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Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
- Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Some people prefer simple window manager environments even on powerful computers with plenty of resources because they maintain simple, text-file oriented configuration and the smaller codebase offers a reduced attack surface for the security conscious.
deadbang
Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
If you are new, I warmly suggest XFCE4: light, easy to use, highly customizable. By default is pretty ugly but it takes second to make it looking cool and modern!
https://itsfoss.com/customize-xfce/
https://itsfoss.com/customize-xfce/
- oswaldkelso
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
fixed: Which desktop environment is the best end off.
Buster should have little relevance and if it does it needs a very very good reason. I've believe the basic functions of a desktop have not changed much in the last 20 years. open, close move, copy, view , hide, read, write, link etc.
It's the interface that has changed. Loads of them with many variables as to why an "individual" would want a different interface.
For me it's lightness, as I run many old computers. Speed, ease of use and resource use is really important, I want instant response and any discernable lag is painful to me. The only place I allow lag is first start on big applications like a big browser, office suit or graphics application (inkscape for example). Easy of use and mouse and keyboard support. I love my mouse and want it to work anywhere, where it's strength can show. Bling is not one of my priority's except when demonstrating just how great my desktop is
On my current setups I have TDE, and XFCE as the only desktops I have installed. I think they are the best ootb DE environments. Very suitable for new users and people that just want a sane easy to use interface. My Ex could hardly tell the difference between xfce and lxde but could use either. I'm not sure if she knew which she was running but if it had an easy to find menu it meant less grief for me.
For many years I ran black box, then switched to a very heavily tweaked openbox, and for the last 2 years I've run a slightly tweaked icewm. I say slightly tweaked but small tweaks can make a huge difference.
I honestly believe for the things I require my tweaked icewm is faster, easier to use and more functional than either full Gnome or KDE. ymmv
fixed: Which desktop environment is the best end off.
Buster should have little relevance and if it does it needs a very very good reason. I've believe the basic functions of a desktop have not changed much in the last 20 years. open, close move, copy, view , hide, read, write, link etc.
It's the interface that has changed. Loads of them with many variables as to why an "individual" would want a different interface.
For me it's lightness, as I run many old computers. Speed, ease of use and resource use is really important, I want instant response and any discernable lag is painful to me. The only place I allow lag is first start on big applications like a big browser, office suit or graphics application (inkscape for example). Easy of use and mouse and keyboard support. I love my mouse and want it to work anywhere, where it's strength can show. Bling is not one of my priority's except when demonstrating just how great my desktop is
On my current setups I have TDE, and XFCE as the only desktops I have installed. I think they are the best ootb DE environments. Very suitable for new users and people that just want a sane easy to use interface. My Ex could hardly tell the difference between xfce and lxde but could use either. I'm not sure if she knew which she was running but if it had an easy to find menu it meant less grief for me.
For many years I ran black box, then switched to a very heavily tweaked openbox, and for the last 2 years I've run a slightly tweaked icewm. I say slightly tweaked but small tweaks can make a huge difference.
I honestly believe for the things I require my tweaked icewm is faster, easier to use and more functional than either full Gnome or KDE. ymmv
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
- Soul Singin'
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
IceWM is certainly faster and easier to use. That's true. But saying that IceWM is "more functional" than Gnome or KDE is too generous. That would imply that Gnome and KDE are functional. They're not. .oswaldkelso wrote:I honestly believe for the things I require my tweaked icewm is faster, easier to use and more functional than either full Gnome or KDE.
- Hallvor
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
IceWM - doing less with less efficiency since 1997.
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
- Soul Singin'
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
I do not know how you define "efficiency," but the "doing less" part is exactly right.Hallvor wrote:IceWM - doing less with less efficiency since 1997.
I want something that "does less."
Flashy window animations. I want less of that. Please do not bend, twist or slide the windows on my computer screen. When I close a window, please do not make it disappear behind a ball of flames.
