# [Desktop environment] What do you use ?



## timfa21 (Mar 16, 2020)

Hello world !
I want to have a desktop environment / window manager which is powerfull / customizable.
I don't know what should I use... Gnome ? It is gnome 3.28.2 instead of gnome 3.36... It is a bit old...
LXQT ? It's not really supported (like cinnamon ?). Plasma ? (a little old too...) Open/Fluxbox (dead ?)
I can't choose...
So, what is your DE / WM ?
What can you recommend to me ?


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## SKull (Mar 16, 2020)

KDE5 Plasma on my desktop. Because my desktop is current hardware and plasma looks really good.
i3 On my laptop. Because i3 is basically all I need anyway.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 16, 2020)

You're asking for personal preference and that's going to get responses of all kinds from all over the place. The only way to find out is to try them yourself and search for suggestions to this same question asked hundreds of times before all over the internet.


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## 20-100-2fe (Mar 16, 2020)

I'm using MATE for the following reasons :

- Its interface is clean, simple, consistent and intuitive => no training required, close to what people are already used to with Windows.

- Its utilities are well finished and featureful (in particular, the date format can be configured in the file manager and the image viewer displays EXIF data) => no need to install diverse additional utilities with inconsistent look and feel.

- It is very easy to customize the default configuration of the desktop to improve user experience on first login => little or no need for further per-user customization.

But as drhowarddrfine said, GUI is a matter of taste and if you don't define your own evaluation criteria, you're unlikely to be more able to choose after reading our opinions than before.


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## eternal_noob (Mar 16, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> MATE


MATE is very nice, i use it too. On machines with low memory i recommend x11-wm/openbox though.


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## timfa21 (Mar 16, 2020)

Thank you very much !
I will see what I will install... I think about mate.


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## jardows (Mar 16, 2020)

I personally use x11-wm/xfce4, but if you are using a login manager like x11/sddm, switching between environments is trivial.  That would give you a chance to try several different ones out at the same time, provided you aren't space constrained.


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## jmos (Mar 17, 2020)

I use the window manager "Window Maker", and no matter what else I'm trying: I always come back. For me, the question whether a ready-made desktop environment or a window manager is the better choice has nothing to do with "small or powerful computers", but with "am I willing to invest the work to create my own desktop environment". And so for example the Linuxers in my personal surroundings all use LXQt today (formerly they used Xfce). Apart from that I like the approach of Lumina: Few dependencies to third party components.


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## 20-100-2fe (Mar 17, 2020)

jmos said:


> I use the window manager "Window Maker", and no matter what else I'm trying: I always come back.



Just out of curiosity, is it only a matter of personal taste, or are there concrete, practical reasons that make you come back to Window Maker?


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## balanga (Mar 17, 2020)

timfa21 said:


> So, what is your DE / WM ?
> What can you recommend to me ?



I think the main question is whether you want to something full-featured or minimal. 

My personal preference is LXDE - https://wiki.lxde.org/en/FreeBSD


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## jmos (Mar 17, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> Just out of curiosity, is it only a matter of personal taste, or are there concrete, practical reasons that make you come back to Window Maker?



My beginnings with X11 are more than 20 years ago, so a good part of my choice could actually be "personal taste". But I'll try to be a little more objective…:

No GTK, no Qt, rock-solid, no start bar - but a separate, configurable start menu on a mouse button (in my opinion, a start bar is a nice and intuitive, but not really a effective concept), no tiling (I don't like it), good keyboard handling, dockapps, "X11 root screen" available (for tools like root-tail etc.), no desktop icons (I need the desktop for windows, not to have access to applications and/or files), simple but elegant look (with a theme engine with which I don't have to use provided themes or study how to build them), "focus follows mouse" well implemented (I use it), good compromise of "all included" and "find your own tools", separate area to change a window size only vertically (also: zoom fullscreen, zoom horizontal and zoom vertical), my own setting f.e. via "xset" are (almost) completely preserved, and good transparency of all processes. A desktop with Window Maker doesn't revolve around itself, but provides a desktop for other applications - and that's how it should. And yet there is eycandy in abundance...

