DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 611, 25 May 2015 |
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux community is always producing and distributing new technology. This week we turn our eyes to shiny new desktops, elected officials and package managers. We begin with a review of Kubuntu 15.04, the first release of this official Ubuntu community distribution to feature the Plasma 5 desktop environment. Read on to find out how Kubuntu and Plasma perform. In our Tips and Tricks column this week we provide a quick overview of Ubuntu's experimental Snappy package manager. Plus we provide a quick reference guide for operating Snappy for those interested in using it. In our News section this week we discuss new packages making their way into openSUSE's rolling release distribution. We also share some thoughts from Debian's new Project Leader and we discuss a file system bug which has hit some people running ext4 on cutting-edge releases of the Linux kernel. In our Torrent Corner we share the operating systems we are seeding and then we provide a list of the distributions released last week. In addition, we introduce our first Opinion Poll and we hope you will join in the conversation and share your thoughts with us. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Exploring Kubuntu 15.04
Kubuntu is an official Ubuntu community project which releases new versions in step with the rest of the Ubuntu community. Kubuntu ships with KDE's Plasma desktop by default, offering users the latest technology to come out of the KDE project. Kubuntu's most recent release, version 15.04, is the first to ship with Plasma 5 and this is also the first version of the distribution to ship with systemd as the default init technology. The distribution's release announcement states, "Plasma 5, the next generation of KDE's desktop, has been rewritten to make it smoother to use while retaining the familiar setup. The second set of updates to Plasma 5 are now stable enough for everyday use and is the default in this version of Kubuntu."
The latest Kubuntu release is offered in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds. The distribution's live media is an ISO file 1.2GB in size. Booting from the live media brings us to a graphical screen. A window appears asking if we would like to run a live, temporary instance of the operating system or begin installing the distribution. Taking the live option loads the Plasma 5 desktop which is laid out in a fairly traditional manner. The application menu, task switcher and system tray are placed at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we can find an icon for launching the project's system installer. The background resembles the view through a kaleidoscope. In the upper-left corner of the screen there is a small icon which opens a menu where we can adjust the Plasma desktop and work with widgets. I will discuss these features more at a later time.
Kubuntu's system installer is a graphical application that features a friendly, streamlined layout. We are first asked if we would like to install third-party software such as multimedia codecs and Flash. On this first screen we can also choose whether to download software updates from the distribution's repositories during the installation. The following screen asks whether we would like to have our hard drive automatically partitioned for us or if we would like to manually partition the disk. I took the manual option and found the partition manager was presented in a friendly manner and it was easy to navigate. Kubuntu supports setting up ext2/3/4, Btrfs, JFS and XFS partitions. I decided to use Btrfs as my primary partition during the trial. On the partitioning screen we can optionally choose where to install Kubuntu's boot loader. The next screen asks us to select our time zone from a map of the world and the following screen asks us to confirm our keyboard's layout. The final screen asks us to create a user account for ourselves and we can choose to encrypt the files in our home directory from this screen. The installer then quickly finishes copying its files and we are asked to reboot the computer.
One thing which stood out while using Kubuntu's installer was the distribution still labels buttons using text rather than icons. I really appreciate this small feature, especially when working with the partition manager. It has become popular recently for some projects to do away with text and use symbols on buttons rather than words which indicate what a button does. I much prefer Kubuntu's approach as I believe the word "Delete" more clearly conveys its meaning than a minus sign.
Kubuntu 15.04 -- The System Settings configuration panel
(full image size: 770kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The distribution boots to a graphical login screen. Kubuntu now ships with SDDM instead of KDM as the default display manager. Personally, I'm not sure I see much difference between the two, at least not from an end user's perspective. At any rate, SDDM worked for me and I was able to login to the Plasma 5 desktop. Shortly after I logged in for the first time two icons in the system tray caught my attention.
Clicking the first icon to catch my attention brought up an application window for Kubuntu's device driver manager. This program offers to collect information on our computer's hardware and, optionally, install third-party drivers which may work better with our devices than the default drivers. The device driver manager worked well for me, correctly identifying my hardware and quickly installing new drivers.
Clicking the second system tray icon to attract my attention brought up a widget letting me know package updates were available in Kubuntu's repositories. There were 50 updates listed as available (19 of them, I was told, were security updates). These updates were 42MB in size. I gave the system my permission to install the waiting updates and found all updated packages were installed without any problems.
I tried running Kubuntu in two test environments, a VirtualBox virtual machine and a desktop computer. In both environments the distribution performed well. Boot times were short, the Plasma desktop was responsive, my displays were set to their maximum resolutions and networking and sound worked as expected. Kubuntu was stable during my trail and performed tasks quickly. The distribution uses a large amount of memory compared to most other distributions I have run recently; Kubuntu required approximately 650MB of RAM to login to the Plasma desktop.
The distribution ships with a useful collection of software and appears to be sticking to the one-application-per-task philosophy. In the application menu we find the Firefox web browser (with Flash enabled), the Konversation IRC client, a remote desktop client and the KTorrent bittorrent software. We also have access to LibreOffice's productivity suite, the KMail e-mail program, the Okular document viewer and a personal organizer. Plasma ships with the System Settings panel which makes it easy to configure the look and feel of the desktop interface. We are also given the Gwenview image viewer, the K3b optical disc burning software and a hardware information browser called KInfoCentre. The distribution provides us with an archive manager, a text editor and a calculator. The Amarok music player and the Dragon Player video player are included along with codecs for playing most media files. Java is installed on the system along with the GNU Compiler Collection. Network Manager is present to help us connect to networks. In the background we find the Linux kernel, version 3.19.
Kubuntu 15.04 -- Acquiring packages with Muon Discover
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Most users will want to install additional software on their computers and Kubuntu provides the Muon Discover package manager to aid in this task. Muon Discover displays categories of software we can browse through. We can also search for packages by name or browse through a list of the most popular applications, based on what other users have installed. Selecting a package brings up a full page description of the software with a screen shot. We can install or remove a selected item with the click of a button. Muon Discover downloads and installs (or removes) packages in the background, leaving us to continue browsing for more items. I tried installing and removing a handful of programs and found Muon Discover worked quickly and smoothly. Actions currently being performed are listed at the bottom of the window and we can cancel any queued jobs in case we change our minds.
There were some aspects of Kubuntu I enjoyed a lot and others which I found annoying or distracting. As an example of a negative aspect, I could not find a way to disable audio notifications in Kubuntu 15.04. In the System Settings panel I found notification and alerts settings, all of which I disabled. In the Desktop Behaviour module I found a system bell option which I also disabled. Even with all sounds turned off, Plasma continued to beep whenever it wanted my attention. Audio alerts are something I have frequently turned off (successfully) in KDE4 and I found it frustrating I was seemingly unable to do the same in Plasma 5. Another problem I ran into was changing the desktop wallpaper. Kubuntu 15.04 ships with one wallpaper, a multicolour collection of shapes. Going into the desktop settings, we find a button that offers to download additional background images. Clicking the button to fetch new wallpapers always resulted in an unspecified network error during my trial.
On the positive side of things I found Plasma generally worked well and worked quickly. I experienced no crashes, no temporary freezing. Plasma was very quick to respond, both on physical hardware and in VirtualBox. I find Plasma to be less distracting and it has a more tidy layout when compared next to KDE4. While I generally enjoy using KDE4, I will admit it can be distracting at times and the notification system is a bit awkward. Plasma fixes these issues. Plasma 5 is less flashy, more streamlined and tucks some of its options away so they are not cluttering the interface. I would say Plasma is a strong evolutionary step forward from KDE4.
