Fed up with the current available DE's? Post your pros and cons here please.

[bitsmurf]

Hi there

Pardon my English. I'm a Danish guy

< rants may occur >

Someone here may wonder why I waste my time writing this. However, there's a good reason.

First a bit of background info:
I've been a long time and happy GNOME user, both through Ubuntu and pure Debian, until Unity and GNOME Shell destroyed that dream.
Then I've turned my head to KDE, but it felt a bit clunky and more or less got in my way instead of staying in the background and just doing what I told it to do.
LXDE is a bit too limited for my needs and XFCE seems like a half-baked cake. However, XFCE is what I chose, and using currently. But I'm still not satisfied.
Oh, and I nearly forgot Enlightenment E17. Yes I have tried it too, and in the same case as KDE, it got into my way and disturbed me.


All these discoveries combined with, in my opinion, wrong movement in the Desktop Environment world, GNOME and Unity especially (with wrong movement, I'm thinking about too much graphical bling and less efficiency in work flow throughout the desktop), has led me to think about what would be a more efficient, fast responding and lightweight desktop, which doesn't get in your way when working, doesn't take up a lot screen space, intuitive and easy to use and favoring navigation with a keyboard.
I would dare to call it a mixture of the Windows and OSX effect at some points.
Don't get it wrong, I do not intent to start a pie fight here, I just want to shed light on some the fundamental issues desktop environments available for Linux has.

Now, dear Phoronix readers, I would like to ask you kindly to chime in with ideas or missing bits you haven't seen in other desktop environments


Pardon my developer-grumpiness, but those desktop environments available on the market today, doesn't seem to follow a path where stability, speed and efficiency is prioritized high.

It shall be no secret that I'm toying with the idea of resembling a new desktop environment, where speed, stability, modularity and efficiency is the top priorities. Whether it's run on an old Pentium, an ARM SoC or a really fast Core i7

Instead of opting for a one size fits all or a size specific model while developing this project, I intend to use a crowd-source like approach where users can have their say regarding every aspect of the desktop environment.


(The view in this post, solely represents my own experiences with desktop environments. I do not expect at all that the reader can or will agree with any part of this post).

[mattox]

1. for a lightweight DE, you could try running WindowMaker and decorate it selectively with DockApps

2. if you are inside of a firewall-protected perimeter, you could stay where you were with Ubuntu/Debian (ie: do NOT upgrade) and run Firefox with some protective Add-ons like NoScript, WOT, RequestPolicy.

3. if you are running a netbook, laptop, then you could use any live distro on a memstick or CD/DVD so any infection/invasion would die when you reboot. But, avoid any like Ubuntu which have that persistent Casper filesystem which would save that lucky infection.

FWIW, I use all three with v/g results

[d2kx]

efficient, fast responding and lightweight desktop, which doesn't get in your way when working, doesn't take up a lot screen space, intuitive and easy to use and favoring navigation with a keyboard

That's why I am using Unity.

[benmoran]

I gave Gnome Shell an honest chance, and now I use it exclusively. The dynamic workspaces and overview modes really sold it for me. Whoever designed the dynamic workspaces is my hero.

[soupbowl]

I mix XFCE with i3 or openbox.
I tried gnome3 for a month, hated it at first, thought it was ok in the middle by the end, I decided I got more done with less effort
on anything but gnome3. KD4 is ok, had issues with cpu usage from a few kde services though.

[cbamber85]

I gave Gnome Shell an honest chance, and now I use it exclusively. The dynamic workspaces and overview modes really sold it for me. Whoever designed the dynamic workspaces is my hero.

Agreed, I use Gnome 3 on openSUSE at home, Gnome 2 on Fedora and Windows 7 at work - and Gnome 3 decimates them all. It took a few days to get used to losing a Start menu, but I never think about it (until I get to work and fling my cursor into the top left corner, and nothing happens...).

[garegin]

unity. it actually harms linux's reputation, because ubuntu is the flagship distro. looks horrible compared to modern OSes like windows 7 and osx (hell, i'll take 10.0 UI looks over this bile). lacks features and works poorly. feels like a cheap knockoff of osx.
gnome is too lacking in features. their excuse is that complexity hinders usability, but windows and osx have those "confusing" features and noobs get along just fine.
kde is an absolute clusterfuck. is it not just too many features. it is thrown together and lacks coherence and quality. whats worse is that there are no big distros other than opensuse who actually work on it to integrate it to the desktop.
xfce lacks features. but that's what lightweight means. you get only get lightweight by losing functionality or bling. no distro that integrates it properly.
lxde. lacks even more functionality. no distro that integrates it properly.

[Hirager]

unity. it actually harms linux's reputation, because ubuntu is the flagship distro. looks horrible compared to modern OSes like windows 7 and osx (hell, i'll take 10.0 UI looks over this bile). lacks features and works poorly. feels like a cheap knockoff of osx.
gnome is too lacking in features. their excuse is that complexity hinders usability, but windows and osx have those "confusing" features and noobs get along just fine.
kde is an absolute clusterfuck. is it not just too many features. it is thrown together and lacks coherence and quality. whats worse is that there are no big distros other than opensuse who actually work on it to integrate it to the desktop.
xfce lacks features. but that's what lightweight means. you get only get lightweight by losing functionality or bling. no distro that integrates it properly.
lxde. lacks even more functionality. no distro that integrates it properly.

Actually, there is another distribution that gained perfect integration of KDE - Fedora! Since version 16 the system feels robust and complete. I had no issues with it ever again. I just can't go back to my previous favourite distros - they are too crude in comparison or require to much maintenance effort.