In my opinion Window Maker is a successful compromise between comfort and flexibility. Of course others will say the same about Xfce, FVWM2, WM2 etc. - and that's the way it should be - but such a desktop is always a very individual matter.

In the end, a desktop environment always brings me too much garbage that I don't need. While others say "don't bother, you don't have to use it", I simply don't want to have garbage installed - I don't buy a drive for that. It doesn't matter to me whether it's an irrelevant 100 KB or more - it's just unnecessary ballast that needs to be kept up-to-date. But Window Maker is almost a small desktop environment due to the presence of themes, wide configuration capabilities, start menu and the dock - you only need a file manager and you have your basic setup.


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## eternal_noob (Mar 17, 2020)

balanga said:


> LXDE


LXDE is nice (but abandoned) and its successor LXQt feels like it's unfinished.


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## Alain De Vos (Mar 17, 2020)

I second that.


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## Cthulhux (Mar 17, 2020)

timfa21 said:


> So, what is your DE / WM ?



Window Maker.


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## zirias@ (Mar 17, 2020)

timfa21 said:


> I want to have a desktop environment / window manager which is powerfull / customizable.


So, kind of, everything at once, huh? Can you define "powerful"? Customizable to what extent? It really doesn't matter whether it's a full-blown desktop environment or just a standalone window manager?

For the full-blown desktop, I personally prefer KDE (Plasma 5). Reason: It's really well-integrated, looks and feels nice, and has a reasonable amount of configurable options (in contrast to e.g. Gnome).

Recently, I decided to take a step back and use FVWM on my desktop, because it's getting old and instead of buying more powerful hardware, let's first see what can be done at the software end of things. FVWM is what I would call powerful and customizable, but here, this means editing (potentially huge) config-files, so you *will* invest some time until you're satisfied. I'm very happy with the speed as well.
Here's the latest result: 
 I'm using the following additional software with it, so it has enough "desktop functionality" for me:
x11/xscreensaver for screen saving, locking and energy saving
sysutils/gkrellm2 for a few stats like CPU load and email notification
x11-wm/picom as a compositing manager with a nice blurred-translucency feature (unnecessary eye-candy)
x11/stalonetray as a "systray" in my FvwmButtons-based "taskbar", e.g. for kteatime, pidgin, etc
x11-clocks/xclock the "taskbar" also needs a clock in the corner I'm used to looking for it
x11/eterm for Esetroot which sets a background image in a way that works with compositors.
x11/rxvt-unicode as a terminal emulator


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## Sevendogsbsd (Mar 17, 2020)

I bounce around a lot but mostly use x11-wm/fluxbox. Light, fast and does what I need it to. I do like x11-wm/windowmaker very much but the huge desktop icons always bug me. It is light and fast as well though and does a great job as a stand-alone window manager. My favorite full blown DE is mate. Also light and fast but provides good functionality without being overly complicated. I was a long time Gnome v2 user and when Gnome moved to v3, I walked away and never looked back. Mate` gives me my good old Gnome v2 back in a way.

I do like Plasma (KDE 5) but it is so complex, in that it installs a ton of files, plus the number of config files in the user's /home is pretty large. That really doesn't matter I guess because they don't take a lot of space, but I am pretty OCD-ish about keeping my /home clean. My issue, not KDE's...functionality wise, the file manager is my favorite part. Other than that, it's too much for me.


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## Hakaba (Mar 17, 2020)

I use Mac OS X at work. So I choose XFCE years ago. 
But the fullscreen mode in Mac OS X change my mind. As it has a very good potential, the implementation is a nigthmare (when an app is open in fullscreen, I can not guess the place it takes. When an app make a notification, sometimes the place change sometimes no etc.)

So I decide to try a WM that only handle the fullscreen mode. Now, I am very happy with dwm.
(I search a minospaced font with the freebsd logo in some inused utf8 char... )


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## jdrch (Mar 17, 2020)

I run KDE with SDDM. Besides KDE being my favorite open source DE, that combo is the easiest to set up on FreeBSD thanks to the Instant Workstation script and the fact that there's at least once dev (the guy who wrote that script) who works on both projects (or at least works on one and uses the other.)  Purely from my observation that last part is extremely difficult to find when it comes to DEs and any BSD.