Kubuntu 15.04 -- Exploring available widgets
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One tool I particularly enjoyed using was KDE Connect. The KDE Connect module allows us to pair an Android device to our desktop computer over the network. This allows the Android device to display notifications on the Plasma desktop and the Android device can be used to remotely manage our desktop multimedia controls. Perhaps the most welcome feature KDE Connect offers is the ability to share a clipboard. Copying text in Plasma or on the Android device allows the other device to paste the same text. This makes sharing links or downloading material quite easy, even from a separate device.
Another aspect of Kubuntu 15.04 I enjoyed was the way in which Plasma handled widgets. Plasma widgets look and act in a very similar manner to KDE4 widgets, but I think the process has been streamlined a little. I used to find moving and placing widgets in KDE4 counter-intuitive and managing widgets on the panel took several steps. While using Plasma 5 I found desktop widgets were easy to place and I did not need to lock/unlock the panel in order to manipulate widgets the way I wanted. I also really like that widgets with similar functionality are, in a way, aware of each other. When I right-clicked on a widget, rather than removing it and loading a new widget with similar functionality, I could ask to see a list of alternative widgets. For instance, when I right-clicked on the clock and selected "Alternatives" I could immediately swap out a digital clock for an analog clock or a fuzzy clock. Likewise, selecting the application menu and asking for alternatives allows us to quickly switch to an application menu with a classic, tree layout.
Kubuntu 15.04 -- Plasma 5 with widgets
(full image size: 1.0MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusions
I generally enjoyed my time with Kubuntu 15.04. The distribution has gone through several changes in the past six months, swapping out KDE4 for Plasma 5, exchanging Upstart for systemd and removing KDM in favour of SDDM. Despite these significant changes, Kubuntu felt as stable as ever and, I think, was more responsive. I was quite happy with the default array of applications, the friendly system installer and the style of the Plasma 5 desktop. There were a few minor problems, rough edges like the network connection issue which prevented me from downloading additional desktop wallpapers. However, Plasma more than made up for it by improving widget management and offering great performance. Big adjustments may be happening behind the scenes, but Kubuntu 15.04 feels like an evolutionary step forward rather than a revolutionary change.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
openSUSE adopts Plasma 5, Neil McGovern discusses DPL tasks and recent Linux kernels hit with ext4 bug
Exciting new changes are coming to users of the openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution. The rolling release branch of openSUSE offers cutting-edge features and this past week three new items were introduced to Tumbleweed. Ruby 2.2 was made the default branch of the Ruby language available to Tumbleweed users. A more visual change was the choice to make KDE's Plasma 5 the default desktop environment for openSUSE Tumbleweed. Perhaps the most significant change though was the introduction of version 5.0 of the GNU compiler. "KDE Plasma 5 is the new default, replacing KDE 4 in Tumbleweed. We understand that this is controversial to some of the users, and others
very much welcome the change. Please ensure to constructively report
your issues to the KDE Team. The currently larger change being prepared is a switch of the compiler to GCC 5.0. There are still packages failing that are part of the core set. Once all this has been solved, I'm sure we'll also see this change happen for Tumbleweed." A major change in compiler's version number typically brings with it improved security, better performance and new bug reports. More information on openSUSE's latest developments can be found in this mailing list post.
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Neil McGovern has been Debian Project Leader only a short time, but he has already made his rounds in the media and made a start on his work as Debian's fearless leader. McGovern has posted a list of interviews he has done (along with links), a list of tasks he is working on and this interesting miscellaneous item: "In case you were wondering about the reach of Debian amongst non-FOSS circles, I'm currently volunteering at the Cambridge CAMRA Beer festival. The theme this year is Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as it's the 42nd annual festival. After hearing about my election, the festival organizer asked if any Debian developer would like free entry,
as they rely on Debian for a lot of the festival."
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People who run rolling release distributions, such as Arch Linux, gain the benefit of always having the latest versions of software. They also receive a stream of new features to enjoy. On the other hand, people running rolling release distributions are often the first to encounter software bugs. For instance, a data corruption bug in the ext4 file system appears to be affecting recent releases of the Linux kernel and a number of Arch users have reported being hit by the bug. Fortunately, a fix has already been made available and distributions are working on fixing the issue. Ted Ts'o, a kernel developer who does a great deal of the work on Linux file systems, commented on the situation, saying: "These sorts of subtle data corruptors tend to be highly timing
dependent, and very hard to find. Sometimes these bugs can hang around
for years before they are found and fixed. The flip side is that
fortunately, they tend to strike very rarely. It's also why I'm very
grateful for developers like Jan and Lukas." Ts'o went into more detail on the bug and how it may be triggered. The information he provided can be found in this mailing list post.
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Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu's Snappy package manager
Canonical, the organization which supports Ubuntu, has been developing a new method for working with software packages. The new technology, which has appeared in some experimental editions of Ubuntu, is called Snappy. Snappy packages are supposed to have a number of advantages over software packages common to most other Linux distributions. Five characteristics of Snappy packages in particular stand out.
- The OS and application files are kept completely separate, as a set of distinct read-only images.
- Transactional, image-based delta updates for the system and applications that can always be rolled back.
- Files are read-only, which means they cannot be tampered with and can be updated perfectly and predictably every time.
- Delta management keeps the size of downloads to the bare minimum.
- Signatures and fingerprints ensure you're running exactly what was published by the developer.
I had been reading a lot about Snappy being used on mobile devices and Snappy packages being developed for embedded devices and the much-hyped Internet of Things. I have also heard rumours Ubuntu's desktop edition may move to using Snappy packages by default in the near future, depreciating APT and .deb packages. However, it was not until recently that I found time to experiment with Snappy and see how the new package manager compared against other Linux package managers. The Ubuntu website has a tutorial for setting up a virtual machine running a minimal edition of Ubuntu and the Snappy package manager. I followed the instructions provided and soon had a virtual machine running with a bare bones, text console interface. I was able to sign into the minimal operating system and begin experimenting.
One of the first things I noticed upon logging into my virtual instance of Ubuntu was that there is a welcome message letting us know .deb packages were not being used on the system, instead we should use Snappy. Despite the message, I did find the low-level dpkg package manager was installed and I could bring up a list of about three hundred .deb packages which apparently made up the base system. However, trying to run apt-get to install or remove packages caused a message to be displayed letting me know I should be using Snappy rather than apt-get. I suspect running the two package managers together on the same system is not recommended.
While Snappy can perform several actions, I want to focus on seven core commands the Snappy package manager recognizes. The first is snappy info. Running snappy info display some basic information about our operating system and what it is running. The summary is very short, but it can give us an idea of what kind of hardware we are running on and the applications installed. We can extend the command a little and run snappy info <package> in order to get a very brief summary of information concerning a specific package.
The second command I experimented with was snappy list. Running this command will show us a list of packages currently installed on the system. Modifying the command to snappy list -v will display all the installed packages along with their version numbers. Since we can have multiple versions of each package installed, the active version of a package is marked with an *. This means if we have, for example, two copies of a web server on our system, we can identify which version is actually running. We can further extend the list command a little to find out which Snappy packages can be upgraded. Running snappy list -uv shows our installed packages with an * next to items that can be upgraded from Snappy's software repository.
