the first time.
  We all made asses out of our selves when we were young and most of us have outgrown it.
- surprise surprise: terminally online risers with 4chan lvl takes export their toxicity to everything they touch. thus get rightly hammered
  https://drewdevault.com/2024/04/09/2024-04-09-FDO-conduct-enforcement.html
- https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-fdo-and-redhat
  https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-fdo-and-redhat2
  
  Vaxry comes off as butt hurt.

KDE is my GOAT

Imagine having only one big task (displaying text) and not even supporting ligatures.
- I appreciate them in print, but do not ever want to see them in my terminal.
  
  Also, ﬆ can fuck off. Just in general. It's harder to write than it's conﬆituent letters.
  
  Okay, that is fair, but since I also program in terminals using held in or (neo)vim, ligatures are a must have for me.
  Plus some nerd fonts even upgrade regular loading animations of some cli-tools.

What are the icons for?
I know gnome, and the 3 that have their name in the logo (xfce, sway, tty).
I’m going back to Slackware. Can’t keep up with this shit any more.
- LXQt: continuation of LXDE with Qt
  Hyprland: tiling/floating wayland-only window manager
  Sway: same but slower and not controversial
  Wayfire: floating/stacking window manager, used in RasperryPiOS
  Alacritty: a terminal, in Rust, that lacks all the stuff that Desktop Terminals have, but it is aaaaaacccellerated
- Going back to Slackware? Who ever leaves?
  Fluxbox ftw!!
  
  I had to leave Slackware when I got kids. Kubuntu took less time (for me) to get the usual stuff working on.
  Kids got older, and Kubuntu was getting annoying, but I didn't make it back to Slackware because now... I use Arch, btw.
- The tear drop is Hyprland, a Wayland based tiling manager

Anyone praising GNOME can be dismissed if they forget to define client-side decorations for their comment.
(this comment was made by The Entire Desktop *nix Ecosystem Except GNOME gang)

Cinnamon is neat. That's it
- Cinnamon has become my, "I just need to get work done" DE.
  I'm fine messing around with Plasma for my personal machines, but for my work laptop, LMDE with Cinnamon. Super stable, simple, it just works.
  
  True. It's Plasma without all the Plasma fluff. It works, it's simple, lacks Wayland but it's being worked on nicely.
  I use Linux Mint as my daily driver, and honestly, it just works™ (except using CUDA heavily, but it's mostly little hiccups). Tried switching to more power user distros, but always having to fix a little thing here and there is getting annoying.

wait hyprland is banned from freedesktop? what???
- The maintainer is banned - context
  
  Don't know who this person is but I have a hard time taking him seriously calling people children while reading out the emails like I high schooler dishing gossip and dismissing transphobic moderators as a "whoops"
  
  the logo is literally a noose

incostimizible
- They tried to fix it, but gnome didn't allow to customize the comment

I remember a HackerNews comment by the lead XFCE dev about how KDE was actually better optimized, because they have so many more devs working on it.

Is this some GUI thing I'm too CLI to understand?

"Calling out" gnome for needing extensions for customization seems stupid when those extensions are easy to find, easy to use, and work really well. On the other hand, I have not been able to find a taskbar for plasma that would let me group windows from an application together while also letting me rearrange the windows inside of a group. I know I need to try implementing it myself someday, but I feel like gnome ends up having more options.
- It's not about how many extensions there are. It's about half of them breaking with each new version. Unless you like outdated systems, in which case you are fine.
  
  I am always on the freshest Fedora Workstation, and all the extensions I use are always supported from the start. I don't use that many to be honest. But, is extensions compatibility really an issue nowadays?
- It really depends on what you want. My experience with Gnome extensions has been rather frustrating. For example, finding a working and maintained extension for app indicators is a pain - and you have to do it again for each new release when inevitably the extension is no longer updated.

imagine being so uncustomizable that you’re customizable
Isn’t really a good argument, even though this is silly
- Extensions are not equivalent to native customization, and both have pros and cons. On one hand, extensions provide a variety of features that can be added specific to people's likings, but on the other hand, there are chances of incompatibility (in gnome shells for example) and delayed maintenance from developers (which results in having to wait for them to finish the work when dependency updates)
- nah gnome should be a lot more open from the get-go and its screensharing is crap
- Extensions break every update. Native customization doesn't unless something dumb happened.
  
  Laughs in three KDE screen magnifier.

Hells yes, Alacritty is my jam
- Nice thing: Cosmic Terminal just embeds Alacritty but adds the stuff like tiling and tabs. Match in heaven.
- The one true just works terminal emulator. All of the features you need, none of the features you don't. Perfection!
  
  Alacritty + Nushell is bae

I need myself a tilling compositor

how does having extensions that customize the desktop make it not customisable
- Well, you rely on third party devs. So there might be conflicts or breakage when something updates and something doesn't. Not sure how it is in reality, but this gnome stubbornness is quite off putting to me.
  
  They're not that common. In my experience a highly extension-ified gnome still manages to be simpler and more stable than KDE with all its native customizability.
- Ever modded a game?

Next is Dwm

Sorry but a tty is just a teletype terminal, using a tty could just as easily mean using kitty, alacritty, gnome terminal or the one you get if you were to use your shell as an init system (not sure what that would be called). You don't switch from a tty to Alacritty, as you're still just in a tty.
Also to my knowledge kitty has hardware acceleration too.
Sorry to be nitpicking but I think knowing that tty isn't just what you get when you press ctrl+alt+f2 is important for a deeper understanding of the operating system.

Ok ive been driving xfce for years now i bewn thinking about something tiling thats equally as lite what u recommend. Also needs to be wayland compatable.
- sway
- I tried LXQt and damn that is ugly. Maybe with theming?
  LXQt 6.1 will have wayland support and as compositor you can use sway, hyprland, river, niri, labwc, dwl, ...

tty: imagine requiring graphics mode

There's kmscon, tho.
- It's pretty cool. Can also display inline images in w3m.

Where's enlightenment and windowmaker?

HYPRCURSOR NOW.

Imagine NOT being banned from FreeDesktop

What's the teardrop logo and why is it banned from FreeDesktop?
- It's Hyprland and Here's explanation why he is banned. (Ofcourse he is toxic because he is a Anarchy Minecraft Player me too sadly but I am not toxic)

labwc: imagine not having a window decorations

Imagine not playing games
- ?
- Imagine having rootkits and APTs on your system, just to play some overpriced games, which you are later, remotely stopped from playing.
  
  why overpriced? I always pirate them but sadly pirated versions only work on Windows.
- You still play games?
  
  yes

incostomizable
Stay in school, kids.
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
imagine
And maybe learn other words.
- Imagine not even noticing repetition being used deliberately...

154 comments