Smart menu suggestions. I want less of that. Please do not suggest applications based on my usage patterns. I know what I want in my menu. Please let me make that decision.
Desktop widgets. I want less of that. Please do not clutter my desktop with a bunch of folders, widgets and icons. I selected a beautiful desktop wallpaper. Seeing it covered with widgets is like looking at a backyard full of dog poop.
Notifications. I want less of that. Please do not display system messages in the tray. Unless my battery is running low, I do not need to see them.
IceWM is great because it "does less!" .
Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Me too. Your reasons are similar to why I use Openbox.Soul Singin' wrote:I want something that "does less."
Something that has puzzled me for years is the horizontal task bar, usually at the bottom. Computer screens lack vertical space. Paper documents usually have the long edge vertical. For some reason desktop screens are horizontal. I always want more vertical space so I set the task bar (tint2) on the left side and make it transparent.
- oswaldkelso
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
This all depends on how we want to use your desktop. I have two panels. icewm taskbar at the top because I want to see time, date, cpu, network, calc, calendar along with my tiling buttons and the like. I dislike the workspace/pager in icewm so run tint2 at the bottom of the screen. Likewise so I can see what's running and on which workspace without the extra step of revealing it.Bulkley wrote:
Something that has puzzled me for years is the horizontal task bar, usually at the bottom. Computer screens lack vertical space. Paper documents usually have the long edge vertical. For some reason desktop screens are horizontal. I always want more vertical space so I set the task bar (tint2) on the left side and make it transparent.
It all comes down to how one want's to do things and if your DE/WM will allow it. Both openbox and icewm allow lots if folks can be arsed to read the configs and tweak them to their liking. My config turns off lots off icewm options because they screw with other things I want to control. Some of the new default features in 1.6.2 annoy the crap out of me but will no doubt be the bees knees to someone else. At least I can turn them off or hide them and use my desktop as I want it to be used.
Edit:
I see The latest released version is 1.6.3 (2019-11-24). but for my configs I still have 1.3.7 running on some machines and both work fine for my setup.
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
- Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Vertical panels restrict the space available for the clock — look how small the one in MX is, they have to use a mahoosive conky to compensate.Bulkley wrote:For some reason desktop screens are horizontal
And the asymmetry is a sin against nature
deadbang
- oswaldkelso
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Vertical panels restrict the space available for the clock — look how small the one in MX is, they have to use a mahoosive conky to compensate.Bulkley wrote:For some reason desktop screens are horizontal
And the asymmetry is a sin against nature
Vertical panels are in general for users that don't have text in their panels or are Chinese. Serious question, I wonder if Chinese users turn their monitors 90 degrees?
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Ha-ha! Oh, well, I'm another one who prefers a left-side vertical panel. The xfce4-panel in MX is too thin for my tastes; easy enough to fix that. And I use a vertical tint2 panel with Openbox.Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Vertical panels restrict the space available for the clock — look how small the one in MX is, they have to use a mahoosive conky to compensate.Bulkley wrote:For some reason desktop screens are horizontal
And the asymmetry is a sin against nature
- Hallvor
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
In general, I agree with you. In terms of functionality, the smallest code base that covers all your needs would be the ideal choice. Less code means fewer things that can go wrong.Soul Singin' wrote: I want something that "does less."
I think it would be better to separate between what is enabled by default, and what can be enabled. The animations enabled by default are very modest. No twisting, sliding or fireballs are enabled, so I fail to see how this is a problem at all. And even if they were, it would be dead easy to turn them off.Flashy window animations. I want less of that. Please do not bend, twist or slide the windows on my computer screen. When I close a window, please do not make it disappear behind a ball of flames.
Turn them off, then.Smart menu suggestions. I want less of that. Please do not suggest applications based on my usage patterns. I know what I want in my menu. Please let me make that decision.