Speaking of updates, the snappy update command will update all packages installed on the operating system. So far as I can tell, all packages are always upgraded to their latest version. I was unable to find a way to simply upgrade one specific package in my test environment. However, I was able to upgrade all packages and then rollback unwanted upgrades, which brings me to the next command.
When we have upgraded a package and found we preferred the older copy of the software we can rollback to a previous version. This is done using the snappy rollback <package> command. Without any further arguments, Snappy will rollback the given package to its previous version. However, we can also specify which version of the package we want to be using. We can do this by running snappy rollback <package> <version>. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it is possible to use the rollback command to upgrade to a newer version of an installed package. This means the rollback command can activate any version of a Snappy package, whether it is older or newer than the currently active version.
Snappy allows us to search through its repository of software using the search command. Running just snappy search will display all packages currently present in the remote repository. We can hunt for specific types of software by running snappy search <pattern> which will return packages with names similar to the provided pattern.
The two final, and perhaps most important, commands are snappy install <package> and snappy remove <package>. These two commands install software from Snappy's repository and remove all versions of an installed package, respectively. So far as I can tell, there is no way to remove one version only of a Snappy package. I suspect this is because Snappy installs a base package and then applies delta updates to the package rather than maintaining multiple whole versions of an application.
I made a few observations while experimenting with Snappy. One is that Snappy appears to work fairly quickly. Transactions are not instant, but they do happen rapidly. The packages I downloaded and installed from the software repository appeared to be about an equivalent size to .deb packages. I did not find Snappy packages to be unusually large.
At the moment there appear to be very few Snappy packages available to try. I found a simple terminal echo program, a web server, some hardware specific packages for various embedded devices, but little else. It may be I was using a testing repository just for people who want to experiment, but at time of writing the range of functionality we can get from Ubuntu's Snappy repository is limited. With regard to the packages in the demo repository, there is not much information to be had about them. The descriptions provided by Snappy for each package are quite short and do not tell us much about what each package does.
When we install new Snappy applications they are stored in the /apps directory. If we wish to, we can explore the /apps directory and browse or run applications stored in this corner of the file system. It appears as though each program gets its own sub-directory, isolating it from other programs and other versions of itself. Most Linux package managers will complain if the user modifies or removes files directly. I experimented to see what would happen if I deleted the directories containing Snappy applications. I found Snappy correctly identified when a piece of software had been manually removed and Snappy considers the package deleted. Snappy does not seem to care how the package was removed, merely that it is no longer present.
At this point I feel it is safe to say Snappy is in its early stages. While the package manager works, it feels limited in some ways. We can install packages, remove them and hunt for new software, but I feel some functionality is missing. Specifically, I wanted more documentation and to be able update just one package while leaving other items at their original versions. Hopefully this feature (or documentation on how to perform the task) will appear later. Locking packages at a specific version would also be a nice feature to have. I was happy to note Snappy does not appear to have any bugs. While Snappy may still need to grow, everything it does do appears to be done correctly and I encountered no problems.
Finally, I like how easy it is to rollback (or roll ahead) packages. Switching between active versions of packages happens quickly and smoothly. I think this will be a very welcome feature on servers and desktops as well as embedded devices.
For people interested in experimenting with Snappy, we have added the Snappy package manager to our quick reference guide to package managers.
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Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
Bittorrent is a great way to transfer large files, particularly open source operating system images, from one place to another. Most bittorrent clients recover from dropped connections automatically, check the integrity of files and can re-download corrupted bits of data without starting a download over from scratch. These characteristics make bittorrent well suited for distributing open source operating systems, particularly to regions where Internet connections are slow or unstable.
Many Linux and BSD projects offer bittorrent as a download option, partly for the reasons listed above and partly because bittorrent's peer-to-peer nature takes some of the strain off the project's servers. However, some projects do not offer bittorrent as a download option. There can be several reasons for excluding bittorrent as an option. Some projects do not have enough time or volunteers, some may be restricted by their web host provider's terms of service. Whatever the reason, the lack of a bittorrent option puts more strain on a distribution's bandwidth and may prevent some people from downloading their preferred open source operating system.
With this in mind, DistroWatch plans to give back to the open source community by hosting and seeding bittorrent files for distributions that do not offer a bittorrent option themselves. For now, we are hosting a small number of distribution torrents, listed below. The list of torrents offered will be updated each week and we invite readers to e-mail us with suggestions as to which distributions we should be hosting. When you message us, please place the word "Torrent" in the subject line, make sure to include a link to the ISO file you want us to seed and please make sure the project you are recommending does not already host its own torrents. We want to primarily help distributions and users who do not already have a torrent option. To help us maintain and grow this free service, please consider making a donation.
The table below provides a list of torrents we currently host. If you do not currently have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 62
- Total downloads completed: 34,930
- Total data uploaded: 6.9TB
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Released Last Week |
PC-BSD 10.1.2
Ken Moore has announced the release of PC-BSD 10.1.2. The PC-BSD project offers users a desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. The project also provides a server edition, called TrueOS. The latest release of PC-BSD allows users to maintain their home directories on an encrypted external drive and offers encrypted guest accounts. This release also includes Tor mode, an option that forces all network traffic through the Tor network. "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of the next PC-BSD / TrueOS quarterly release, 10.1.2. PC-BSD 10.1.2 notable changes: New PersonaCrypt utility allows moving all of users $HOME directory to an encrypted USB Drive. This drive can be connected at login, and used across different systems. Stealth Mode - allows login to a blank $HOME directory, which is encrypted with a one-time GELI key. This $HOME directory is then discarded at logout, or rendered unreadable after a reboot. Tor mode - Switch firewall to running transparent proxy, blocking all traffic except what is routed through Tor. Migrated to IPFW firewall for enabling VIMAGE in 10.2. Added sound configuration via the first boot utility." Further details and instructions for upgrading from previous releases can be found in the project's release announcement.
Q4OS 1.2.2
The development team behind the Debian-based Q4OS distribution have announced the availability of Q4OS 1.2.2. This new release presents a minor update to the Q4OS 1.2 series and introduces a new graphical package manager, called Software Centre. "We introduce the new 'Software Centre' in this version, now it makes management of free applications much easier. We plan an important option for the Software Centre, which would allow direct purchasing of non-free applications and installing them in Q4OS seamlessly. The other notable change coming with the new Q4OS release is completion of several Welcome Screen translations, thanks to excellent work of external translators from different countries. A few internal improvements and bug fixes has been closed as usual." This release of Q4OS is available in 32-bit and 64-bit x86 builds. Further details on the release are available in the project's brief release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll |
What is your preferred desktop environment?
Welcome to our first weekly opinion poll. In an effort to get to know our readers better and in the hope of having an open discussion on what matters to people, we are going to conduct a series of opinion polls. We hope you will join in and let us know your thoughts. This week we would like to hear from you: What is your preferred desktop environment? Do you prefer lots of configuration options, eye candy, simplicity? Do you like to have lots of features or would you rather have speed and a small memory footprint? Does it matter to you if your desktop is built using GTK or Qt libraries? If your favourite graphical interface is not listed in the poll, please let us know which desktop or window manager you are using in the comments section below.
