7mo ago

Using any DE be like:

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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
  
  Missed opportunity for krazy and komplex.
  
  I just installed Fedora KDE for the first time from gnome and goddamn all these fucking Ks lmao! Gotta say though I didn't like elisa, installed Clementine almost immediately. I definitely don't need all these apps but I have to figure out what they all do before I go removing them willy nilly.
  And it refused to update my default browser to Librewolf so I had to uninstall Firefox to force it.
  And NetworkManager wouldn't work with the official fedora recommendation of how to randomize mac addresses, no clue why, it worked on gnome.
  Other than that it is neat, though.
  
  Yeah Fedora KDE is very bloated.
  But no, changing the default browser under "default apps" in the settings works very reliable.
  NetworkManager should default to randomized MAC since F40.
  Have a look at my debloat guide
  
  Nope, tried that, and still SABnzbd opened up in Firefox until I ran sudo dnf remove firefox. No clue why.
  As for the randomized mac, OHHHHH thanks! That's probably why when I put that config file there it was confused! I was unaware of this change, thanks again!
  And thanks, I'll definitely check out your debloat guide, but I'm still going to have to do some learning and decide for myself because we'll be different. For instance I'm probably keeping kGpg unless I replace it with Kleopatra (ironically also a K haha). I'll definitely use it as a start point though!
  
  What is a SABnzbd ?
  the MAC is randomized but static, so you are somebody else for every network, but then stay the same.
  Full MAC randomization causes major breakages though, and should be avoided.
  The default hostname is also really unprivate, change it to PC with sudo hostnamectl set-hostname PC.
  
  https://sabnzbd.org/
  Just Usenet shit. The important part is when you run the program it opens up your default web browser, which in my case was perpetually firefox and idk why.
  I've had mac rando on on fedora in the past and am running Graphene with it on by default, no breakages so far in about 2-2.5yr. Maybe my usecase doesn't need static MACs. The only issue is my home wifi says "a new device has been connected" every time I connect, but like, that's fine.
  Good point on the hostname though, I usually use a specific name per device for my own sanity but maybe I should make them all generic "PC."
  
  xdg-open will open the default browser. This is likely an issue with that app having firefox hardcoded, or detecting it and using it when detected or some stuff.
  I've had mac rando on on fedora in the past and am running Graphene with it on by default, no breakages so far in about 2-2.5yr
  People that dont have problems dont have a lot to add in terms or arguments :D
  There are 2 types of MAC rando, and GrapheneOS uses full per-connection rando by default.
  If you are in networks where access is controlled via the MAC, this will break. Static randomized (in grapheneOS "per network") like on Fedora dont have this issue at all, this should really be default always.
  But it does not protect against certain levels of tracking.
  Also randomized MACs may fill up certain router softwares and cause DHCP to fail because it tries to remember every connected device "for security" (FritzBox in my case).
  
  Thing is though, it exhibited the desired behavior on Fedora 39 Gnome, if it was just how SABnzbd rolled I'd expect it to do it back then too, but since it's new behavior I suspect it's something else.
  Yeah it does clog up the router a bit but I think in my case they auto-clean the older ones out.
  
  Strange. Make sure to contact the devs though, as KDEs settings always worked for me reliably.
  
  There is a new Qt app called Vvave, a tiny music player.
  I also dont like Elisa, I personally use G4Music but also tried Strawberry.
  There also is Qmmp, which is still developed and also pretty minimal
  
  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.
  
  Development was dead for years, so dead that it wasn't included in new release repositories
  Clementine was a fork that was pretty good, but I think had more ambitions than active developers.
  Strawberry later forked from Clementine and is still being developed, and they're doing well, but they aren't building on the KDE framework.
  
  Do you know if Elisa is related?
  Crazy that we can use 3 forks alongside each other, feels wrong.
  
  They recently managed to complete porting to QT5 framework. Thus it is still missing in distributions that do no longer ship QT4, like e.g. Debian 11+.
- 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've had to entirely wipe my kde config folder enough times because I dragged a widget and created phantom toolbars taking up space I couldn't interact with or completely broken toolbars that I just don't have the patience to use it anymore.
  
  It does look and act like a cellphone OS :P
- 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.
  
  Damn can you list some of the options you remember changing?
  
  I disabled all animations, the baloo file indexing and all services that start automatically at login.
  I also installed not the full KDE Suite but just Plasma Desktop and then uninstalled all parts I don't need.
  So technically, I'm not running KDE but Plasma. From the KDE application Suite I use Dolphin, Konsole, the archiver, the image viewer, the PDF viewer and the system settings tool.
  
  Yes baloo is a hog. Note that the background services systemsettings page will be hidden in the future but accessible from the global search.
  
  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.
  
  I will try Plasma 6 on an Intel core Duo in some time though, exited.
  Eh, I used it on an HP Pavilion DV2000 (3 GB RAM) from 2009-2017. With Gentoo. It worked just fine.
  Gnome 3, on the other hand...
  
  Well thats not Plasma 6, but it likely didnt get worse.
- 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.

154 comments