Oh please. Do you think Bester69's desktop is what the average KDE desktop looks like?Desktop widgets. I want less of that. Please do not clutter my desktop with a bunch of folders, widgets and icons. I selected a beautiful desktop wallpaper. Seeing it covered with widgets is like looking at a backyard full of dog poop.
Disable them, then.Notifications. I want less of that. Please do not display system messages in the tray. Unless my battery is running low, I do not need to see them.
If you are happy with it, great, but those "annoyances" you mentioned are either easy to shut off or are not even enabled. You may be fortunate and have IceWM to your liking out of the box, but I am guessing you have configured that to your liking as well...IceWM is great because it "does less!" .
What I didn't like about IceWM:
-Lack of localization
-Lack of features
-No compositor
-The dated UI
-Too much text file editing
What I liked about IceWM:
-Very easy to change appearance
-Flexible
-Small code base
What I don't like about KDE:
-Unintuitive. This is the first desktop environment I have had to use Youtube videos to perform simple tasks. (Well done, devs!)
-The number of options can be overwhelming
What I like about KDE:
-You can create any desktop look and feel you want. Everything, including the taskbar, is widgets.
-Good, mature compositor
-Great localization
-Very good native applications
-Memory footprint like XFCE, but vastly more feature rich
-Modern and consistent UI
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
- Soul Singin'
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
Hallvor wrote:Oh please. Do you think Bester69's desktop is what the average KDE desktop looks like?Soul Singin' wrote:I selected a beautiful desktop wallpaper. Seeing it covered with widgets is like looking at a backyard full of dog poop.
If that's what the average KDE desktop looks like, then I fear for the future.bester69 wrote:
In fairness to you, I must say that your points are valid. And in fairness to KDE, I must say that KDE is the desktop that I started with way back in the days of KDE 3.5. I still have a soft spot for KDE, but these days I only have IceWM installed on my machine.
Here's a nice memory:
The wallpaper is the "Candle in the Dark" photo from the Cassini mission to Saturn. The large crescent moon is Titan and the smaller moon is Enceladus ... without any desktop widgets obscuring the view. .
- Hallvor
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
And in all fairness I must say that it took a very long time for me to accept and like KDE after they ditched KDE 3.5. I abandoned KDE for quite some time, but it matured and I grew into liking it.Soul Singin' wrote:And in fairness to KDE, I must say that KDE is the desktop that I started with way back in the days of KDE 3.5. I still have a soft spot for KDE, but these days I only have IceWM installed on my machine.
That is a very nice wallpaper.
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD
- oswaldkelso
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
The key issue missing in this thread is what is your hardware?
If you have an i7 with 8Gb of ram then maybe Gnome or KDE is the best for you
If you have loads of 32bit machines with as low as a 1GB of ram forget the big DE's
In short you need to evaluate you hardware, time and ability to learn before you can even think about which desktop environment to try and use. Now don't get me wrong I may pimp light-weight but I love bloat as much as the next person. The number of "obsolete" computers I could get from windows users because they're to slow could fill my shed. I seriously doubt I'll ever need to buy a new computer ever again
If you have an i7 with 8Gb of ram then maybe Gnome or KDE is the best for you
If you have loads of 32bit machines with as low as a 1GB of ram forget the big DE's
In short you need to evaluate you hardware, time and ability to learn before you can even think about which desktop environment to try and use. Now don't get me wrong I may pimp light-weight but I love bloat as much as the next person. The number of "obsolete" computers I could get from windows users because they're to slow could fill my shed. I seriously doubt I'll ever need to buy a new computer ever again
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
I am using the vanilla GNOME on Debian 10. Prefer it to others. Ironically, the Windows key is the most used key on my keyboard
Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
@OP if you have got ancient hardware then maybe buster isn't for you. As even a netinstall will consume upwards of 175 mb RAM at non graphical login.
I tried tinycore linux the other day and it takes around 60mb to graphical login and has all the popular applications in their repos.