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Favourite Desktop
Cinnamon: | 857 (15%) |
Enlightenment: | 72 (1%) |
GNOME Shell: | 540 (10%) |
KDE: | 1220 (22%) |
LXDE: | 344 (6%) |
MATE: | 762 (13%) |
Unity: | 269 (5%) |
Xfce: | 1243 (22%) |
Other: | 340 (6%) |
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DistroWatch.com News |
Distributions added to waiting list
- K-Mint Ultimate. K-Mint Ultimate is based on Linux Mint's KDE Edition and features updated packages.
- Universal OS Speed Edition. Universal OS Speed Edition is presently based of EBOS Speed Edition and attempts to fix bugs and reduce resource requirements.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 June 2015. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Opinion Poll - What is your preferred desktop environment? (by Mario Lorenzo Lanzani on 2015-05-25 01:04:37 GMT from Europe)
PekWM
2 • favorite desktop (by phil clow on 2015-05-25 01:41:19 GMT from North America)
ubuntu netbook remix is the best looking of all desktops. I would like to see it available for a newer os.
3 • opinion pol (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2015-05-25 01:46:32 GMT from Africa)
KDE
4 • Desktop poll (by Travisyard on 2015-05-25 01:54:55 GMT from Planet Mars)
I chose other, but I would have liked to see Openbox on the list.
5 • favorite desktop (by Thomas Mueller on 2015-05-25 02:12:11 GMT from North America)
My favorite desktop or window manager is IceWM. There are others I'd like to try also, including i3 and ratpoison. Ratpoison takes some learning curve to get used to. I seem to find my way better in IceWM than in my limited tries with KDE 4.x and couldn't find my way around in GNOME. I've used IceWM in Linux (Slackware 13.0), FreeBSD and NetBSD.
6 • favorite desktop (by Carlos Felipe on 2015-05-25 02:24:18 GMT from South America)
I think Cinnamon is a modern, easy and customizable desktop environment, better than GNOME Shell and others. KDE is so beautiful, but I don't know..
7 • Favorite DE (by mikef90000 on 2015-05-25 02:24:43 GMT from North America)
As someone who prefers launching apps & docs from easily customizable panels, I use Xfce.
LXDE comes close in this area, but alarmingly LXqt has regressed. Also, MATE shows the dated GNOME 2 lack of a panel 'editor'. Hopefully both of these DEs will move forward.
BTW great review of KDE Plasma 5, I shall have to check it out. Memory footprint is a little worrying ....
8 • Opinion Pol (by jaws222 on 2015-05-25 02:27:46 GMT from North America)
I go Openbox
9 • Rolling Fud (by linuxista on 2015-05-25 02:28:03 GMT from North America)
The kernel bug only affected a small portions of users using Raid0 under certain circumstances. Additionally, it does not seem to be limited solely to rolling distros like Arch and Gentoo. Below are some posts from the threads.
>I believe the problem people are experiencing here is due to a raid0 bug with trim that I discovered on Fedora with 3.19.7 that was backported from 4.0.2. It still hasn't been fixed in any release.
>It's affecting almost all raids, some non-raids and across multiple distros (arch, fedora, debian).
>Unfortunately, I don't think you can blame all of your problems on the bug fixed by this particular bug. First of all, it doesn't apply to directories at all; secondly, it's been around for a long time. I'd have to check and see whether or not 3.16 had the problem, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. - Ted Cho
10 • My Favorite Desktop (by Muthu on 2015-05-25 02:29:05 GMT from Asia)
I always love KDE for its looks and the cool blue theme. Now, Iam running (Netrunner 16-Plasma 5.3) and Linux Mint KDE.
11 • Opinion Poll (by Chris on 2015-05-25 02:30:23 GMT from North America)
DW, thank you for doing this; hopefully, such polls will result in quality information in which to provide future articles and, should you release the results, help distro/respin developers to provide products more in line with the public's demands.
However, I have a couple of observations/suggestions: 1. Under the provided format, it would have been more helpful if you listed all DE/WMs in DW's search database in lieu of listing several and then a Other category. 2. Such may not be available from your polling script, but a ranking poll would be more helpful. I cannot speak for everyone, but I select DE/WMs based upon the system's mission/needs, which varies. However, I have a few favorites depending upon the mission/needs.
My Ranked List (YMMV): Openbox Xfce LXDE/LXQT MATE Cinnamon Unity KDE GNOME Shell
P.S. #! RIP
12 • Opinion Pol (by jaws222 on 2015-05-25 02:34:21 GMT from North America)
So many good ones IMO. Hard to rank them but rather categorize in my own way:
The good ones:
Openbox LXDE XFCE Mate Cinnamon
Middle of the road:
Enlightenment KDE Trinity IceWM
The (really)bad:
Unity Gnome Shell
13 • Raid0 (by linuxista on 2015-05-25 02:41:30 GMT from North America)
For the bug to affect you it has to involve Raid0, ext4, and discard or fstrim. If you're using Raid0 your tolerance for risk would seem to be far higher than worrying about a potential kernel bug.
14 • desktops (by linuxista on 2015-05-25 02:43:16 GMT from North America)
A couple of votes for Openbox and i3.
15 • Kubuntu (by Reuben on 2015-05-25 02:48:44 GMT from North America)
I'm currently using Kubuntu 15.04. I installed a daily image a few months ago. Plasma 5 is nice. There are a lot of little tweeks here and there that really add up to create a better experience than KDE4. A few annoyances here and there. It's always trying to get me to reboot, like after I ran "apt-get autoremove" to get rid of some old kernels. Anyways, if you're going to use it I strongly suggest that you install the backports repository. Plasma 5.3 and Applications 15.04 have some nice features. I can only imagine that Plasma 5.4 will be even better.
As for the data corruption bug, last I heard it wasn't actually ext4, but a bug in mdadm.
16 • Preferred DE (by M.Z. on 2015-05-25 02:59:54 GMT from Planet Mars)
I'd say KDE is my preferred DE, love the looks feature richness & customization. Others are fairly good too, but I tend to stick to KDE apps like Okular because they look good everywhere & allow some customization as needed, though some non Qt apps like Firefox & LibreOffice are excellent. My list:
1 KDE - best overall, especially on any recent hardware 2 Cinnamon - a solid second with lots to like 3 XFCE - a nice mid to light weight DE 4 MATE- still good just like the older Gnome releases were 5 LXDE - best truly light weight DE 6 Enlightenment - kind of attractive & interesting, but E19 is a lot fatter than expected
Agree with @12 about the bad DEs, though flip the order because nothing is worse than spyware no matter what Canonical's intentions were.
17 • Favorite DE (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-05-25 03:27:18 GMT from North America)
Best DE for me is no DE, just a Debian core netinstall with either Openbox or Fluxbox WM. The only way to go, add the necessary applications for it to be fully functional. Very fast, light-weight, fully customizable, all without the bloat of KDE, or memory consumption of Gnome. If I were to run a DE, it would be no doubt XFCE, and second would be LXDE. But really it is what the user is looking for in a distro, and the needs of that individual. I chose simplicity.
18 • No subject (by erinis on 2015-05-25 03:48:17 GMT from North America)
I'm waiting for the Blackberry Raspberry PI ? Seriously your hardware should be the focal point of what you have. It's limited as to the age of the computer. My advice is if its a low end older model stick with XFCE as this is the perfect balance unless you have the latest and greatest. Experiment with what you have and enjoy but stop complaining about DE's you don't like. Thanks
19 • The ability to purchase non-free applications on Q4OS (by Mint 2 is not my Style on 2015-05-25 03:48:59 GMT from Asia)
As the Trinity Desktop is the rebirth of KDE 3.5, the ability to directly purchase non-free applications on Q4OS could be seen as the second reincarnation of Lindows 4.5 purchasing model. Welcome to 2003 and best wishes to Q4OS team.