My _opinions_ (note the emphasis) on other DEs:

MATE: Looks good, but too barebones for 2020. If Gnome hadn't developed systemd dependencies MATE would have no reason to exist
XFCE: Development too slow
LXDE: Basically an ugly MATE. If you have more than 4 GB RAM don't use this, the tradeoffs aren't worth it
LXQt: Gaudier LXDE
Gnome: The only real alternative to KDE in terms of raw functionality, IMO. Unfortunately it now has a lot of systemd dependencies that make support of other OSes difficult
Cinnamon: The DE for Windows XP/Vista refugees and people who stopped learning new personal computing paradigms and concepts after XP
Budgie: Insufficiently widespread to be relevant or well supported
Solus: See Budgie
i3: The "Do you even lift, bro?" option. Only hardasses, masochists, and greybeards need apply. Normal people with things to do should look elsewhere
Pantheon: Cinnamon for macOS refugees and people who need current gen Mac horsepower but can't afford a new Mac
If you don't like KDE, I'd choose XFCE, if only because FuryBSD supports it (as it does KDE) so it's relatively easy to get it up and running. If you don't like either of those 2, use MATE.

Current gen DE RAM usage arguments aren't meaningful unless you have less than 16 GB RAM.

Gnome may be tempting but you're gonna have a bad time with it on FreeBSD.


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## timfa21 (Mar 18, 2020)

I'm testing MATE now, I think it is a great agreement between Gnome and KDE. But I've heart that mate will include some dependencies with systemd in a future release...
So, I will test Xfce too...
And, why not FVWM after all ?


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## 20-100-2fe (Mar 18, 2020)

timfa21 said:


> But I've heart that mate will include some dependencies with systemd in a future release...



Where have you heard that?
And what kind of dependencies?

I like the simplicity of XFCE too, but I don't use it because it has stopped halfway between a window manager and a desktop environment: it comes with some utilities but without the same functional coverage as MATE and with a lower quality finishing.

Furthermore, its last version brings some changes I wouldn't call 'improvements'. And customizing its defaults is difficult, poorly documented and unreliable.


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## eternal_noob (Mar 18, 2020)

timfa21 said:


> But I've heart that mate will include some dependencies with systemd in a future release


Are you talking about support for `systemd-logind` in mate-session-manager introduced in MATE 1.6 (7 years ago)? That's support, not a dependency.


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## hruodr (Mar 18, 2020)

X11 with `twm`.


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## timfa21 (Mar 18, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> Where have you heard that?
> And what kind of dependencies?
> 
> I like the simplicity of XFCE too, but I don't use it because it has stopped halfway between a window manager and a desktop environment: it comes with some utilities but without the same functional coverage as MATE and with a lower quality finishing.
> ...



I've heard that on linuxfr.org :
"MATE est en cours de développement pour intégrer de nouvelles technologies (systemd, GTK+ 3, Wayland, etc.) tout en préservant un environnement de bureau traditionnel."
So, in english : "MATE is being developed to integrate new technologies (systemd, GTK+ 3, Wayland, etc. ). while preserving a traditional desktop environment."


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## outpaddling (Apr 15, 2020)

FYI, if you want to quickly experiment with various desktops environments, try sysutils/desktop-installer.

On a modern machine with a fast Internet connection, you should be able to fully configure any of the lightweight desktops in well under an hour.  KDE will take longer, of course.


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## eldaemon (Apr 16, 2020)

I primarily use x11-wm/dwm, a tiling window manager. It's not for everyone. Works great with some applications, awkward with others. Certainly lightweight. Has a learning curve.

`make config` gives some handy options for it, including switching to the meta (Windows/Super key) from alt as the modifier.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 16, 2020)

Of tilers I have used, x11-wm/dwm was my favorite. I thought it was pretty neat that there is no config: edit code to change settings. Tilers bug me after a few days though so I don't use them any more.


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 16, 2020)

Currently lxde , openbox-lxde , compton , xfce4-panel.


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 16, 2020)

Currently lxde , openbox-lxde , compton , xfce4-panel.
I learned to live with the : "GDBus.Error org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Error.General:
Unable to lookup session information for process '4200'" start popup window


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