caution: off-topic post follow-up in an off-topic thread
wizard10000 wrote:
I am also guilty of this particular form of intellectual masturbation; I have two laptops and a 32-bit netbook and fluxbox is installed on all three. I've found it to be great fun trying to strike that balance between features and efficiency and I still do it to some extent.
You can justly call it that but its fun, at least from the angle of someone trying to learn by exploration. When I came to Linux I was extremely strapped for machine resources and slimming down my OS/DE was a need and that was what sparked the exercise. I had no one to call for help in learning FOSS-Fu.
wizard10000 wrote:
But - my mindset has changed a bit in the last six months or so, which is the reason I'm back to KDE on my main machine with fluxbox installed as a backup in case I break KDE. I'm given a fixed set of computer resources; got 8GB of RAM, six or seven of which are just sitting there as disk cache most of the time and unused resources are unneeded resources.
So - my 64-bit Plasma 5 daily driver uses about 400mb of RAM at idle. It takes two seconds longer to get a working desktop than it does on the same machine running fluxbox and once the desktop is running there's not really a meaningful difference in application launch time. Took me 30 years to figure it out, but if I've got the resources I might as well use them
I never left that approach. Not being a power user to start with, having a given set of utilities I was capable of using without great risk of fudging (too much) things in the system was a actual need. Also, having another person using the same system I'm using with even less skills than I did/do have made forceful to keep the machine usable to anyone (at least to a certain degree).
I got my feet wet in Debian with the GNOME DE. It was friendly, even more for someone coming from Windows, easy to use, accessible. When it mutated to its present form I was at a loss and turned my back on it.
KDE was always a bit too much on the heavy side for my systems but I did try it for a time but wasn't able to get my liking.
XFCE was my DE for some time but it lacked a few tools I missed from GNOME.
Cinnamon is just not my kind of cake.
Mate brought back the classic GNOME look so I reverted to it. Its comfortable and familiar to use but I still find it a bit green. There are a lot of changes to be made until it can fully distance itself from GNOME. I'm still running it as my present DE, nonetheless.
E17 made me curious enough to give it more than one try and I sincerely think of it as an overlooked desktop in Debian. Had it installed side by side with Mate but I found it strange to have more than one DE coexisting in the same machine to give it a proper evaluation.
Then there is Openbox, to which I am partial to, because I tried a software similar to it when I was a devoted windows user but I lacked the resources (internet access and support/help) to properly learn how to handle it (can't remember the name though but it was I believe in had "box" in its name).
Usability is always on my mind but I like to explore and learn.