20 • Favourite Desktops (by Newby on 2015-05-25 04:04:41 GMT from North America)
KDE4 looks nice, but had to deactivate nepomunk and akonadi to make the thing even remotely usable. Usually use the lighter weight Xfce, and for serious work (ie. -don't want visual distractions), I use fluxbox.
Was interested in comments by 17) Leonard Ashley: If you've used BOTH openbox and fluxbox, would be interested in any comments you may have on their relative merits against each other. For me, Fluxbox won out since it uses text-based configuration files, rather than xml. Can someone explain why anyone would want to deal with xml-based config files rather than text-based??? Doesn't make sense to me. Also, openbox documentation shows tons of configuration options, but no way to download a summary pdf (or even a single large text file would help) of all that documentation for off-line study. Both problems were killers for me, so opted for Fluxbox. Note: To avoid severe eye strain, I have Xfce set for resolution of 1024X768. Easy to do with the display manager. To get that resoltuion in fluxbox had to edit the following line: /home/username/.fluxbox/startup In the "startup" file,added the line: xrandr --size 1024x768 -r 75 where size is the desired resolution, and r is the desired refresh rate. Hope that is useful for anyone trying fluxbox for the first time. Not sure what I have to do to get fonts to display nicely (no "jaggies") as in Xfce or KDE? Would also appreciate comments and tips on using i3 and Pekwm...
21 • Opinion Poll (by Chris on 2015-05-25 04:53:26 GMT from Oceania)
WindowMaker
22 • Opinion Poll (by Andy on 2015-05-25 04:58:04 GMT from North America)
TDE Trinity
23 • desktops (by frodopogo on 2015-05-25 05:34:35 GMT from North America)
Mint MATE is my daily driver, but I have Cinnamon on a partition of two different computers, and I think that's my future DE. The Mint version of Cinnamon is superb, but a couple of months ago, I installed Cubuntu on a partition, and went through the work of changing various things to make it English language. One of the reasons was that it offers the possibility of switching from Cinnamon to Unity or MATE. I really don't want to knock something I hadn't tried, so it gives me that option. But the Cubuntu implementation of Cinnamon is visually STUNNING. I don't like the Ubuntu colors, and in the Ubuntu MATE edition they make me slightly nauseous, but somehow Cubuntu just makes them work in such an elegant way. Maybe part of it is that I DO like the Ubuntu icon set, and it works really well with Cinnamon. If I wasn't concerned about Ubuntu spyware, I'd probably have switched to it already. Unity was not as bad as I expected... the side bar doesn't bother me that much, but it's still VERY confusing. I think they should make Cubuntu the official edition.... and ditch the spyware. I was surprised by how much different Ubuntu MATE is from Mint MATE.... Ubuntu MATE is useable, but Mint MATE definitely has the edge. I COULD fairly easily use lxde, xfce, or KDE if I had to, but there are things about the xfce and KDE start menus that annoy me too much. With xfce, I think it's the altogether too common whiskers menu.... it puts the "off" button in an odd place, and makes it really small. When I go to shut the computer down at night, I'm TIRED, and don't want to hunt for a teensy little button in a weird place!!! If you're going to make it small, at least make it RED!!! It just flies in the face of the concept of user friendliness.... what WERE they thinking???? I forget exactly what it is KDE does that annoys me with the menu.... but putting a "k" in front of EVERYTHING is korny and konfusing!!! :-D (my brain tags everything by the first letter, so that has katastophic effects on my memory to remember which program is which.... JUST what I needed!) I don't suppose that will ever change, it must be some KDE kommunity kommunal kode!!! (See how SILLY it is??? It doesn't exactly kommand respect!)
24 • Favorite DE (by DWave on 2015-05-25 05:39:11 GMT from North America)
Ah, the age old question of DE/WM preferences.
My favorite DE is XFCE... since most of the computers I use/administrate are a bit long in the tooth, XFCE runs beautifully on them, while still being easy to use/configure, and offering fair customization options.
For personal use, I usually go for a simple WM, however. I use WindowMaker and Fluxbox. I love the oldschool charm of WMaker, but I tend to use Fluxbox a bit more often, out of practicality. I set them both up with hotkeys to launch my programs, and pseudo-tiling keybindings.
25 • Favorite DE (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-05-25 06:25:49 GMT from North America)
@20 - NewBy
I do run both Openbox and Fluxbox, both have their merits and attributes, besides one being a text based and the other XML, really means very little since I don't have a problem configuring either one. Openbox has a lot more information available versus Fluxbox. I have been running Openbox for several years, still finding new and interesting tweaks, like complete transparency as Fluxbox is. Fluxbox has a little more bling or shine to it, and is very similar in the layout, both have lxappearance, nitrogen, and the menu editor is quite similiar. "/home/config/openbox" configuration files are simple compared to "/home/.fluxbox" in which some of the files resemble and function as would those in Openbox, but there are a few others which require a little more attention to detail and understanding the purpose of those files. Fluxbox in my opinion is more advanced, but yet I enjoy Openbox and don't see a need to part with it. I also dabble with i3 and Bluetile WM's. I enjoy Debian Linux. Hope this helped. Thank you
26 • Favorite Desktop (by William on 2015-05-25 06:47:09 GMT from Europe)
Number one, most Awesome Desktop, is simply "Awesome". My number two is Fluxbox.
1 : Awesome 2 : Fluxbox 3 : ............... (empty, nothing, linux/bsd (pc) turned off)
27 • Antirollers (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-05-25 07:03:00 GMT from North America)
What was that blurb on Arch ext4? An isolated bug is bad generalization. The Arch forum link concludes it's "a raid0 bug with [SSD] trim." Pretty obscure corner case.
And read Tso at your own link: "...it's been around for a long time. I'd have to check and see whether or not 3.16 had the problem, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Sometimes these bugs can hang around for years before they are found and fixed."
A bug sitting around for years is an argument for rolling releases. Debian / Ubuntu sits on known fixes; Arch ships pronto.
I never run ext4 with journal anyway (-O "^has_journal"), so I avoid most ext4 problems. Sometimes you just have to be smart about what kernel devs offer you and only use reliable featuers. That's nothing to do with rolling/static arguments.
28 • Favorite DE (by Simon on 2015-05-25 07:05:01 GMT from Oceania)
There are 2 main reasons why i'm using enlightenment over say something like KDE The first is that Enlightenment allows you to change Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) independently per screen, Handy if you want to keep a editor on 1 screen in 1 Virtual desktop and swap between A browser for doco and a PDF data sheet both in different virtual desktops on the other screen.
