Alright... Next question.
I'm leaning towards KDE Plasma on top of EndeavourOS.
I know some of you are partial to Gnome or cinnamon. I'm looking for something easy to tweak, has good switching between "desktops, " is reliable, and as lightweight as possible in regards to memory usage since it will be a while before I update the RAM.
What do you use?
#asknostr #linux #devs #devstr
Fedora KDE would be my go to KDE Distro nowadays.
Agreed. Some try to force KDE into "stable," but KDE doesn't work well that way in my experience.
KDE 6.4 is decent. It's biggest fault, in my opinion, is that is has so many settings that the developers clearly have a tough time making them make sense. Like setting a wallpaper. It's ridiculous. You have to set it for each monitor and in a different spot for the lock screen. But it's pretty good once you get it configured.
the Gnome project as it has been for a long time is very streamlined and the devs seem interested in minimalization and feature removal. any time I've run it, it requires plugins to make it useful (IMO) and plugins break on updates β often.
KDE tends to be clunky but has more options without the need for plugins.
there are other options as well.
what is this setup for exactly?
My new laptop, a Lenovo T580. I want a simple, resource-light experience, but one that will let me dork around a lot without too much external fiddling.
Thanks for the recommendation!
XFCE. Lighter but complete and usable out of the box without a steep learning curve.
Someone will come in here and say i3, sway, or some other window manager only for sure. They are fun and light and fast but a lot of tweaking and keyboard shortcuts to memorize before they can be a serious daily driver. Definitely a tradeoff to get the extra benefits. Maybe that is worth it to you. Just don't let someone sell you on going the window manager route instead of a full desktop without knowing it will be very different and you will need to adapt a lot more than switching desktops requires.
I would support nostr:nprofile1qqsqzr0se9y0ax44f5kt06jzplaq34tetzvpkm4x36p64flt9hflqkspz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejz7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hsz9rhwvaz7te3xgmjuvpwxqhrzw358qmrjtcssl7h4's suggestion. XFCE is a light desktop with many options to customize it. Try this one first. Should you later prefer more customizable environment (but with more resources needed), go for KDE. Next step: after you learn more Linux and still looking for sth super light, try windows managers.
I've been wondering about this.
How hard is it to switch between DEs and window managers?
Switching is very easy. Adapting a WM to your expectations may be a challenge. It depends on what you need and your knowledge. If you know Linux on an advanced level, you know basics of scripting and Python, it could be quite easy. If not, it would require more time to find solutions.
DEs give you an easier path: almost everything is in GUI. And in my opinion, KDE dominates in that topic. But personally I like Cinnamon, as well. And Gnome was my first DE ever (maaaaaany years ago...).
Still, on older comps (which I usually use) WMs make much more sense in case you need graphical environment and I like using them.
I don't script. π
I think I'll stick to a DE for now.
If you install a distro that has a GUI you almost definitely have a desktop manager app. This is the app where you enter your credentials to login. Basically all of them have a way to select which desktop or window manager to launch after login.
So install 2 desktops. Logout. Switch the dropdown. Login. New desktop or window manager. No reboot or command line needed.
I saw that in a video, but I didn't know if that was an OS thing as the person in the video said (no idea if that is correct or not) that it was a feature of Gnome (in his install).
The cool thing about the Linux universe is being able to just try on a different distro every so often (and not hem and haw for ages before upgrading or changing like we used to with Windows), since Windows is SOOO gobsmackingly resource-hogging and invasive, and one little tiny thing wrong can break it.
> I'm looking for something easy to tweak
KDE probably. GNOME is more dogmatic about how you should be using it, so fewer tweaks, fewer extensions, etc.
> good switching between "desktops, "
Both can do this without issue. And it's really central to GNOME's paradigm (instead of alt-tabbijg, they want you to basically have one application per 'workspace'βI think that's what they call it).
> is reliable, and as lightweight as possible in regards to memory usage since
I think that GNOME was generally considered lighter than KDE, but I've seen recent anecdotes that is now flipped in KDE's favor.
I'm using KDE, and for what it's worth, you can configure it to fairly closely resemble and function like GNOME.
After nostr:npub1yaul8k059377u9lsu67de7y637w4jtgeuwcmh5n7788l6xnlnrgs3tvjmf recommended Ubuntu MATE on your initial post, I did a YouTube deep dive and that looks really fun. Gonna install it on a friendβs computer soon.
It seems a really solid choice.
I highly recommend KDE. I saw something saying it can run almost as light as XFCE. Cinnamon is fine, solid on Mint, but basic, not very inspiring. GNOME is different enough that I don't enjoy it, but some really like it. KDE is beautiful by default and I can tweak it to my heart's content.
I didn't try EndeavourOS. Lots of options, and you can install it on whatever distro. Kubuntu's good, Neon is nice but a bit less stable. Solus is nice but may have less software available.
i think there is a super lite version of kde, yes, i forget the name of it though.
but the interface is awful, like a slightly better version of win32