Or if you want to stick to Buster then maybe LXDE. Am surprised nobody mentioned it in this thread or if they did I might have missed it.
Edit - TDE is also quite low on resources.
I tried tinycore linux the other day and it takes around 60mb to graphical login and has all the popular applications in their repos.
Or if you want to stick to Buster then maybe LXDE. Am surprised nobody mentioned it in this thread or if they did I might have missed it.
Edit - TDE is also quite low on resources.
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Re: Which desktop environment is the best for Buster?
As many have said, what do you like and/or need from a DE? Something light that stays out of the way? Something configurable? Something easy?
I like KDE and a lot of folks say it's resource-heavy, but I only find that it uses a few percent of CPU and memory. Here's a "top" of the first few things running right now on my system:
Xorg is running a little higher than normal because I'm using a TV and monitor, streaming a news show to the TV in Chromium while talking to y'all here on Firefox. Kwin is at less than 4, even still. There are other KDE processes that eat up perhaps another percent, but the things clearly eating up the most right now are the LMMS DAW and the synth plugins for the project I'm working on, and the video I'm streaming through Chromium.
That actually brings up one of the things that keeps bringing me back to KDE: the standard KDE volume control in the tray gives you the option of directing the sound output on a per app basis; with just a couple clicks the video's sound is coming through the TV via the HDMI connection on the graphics card, Firefox would output to the onboard sound card if I was playing something there, and LMMS is using the Scarlett audio interface on USB. None of the "light" DE's would do this for me as simply, nor would Cinnamon for that matter. I'm sure most people aren't running three discrete sound devices at once, however, so why would it be a selling point to them?
Get whatever works best for you; your needs and taste in interface aren't the same as everyone else's. The great thing is, it doesn't cost you anything or break compatibility to try out different DE's.
I like KDE and a lot of folks say it's resource-heavy, but I only find that it uses a few percent of CPU and memory. Here's a "top" of the first few things running right now on my system:
Code: Select all
31341 lumbergh -51 0 4304664 164516 86020 S 32.6 0.2 9:43.00 lmms.real
31434 lumbergh -51 0 1477912 395732 64536 S 18.6 0.6 5:26.91 RemoteVstPlugin
28705 lumbergh 20 0 2139692 421488 119452 S 15.9 0.6 20:52.40 chromium
31481 lumbergh -51 0 1145148 160604 24136 S 13.3 0.2 4:02.50 RemoteVstPlugin
30778 lumbergh 20 0 2165248 498244 107532 S 11.3 0.8 4:50.09 chromium
2625 lumbergh 9 -11 2010548 28236 22280 S 7.0 0.0 2:42.80 pulseaudio
2074 root 20 0 4466440 150548 106408 S 6.3 0.2 4:38.97 Xorg
28413 lumbergh 20 0 2470140 203744 117760 S 6.3 0.3 7:52.77 chromium
31394 lumbergh 20 0 24284 21228 1456 S 6.0 0.0 1:40.88 wineserver64
2753 lumbergh 20 0 4432940 144280 102848 S 3.7 0.2 3:23.43 kwin_x11
4247 lumbergh 20 0 2927676 256668 171732 S 2.3 0.4 0:16.89 Web Content
That actually brings up one of the things that keeps bringing me back to KDE: the standard KDE volume control in the tray gives you the option of directing the sound output on a per app basis; with just a couple clicks the video's sound is coming through the TV via the HDMI connection on the graphics card, Firefox would output to the onboard sound card if I was playing something there, and LMMS is using the Scarlett audio interface on USB. None of the "light" DE's would do this for me as simply, nor would Cinnamon for that matter. I'm sure most people aren't running three discrete sound devices at once, however, so why would it be a selling point to them?
Get whatever works best for you; your needs and taste in interface aren't the same as everyone else's. The great thing is, it doesn't cost you anything or break compatibility to try out different DE's.