The second is themeablity, People don't often see this because not many people have put the effort into making really good themes for enlightenment, but heres 3 examples. The first is pretty much the default followed by something i'm working on and another
https://www.enlightenment.org/ss/display.php?image=e-555de318e2e960.52972699.png https://www.enlightenment.org/ss/display.php?image=e-552398ac5f69d8.34996133.jpg https://www.enlightenment.org/ss/display.php?image=e-5537e17215b3c4.77281006.jpg
I tend to also go towards kde/Qt apps as i generally find them more configurable then the gtk equivelent meld and Hexchat are Exceptions here
29 • i3 & pekwm (by linuxista on 2015-05-25 07:08:25 GMT from North America)
@20 : re i3, you'd probably like it since the config files are simple and text based, not xml, lua or haskell. It's quite simple to get up and running. Maybe the easiest of the various tiling wms I've tried. The documentation is quite good (i3wm.org), and dependencies are minimal (not like Xmonad).
Re Pekwm, this might be the best resource : https://urukrama.wordpress.com/index/. Also Manjaro has a community version with Pekwm set up as the desktop : http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarolinux/files/community/. You could run it in a virtual machine to get a feel. It's got tabbed apps like Fluxbox, but I'm not sure what other advantages it might have over Openbox or Fluxbox.
30 • Favourite desktop (by John LeDuc on 2015-05-25 07:13:28 GMT from Asia)
A combination of twm, vdesk and complcated bash-script to do virtual desktops.
31 • KDE & Review (by Sondar on 2015-05-25 07:26:59 GMT from Europe)
Not my cup o' tea, is KDE. Bloated, following the wholly underisable and inexorable trend emanating from you-know-where. Notwithstanding, another great review from Jesse. As for unwanted beeping, simple expedient is unsolder onboard sounder, if present, plug in a decent external sound system (green plug) and leave the system OFF unless playing music/video. Works for me. On the other hand, if it must be KDE, might've been a more appropriate choice of review to select K-Mint Ultimate, (now in waitng list!), as Mint tends to tidy loose ends more effectively. Xfce would've been better still for a mainline distro, although one of the compact offerings, especially the burgeoning Puppy derivatives, would avoid the bloat, run faster, cover most requirements and save a pile of dosh. And, possibly be a lot more fun, if that's your bag.
32 • Favourite Desktop (by Elizabeth on 2015-05-25 07:29:27 GMT from Europe)
After trying them all, I have been a devoted Xfce user for several years. I am not impressed by wavy boxes or other fancy effects, I need functionality and efficiency in a neat and satisfying workspace. The beauty of Xfce for me is its customizabilityness - it can be made to work exactly as I do.
33 • Re Desktoip Environments (by salparadise on 2015-05-25 07:48:06 GMT from Europe)
What, no Pantheon?
34 • KDE and Kubuntu (by Jura321 on 2015-05-25 07:56:18 GMT from Europe)
Hi,
I had kubuntu with KDE plasme 5 also installed just for testing purposes and I had encouraged more bugs than Jessie.
First and most distracting issue was about system tray place. I got used to run cherry tree with own-cloud client on every my systems to gather useful tips and tricks - and if you enable "system tray docking" the window of cherry tree will disappear and never come back. Also during my customization I have been hit by more errors and collapses - changing wallpapers, icons settings etc. Some advance configuration settings are still missing if you compare KDE 5 with KDE 4. I would be more modest to encourage using KDE PLASMA 5 on working machines. In nutshell it's worth to test it but be prepare for some tinkering.
Best regards Jura321
35 • Desktop Environment (by Romane on 2015-05-25 08:05:51 GMT from Oceania)
I think what really matters is that the environment works with the user. After that, then looks. I have tried a few different environments but keep coming back to KDE, simply because it works with me the way I want. I think it looks better (but at that, must admit to not having tried some of the environments that others above have praised). Also happen to much prefer QT over GTK, but that really is subjective. Tried Enlightenment, but don't have the parience to sit and tweak the look.
Of course, potato, potarto, tomato. tomarto :)
36 • desktop poll (by Bufo on 2015-05-25 08:29:23 GMT from North America)
KDE
37 • Desktop Env (by Black_Codec on 2015-05-25 08:40:17 GMT from Europe)
I voted for XFCE beacause i think it is the most adaptable. But my preffered enviro is fluxbox, a vm that need only a desktop manager to work out of the box and use more or less the same ram of e17/e19 the other people who use *box that claim them as smaller never see flux in action i think :P
38 • @37 RE:Desktop Env (by Black_Codec on 2015-05-25 08:41:15 GMT from Europe)
Sorry not "a vm" but "...a wm that need ..."
39 • desktop poll (by dave brown on 2015-05-25 08:46:57 GMT from North America)
i3.
40 • @1 - PekWM (by Carlos on 2015-05-25 08:48:06 GMT from Europe)
+1 LOL
41 • Desktop (by excollier on 2015-05-25 08:48:21 GMT from Europe)
After a few years with Cinnamon, Mate, KDE and Openbox I have settled on XFCE. It's fairly light, reasonably customisable an just does the job. Currently using it for Mint 17.1, Debian Wheezy and Jessie. Simple. I miss !# and it's take on OpenBox though.
42 • Favourite-Desktops (by NewBy on 2015-05-25 08:52:56 GMT from North America)
25) Leonard-Ashley: Thanks for the feedback on Fluxbox versus Openbox. 29) Linuxvista: Thanks also for your comments. Guess I will give Openbox another look, although maybe check i3 first. A simple stiling window manager with text-based config files sounds like minimalist perfection. Still not sure how to get nice looking fonts in fluxbox. Doing some "Googling" turned up: turn on antialiasing, turn off antialiasing, make use of style. Unless someone has the surefire answer, guess I will backup my fluxbox config files and experiment around with some settings to see what happens. Without a surefire answer, sometimes the best way to learn is to (figuratively) "blow things up" (in this case mess around with the config settings and see what mayhem results). The other related problem is trying to convince the girlfriend that this constitutes "Fun". Probably the wrong website to be discussing THAT problem. Sigh....
43 • Window Manager (by Martin on 2015-05-25 09:11:32 GMT from Europe)
I use both of these: Fluxbox Openbox Occasionally I play around with Icewm too.
44 • Desktop (by Lansley Nailor on 2015-05-25 09:16:11 GMT from Europe)
Kiss applies - DDE (Deepin for those not tried it yet) is by far the easiest and best.
45 • What is your preferred desktop environment? (by Devesh on 2015-05-25 09:17:41 GMT from Africa)
I am using KDE on Debian because when I tested desktop environments for multiple monitors years back it was the only one that ran reliably with the Nvidia drivers. I run 4 monitors and at the time Ubuntu Gnome worked fine on 2 but not 4. Got everything working well now so not I'm and not going to change it anytime soon.
46 • Desktop Vote (by emiloud on 2015-05-25 09:19:34 GMT from Africa)
I voted for KDE because it runs very well on Kaos Distribution and manage dual screens perfectly, non Qt applications behavior and looking feels good. My second choice for a Desktop is Cinnamon that is very light and smooth. For a laptop I use openbox with crunchbang customisation that enhance battery time usage.
47 • Favorite DE (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-05-25 09:44:27 GMT from North America)
@ 20 & 42 - NewBy: Don't know what Fluxbox distro you are using. Try VSIDO, very fast, sophisticated distro, you may just find what you are looking for. Excellent forum.
48 • Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) (by Elcaset on 2015-05-25 09:50:44 GMT from North America)
I vote for Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE). It is very fast, even on old hardware. Also, TDE has all of the features missing from the other really fast, light desktops. You can configure it to do just about anything you'd want.
