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Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

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crunchor
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Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#1 Post by crunchor »

I am new and have no idea, any suggestion?


neuraleskimo
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#3 Post by neuraleskimo »

I use KDE (and have with few exceptions since the 0.9 days), but have used Gnome and XFCE. All are good. I like all of the knobs that KDE gives me to tweak. However, the simplicity of Gnome is also appealing, but its lack of configuration keeps me using KDE (that is just my experience and others may disagree). My advice is try all three and see what you like.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#4 Post by sgage »

I prefer the MATE Desktop Environment - it is quite full-featured and integrated, but relatively light weight compared to the Gnomes and KDE's and such. But really, it's just a matter of personal preference.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#5 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

GNOME. It's the most polished option and also the default so it has more people testing it.
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#6 Post by Hallvor »

There is not a "best" desktop environment, just like there is no objectively best flavor of ice cream. It boils down to your own preferences.

For me, it is KDE: Lighter on resources and more options. Gnome will be fine for most tasks. I used it in the past and really liked its simplicity. The downside is this: You must use the command line interface for some tasks that you can point and click in KDE.

Oh, and you get gems like KDE Connect.

https://www.slant.co/versus/1124/4160/~ ... kde-plasma
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#7 Post by arochester »

There is not a "best" desktop environment, just like there is no objectively best flavor of ice cream. It boils down to your own preferences.
+1

The nearest to "best" is the one YOU like and which suits YOUR computer...

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#8 Post by stevepusser »

arochester wrote:
There is not a "best" desktop environment, just like there is no objectively best flavor of ice cream. It boils down to your own preferences.
+1

The nearest to "best" is the one YOU like and which suits YOUR computer...
+1000
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neuraleskimo
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#9 Post by neuraleskimo »

I have to say that I am impressed with the calm discussion. In the old days, Gnome vs KDE would cause horrible fights. I still have nightmares!

To all of you who remember those days, I have only one thing to say. EMACS!!! [sound of me running to hide] ;-)

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#10 Post by NFT5 »

Hallvor wrote:There is not a "best" desktop environment, just like there is no objectively best flavor of ice cream. It boils down to your own preferences.

For me, it is KDE: Lighter on resources and more options.
Agree, even though I don't find KDE that light.

I use KDE on my desktop (and love the features and configurability) but MATE on production machines and notebooks. Fewer options means employees aren't as likely to tweak it to the point where it doesn't work. I've also tried XFCE and it is a bit more full-featured than MATE but still very light. All, with the possible exception of Gnome can be configured to look, and work, almost any way that you like.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#11 Post by neuraleskimo »

By the way, opensource.com is running a series on Linux desktops that they are calling the "24 days of linux desktop". See
https://opensource.com/sitewide-search? ... %20desktop

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#12 Post by eor2004 »

sgage wrote:I prefer the MATE Desktop Environment - it is quite full-featured and integrated, but relatively light weight compared to the Gnomes and KDE's and such. But really, it's just a matter of personal preference.
+1
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#13 Post by None1975 »

crunchor wrote:I am new and have no idea, any suggestion?
Notion wm and old good

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#14 Post by MagicPoulp »

Best for what?

I use enlightenment because it is the one just after Gnome and KDE that has a near future with wayland. I like wayland since I often experience tearing under Linux and X11.

I prefer Gnome to KDE since I prefer GTK to GT (and I prefer C to C++ that I think is faster at low level). And Enlightenment uses Enlightenment Foundation Libraries which is also in C.

Gnome is the standard, and already has wayland working. Gnome is probably the best to save time. I like not to pick the thing for the masses. I need to remove my old Ubuntu habits. I also belive Gnome takes more resources, especially in the graphics.

I kind not like the gnome monopoly (cf systemd, initd, etc).

I have no issues with enlightenement, except that I don't have time to build it for wayland manually lol.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#15 Post by Hallvor »

NFT5 wrote: Agree, even though I don't find KDE that light.
KDE Plasma 5.17 uses slightly less RAM than XFCE, and the difference increases as you start more and more applications. It is certainly not as fat as the rumor says.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#16 Post by MagicPoulp »

The load is quite complex to measure. You can't jsut look at the memory used.

KDE is based on QT which is in C++. C++ is often loaded with small memory allocations. And each of them stalls the thread scheduler.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#17 Post by Soul Singin' »

Hallvor wrote:KDE Plasma 5.17 uses slightly less RAM than XFCE, and the difference increases as you start more and more applications. It is certainly not as fat as the rumor says.
MagicPoulp wrote:The load is quite complex to measure. You can't jsut look at the memory used.
How much memory your window manager or desktop environment uses is nothing. What matters is how much memory your applications use.

On my system, a fresh boot into LightDM (without logging yet) consumes:

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$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7775         281        7148          18         344        7242
Swap:         11032           0       11032
After logging into IceWM, memory usage is:

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$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7775         335        7029          32         410        7172
Swap:         11032           0       11032
After opening the Dolphin file manager, memory usage is:

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$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7775         373        6900          48         501        7117
Swap:         11032           0       11032
And after opening Firefox (to type this message to you all), memory usage is:

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$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7775         842        6214          79         718        6615
Swap:         11032           0       11032
Firefox alone consumes more memory than everything else. So choosing a desktop environment or window manager based on memory usage is pointless.

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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#18 Post by Hallvor »

Firefox alone consumes more memory than everything else. So choosing a desktop environment or window manager based on memory usage is pointless.
True. Also, modern computers will run everything out there just fine. Yes, Firefox is quite a resource hog.

Fresh boot:

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hallvor@debian-thinkpad:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7668         470        6568         109         629        6852
Swap:          7879           0        7879
With Dolphin and Konsole:

Code: Select all

hallvor@debian-thinkpad:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7668         492        6494         155         681        6784
Swap:          7879           0        7879
With Firefox (and addons: Fixed Zoom, uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger) and this thread open:

Code: Select all

hallvor@debian-thinkpad:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7668         787        6006         191         874        6450
Swap:          7879           0        7879
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#19 Post by anticapitalista »

True ... but ...

If you have an old computer, using a window-manager rather than a desktop environment means that the apps will be using the RAM and not the desktop.

eg login to IceWM - it uses lets say 150MB RAM (idle)
Open firefox and it jumps to over 500MB

login to xfce - uses 350 MB idle.
open firefox it jumps to 800MB
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?

#20 Post by Soul Singin' »

anticapitalista wrote:If you have an old computer, using a window-manager rather than a desktop environment means that the apps will be using the RAM and not the desktop.
And if you have a new computer, using a window manager rather than a desktop environment means that the apps will be using the RAM and not the desktop.

Some of us just want something simple.

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