[olug] Alternatives to GNOME3

Sat Jun 4 15:18:31 UTC 2011

I have a pretty severe bias against lxde for several reasons: (1) last time
I installed it, it made changes to my system that weren't warranted, like
changing my login manager and screensaver settings, (2) it used a deprecated
method to set it's GTK theme, which broke theme settings in any other GTK
based desktop(s) like XFCE, (3) PCManFm is the only file manager I've ever
had corrupt external USB devices -- bad enough that fsck couldn't fix it, it
I had to mkfs the device to get it functional again, (4) PCManFm is also the
only file manager I've used that literally lost file(s) during a move
operation.

Given those experiences with lxde, I've vowed to *never* use it again, and
*always* tell people about those experiences when it is suggested /
recommended.  I admit, I have not installed it in over a year, so there is a
good chance of many of these issues having been fixed.  However, those
issues are serious enough that I have no confidence that similar, possibly
disastrous problems could be introduced into that software again.  The only
part about lxde that is *good* from what I can see is that they use OpenBox
as their window manager.

The problem with XFCE on Ubuntu was (is?) using quite a few pieces of Gnome
with it, which required loading the Gnome foundation classes.  Things like
the Network Manager are notorious for needing huge amounts of memory, and
seriously degrading performance for what should be a small and light system.
 I haven't had a chance to play with XFCE 4.8...I should grab it sometime.
 I've been hearing a lot of good things about it.

While I won't say that I've played with everything on the Window Managers
for X website (some of the links were dead last time I went through
carefully, and some are included more for historical purposes and won't
compile or run on a modern GNU/Linux system) I've probably messed around
with at least 50 percent of the choices.  Including packages like
Enlightenment and FVWM, sawfish, and quite a few that had to be compiled
from source.

George

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Jordan Fox <vmifox at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow, that was a really good overview!  Kudos. I'd forgotten about some
> (awesome) and never heard of others (pekwm).  I really like xfce and have
> used it for years.  V4.8 is a really nice update over v4.6.  Previous
> articles, phoronix and anad tech, showed that older versions of xubuntu
> have
> similar ram usage as ubuntu (xfce 4.6 and gnome2).  I haven't seen any
> articles using other distros.  I've also been following lxde for a while,
> but haven't looked at the most recent versions.  Lxde is a lot lighter on
> resource usage than xfce.  Both DEs are available for fedora, ubuntu, and
> debian - not sure about others.  As always, liveCDs or usb sticks are your
> friends in this regard.
>
> Jordan
>
> Sent by my automaton.
> On Jun 3, 2011 11:22 PM, "George De Bruin" <sndchaser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One last thing I meant to mention... An invaluable resource for looking
> > around at desktops / window managers is the Window Managers for X site:
> > http://xwinman.org/
> >
> > <http://xwinman.org/>George
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:20 PM, Kevin <sharpestmarble at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I just installed Fedora 13, stock windowing system.
> >>
> >> I find that I am not a fan of GNOME3, specifically the lack of a
> >> window list/taskbar. I can get around that using alt-tab. However, if
> >> an application has multiple windows open, then only the most recent
> >> one is selectable. I can hover on an application and click on the
> >> window I want, but that defeats the whole purpose of using the
> >> keyboard for application-switching.
> >>
> >> I would like to switch to another system, but don't know which one I
> >> should switch to. I was a fan of GNOME2's system of picking a
> >> configuration and going with it; KDE doesn't rub me right.
> >>
> >> I just want things to work, but GNOME3 makes too many compromises in
> >> the way of UI speed. Does anyone know of an alternative to GNOME3 I
> >> should try?
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> OLUG mailing list
> >> OLUG at olug.org
> >> https://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ---
> > Faster moments spent spread tales of change within the sound...
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Faster moments spent spread tales of change within the sound...