49 • Kubuntu 15.04 Issues! (by Terry Parris on 2015-05-25 10:40:14 GMT from North America)
Though the review here is well done and others are not experiencing any issues with Kubuntu 15.04, I've attempted to load it on a Dell N5010 Inspiron laptop numerous times and one key feature just refuses to work for me. I can NOT search for anything from the desktop, the menu, or in Dolphin. On the desktop and in the menu I get NO results. In Dolphin I've gotten an error every time. I forget what the specific error is but search failed every time. The feature that the reviewer claimed didn't work (downloading desktop backgrounds, themes, or even backgrounds for SDDM) did indeed work on my system. One other issue I found with 15.04 was it incorrectly attempted to load a kernel module driver for Intel processors that was meant for Sandy Bridge and above processors. This kernel module made my old Arrandale core i5 run hot even with power management tools such as TLP and powertop (powertop has issues with systemd at present as you can find many posts on various distro's forums). My only other issue is that I'm NOT enamored by the FLAT look of the desktop (though it can be changed somewhat). The flat look is great for touch screen aficionados but doesn't cut it with most users who like the glitz of desktops past. It's very difficult to tell whether or not you clicked open an application and often times you open more than one instance of that application by accident. I expected several issues moving to Plasma 5 as when the move to Plasma 4 happened and I was not surprised. Given time Plasma 5 will be a great interface. Till such a time, I'm going to relegate myself to Kubuntu 14.04 LTS or I may even shift over to Debian 8 (Jessie) once I figure out how to get power management on my laptop figured out with systemd.
50 • Opinion Poll (by jymm on 2015-05-25 11:15:42 GMT from North America)
Mate, it was Gnome, which I now find unusable. I still like the classic or fallback modes of Gnome if used. Second would be Cinnamon.
51 • Opinion Poll (by EdB on 2015-05-25 11:45:47 GMT from Europe)
KDE on the workhorse (PCLinuxOS) Cinnamon on the less powered (Mint) LXDE for the underpowered (PCLinuxOS)
52 • Opimion Pol (by Joe on 2015-05-25 12:19:34 GMT from North America)
Xfce is the Rodney Danderfield of Desktop Environments. It gets no respect, it is old school, but it is still working.
53 • Poll (by itres on 2015-05-25 12:34:02 GMT from Europe)
Pantheon is not listed?
54 • Desktop poll (by Corbin Rune on 2015-05-25 12:45:53 GMT from North America)
My main three (equal order, really): Enlightenment, KDE, Openbox. I also can get behind Fluxbox (recently messed with it, and it's pretty fun), Lumina, LXQT, and XFCE. Budgie's interesting, but I haven't messed with it too much.
55 • Its a desktop (by lee on 2015-05-25 12:56:03 GMT from North America)
MATE now, Gnome2 formerly, has been my choice for a decade or more when I use keyboard and mouse. My desktop has no wallpaper, but is littered with links, files, pictures, and directories.
The panel is on top with an apps menu, browser icon, text editor icon, terminal icon, trash icon, weather app, system monitor app, clock app, and workpace switcher. All very Windows 95ish.
Our touch screens have iOS, Android, and Win 8.1 and all are different.
56 • DE (by Kry on 2015-05-25 13:08:33 GMT from Europe)
I'm in the minority, but for me, it's more important for something to work and to be fast, than being aestetically appleasing. The moment something uses way too much resources than necesserary, it's out. (Except Firefox. That thing is way too slow and crashes too often, but I still need it for browsing. :S)
"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. (Mark Twain)"
Aww, yiss.
57 • Xfce (by a on 2015-05-25 13:10:29 GMT from Europe)
I still like and use Xfce but they are starting to behave like Red Hat developers and removing features for no good reason without any regard for their users. Also they are planning a move to Gtk3, and this will lead me to switch to something else.
58 • Desktop Poll (by Montreal on 2015-05-25 13:43:59 GMT from Planet Mars)
I am running Mint Betsy 64bit w/MATE on my production box (Intel Quad core i5-3570K Asus P8Z77 mobo)... and oh! How I love my Betsy! I installed debian(Jessie)-based SolydK (KDE 4) 64bit on a HP core 2 duo laptop and customized the desktop to my liking. And it keeps rolling and rolling without a glitch. Very pleased with such a reliable distro. I also have a test box (Acer core 2 duo 64bit w/Intel chips) currently running KaOS Plasma 5, I wouldn't recommend to run it on a production box though, but it performs well and is stable if one only needs to surf the net, type documents, play Kpat. Out of curiosity, I keep a close eye on Solus (formerly EvolveOS) and the BUDGIE desktop. Couldn't care less about Cinnamon.
59 • Opinion Poll (by Bill on 2015-05-25 13:47:42 GMT from Planet Mars)
MATE Xfce Cinnamon
60 • Opinion Poll (by Chris on 2015-05-25 13:53:41 GMT from North America)
CDE
61 • Snappy (by dragonmouth on 2015-05-25 14:07:23 GMT from North America)
Snappy is another proprietary product, like Mir and Unity, that Canonical is using to create a walled garden for Ubuntu.
62 • de (by charlieD on 2015-05-25 14:08:46 GMT from Planet Mars)
Cinnamon. Kubuntu is not ready for daily use, way too buggy.
63 • Desktops. (by scrumtime on 2015-05-25 14:11:35 GMT from North America)
I only really use Openbox / Fluxbox / Pekwm/ and Ice WM....so actual DEs are not my thing.
I do have my GFs Gentoo box running with XFCE just for Marital bliss..as R clicking for a menu seemed a tad too difficult to master....when i get a chance to play I activate the R click option .
pretty much since the early days of linux I was more of a Fluxbox man though Gnome was great..sadly no more. Kde has always had too much junk for what i needed.... Enlightenment...try as I may I have never really got it to run right and every time i changed anything it seemed to make it worse..
I have been trying PEKWM manjaro for a while and it has grown on me. and Icewm I run on Antix and it has always run perfectly..
never tried Unity , Gnome3. budgie plasma cinnamon ..too much bother for my needs... and as everyone i know who has Gnome 3 has major problems with it i dont envisage me using it
64 • Prefered desktop (by Fernando Gracia on 2015-05-25 14:30:06 GMT from North America)
For my boxes only two DE are functional 1.-Xfce 2.- Mate
65 • Snappy vs. Tiny Core (by schultzter on 2015-05-25 14:47:49 GMT from North America)
I realise this isn't a perfectly valid comparison but the first thing I thought of when I read the article about Snappy was Tiny Core! It's a great distribution, one that keep looking for another reason to use (although I mostly stick with Arch). I realise the objectives of TC and Ubuntu Snappy are vastly different but I can't help but feel there's a lot of overlap.
66 • Mozilla Icons (by Dr. Robert Marmorstein on 2015-05-25 15:00:26 GMT from North America)
Good review. Thanks!
On upgrading my wife's laptop, we seem to have lost the icons for Firefox and Thunderbird. The programs show up in her menu and panel, but instead of an icon, there's just a blank space. Your screenshots show normal Firefox icons, so I'm not sure what went wrong for me.
Anyone have any ideas on where to look for a way to fix this?
67 • Innovative and Intuitive Desktops (by wrkerr on 2015-05-25 15:10:18 GMT from North America)
For me, there are four main attributes I'd like my desktop interfaces to have. Admittedly, these are highly subjective. 1) Simple and intuitive to use 2) Reasonable and responsible allocation of system resources 3) Innovative, intelligent, and helpfully designed 4) Consistent feel and self-integration of all basic components
For those of us who have been using linux for years, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE all excel at point one because of their adherence to the traditional desktop metaphor, but fail at point three and some at point four (to my perception). On my modest hardware, KDE and Unity fail at point two. Enlightenment fails at point one and three.
My favorite environment is currently Gnome Shell, which I find to do very well on all four points. Previously I preferred Cinnamon, and I still enjoy it, but I feel that Gnome Shell has surpassed it on point three, without compromising point one, which is a hard balance to find.
That being said, one of my favorite things about linux is the diversity of options. Everyone is free to use what they wish, as development continues to push onward.
68 • XFCE (by foo2foo on 2015-05-25 15:19:50 GMT from North America)
Strictly use XFCE nowadays, simple DE with everything needed, and just works.
On Funtoo its even faster and leaner because I can really have it without anything I don't need for whatever build I am using it on.
69 • Gnome3 (by linuxista on 2015-05-25 15:28:51 GMT from North America)
@63 >and as everyone i know who has Gnome 3 has major problems with it i dont envisage me using it
I've been using Gnome3 since the beginning, and it's always been stable and functional. The only downsides are 1) somewhat limited user configuration (the opposite of KDE), 2) and the loss of a taskbar (at least in non-classic mode). Since the basic functionality of Gnome overview mode does everything at one go with a hot corner, the lack of these two things has never been an issue for me; I prefer "scale" window switching to the taskbar anyway.
Cinnamon has always seemed like a crippled version of Gnome3, and after tweaking it as much as possible to try to get the same functionality I always give up. KDE tends to be buggier and the way it doesn't recognize the "super" mod key, but changes it to "meta" is annoying and screws up and limits my keyboard shortcut compatibility with my tiling desktops.
Gnome, with a few extensions, actually has a whole lot of functionality, from being totally graphical and touch-screen to a not too shabby tiling wm.
70 • Cinnamon (by bison on 2015-05-25 15:30:26 GMT from North America)
I use (and voted for) Cinnamon, but I am very interested in Lumina. So far I have not been able to get it to build, or find Debian packages.
71 • Tiny Core (by bison on 2015-05-25 15:39:13 GMT from North America)
@65 It's really impressive that something as small as Tiny Core can run Chromium. I don't use it on a regular basis, but I download the new releases and try them out. I would like to see something like Tiny Core that uses musl instead of glibc.
72 • DE (by Ron on 2015-05-25 15:42:11 GMT from North America)
XFCE, it does the job with no muss, no fuss.
Now if you just want entertainment, I suppose KDE, but not for me. No, I actually use the computer to run apps., not to fill up aimless time with flash and dash.
73 • poll (by beige on 2015-05-25 16:25:04 GMT from Europe)
I recently started using Window Maker again. It’s my second favourite (especially when wmpinboard is available), my real favourite olvwm has been suffering from a lack of maintenance for too long.
74 • best window manager = XFCE (by hotdiggettydog on 2015-05-25 16:35:24 GMT from North America)
I tested a bunch of distros lately with a variety of window managers in virtualbox.
For my needs XFCE won.
Kde has the worst archive manager. No encrypted archive capability in this day and age. Yes, I know there are other encryption means but a simple .zip or .7zip encrypted archive is universal. Anyone has a solution let me know.
75 • @70 - Lumina (by foo2foo on 2015-05-25 16:41:14 GMT from North America)
The folks over at PC-BSD are really doing something awesome with Lumina. A new DE aimed specifically for the BSDs is something that is long over due.
As many of the GNU Linux DEs become dependent on systemd, it is even more important. I wouldn't count on Lumina working on GNU Linux as it isn't a focus for the PC-BSD devs, just like many BSD isn't a focus of many Linux devs.
76 • Anyone Remember Blackbox? (by Anna Merikin on 2015-05-25 16:43:03 GMT from Planet Mars)
I started Linux with KDE-1.0. I liked it better than FVWM, the only other real choice on Red Hat 6.x at the time. When my upgrades (locally compiled) to KDE 3.x all failed, I tried blackbox out of desperation to keep my installation of KRUD (RH 6.2) alive. I found I liked it a lot, and didn't miss KDE at all. I designed my own look and theme using their text config files only and had full control of things like menus and features through text file manipulation. I can't say it was easy to configure, but it sure was a joy to do. BB introduced several features to me that I will not live without: right-click customizable menu, roll-up windows, scroll-wheel switches desktops, vertical/horizontal maximize buttons, keyboard support through plugin, and a lot I can't recall.
BB is no longer being developed, as its founder eventually got it to where he liked it, got it dead stable, and signed off on it. Openbox IIRC is a C+ iteration of BB's features and philosophy (BB was written in C) and fluxbox a further fork.
The only modern DEs which support those features (that I have found) are XFCE and KDE. I use either. KDE seems a little faster on my hardware than the latest XFCE, surprisingly. I use the same apps on either DE, a mix of QT and GTK. All my boxen have plenty of RAM.
BTW, my fave theme on XFCE is a lot prettier to my minimalist eyes than anything I have found for KDE.
77 • Lumina (by Jesse on 2015-05-25 16:50:32 GMT from North America)
@70 and @75:
I occasionally contribute patches to Lumina and I am pleased to say that Lumina runs very well on Linux. It's stable and almost all features work. (turning off number lock and shutdown from within the DE still need to be implemented). I've been running Lumina on my desktop machine and a laptop for the past eight months.
If you want Debian packages for Lumina it's actually really easy to make them yourself. Lumina ships with a "debian" directory inside the source tree. So all you need to do to build Debian packages on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint is follow the instructions here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/build.en.html
That'll give you the .deb files and you can install them with your package manager. If you run into dependency issues, there is a full dependency list for GNU/Linux in the source tree.
78 • favorite de (by Barney Rudo on 2015-05-25 17:17:40 GMT from North America)
matew
79 • Poll (by Ron on 2015-05-25 17:25:06 GMT from North America)
I checked Cinnamon, but honestly I have three equal favorites. Cinnamon, KDE and XFCE. For older hardware LXDE.
80 • Unity was bad (by Haider Rehman on 2015-05-25 17:52:09 GMT from Asia)
But is now one of the best Linux DEs. Try it again before criticising. In my personal tests with friends, more people like Unity than Cinnamon. Note that I am myself a Cinnamon user. It's about choice, which DE you use. Learn to respect other's choices.
81 • Desktop environment (by Jean Guy on 2015-05-25 18:51:06 GMT from North America)
I chose Xfce because it is very lightweight and configurable without making you feel like you're using a stripped down desktop environment like LXDE.
82 • DE choice & Unity (by M.Z. on 2015-05-25 19:15:22 GMT from Planet Mars)
@33 & selectors of the 'Other' category Just thought I'd point out that there are waaay more DEs & window managers than could comfortably fit onto most polls & that Other category acts as a nice catchall. It's beating a couple of other options right now, though if Pantheon or one of the many other DEs that fit into 'Other' were near the top I'd expect the 'Other' option to be doing a lot better.
@80 - Unity is the worst thing to ever happen to Linux I know Unity takes a lot of flack from me & others, but I see the user privacy issue as being far more important than worries about politeness. From the little I used it before they added the spyware features it was half decent & more usable than Gnome 3 by a good margin, though I never really liked it. Then the spyware features were rolled out & were added by default with no direct acknowledgement that I can see during the download or install process. Being that Ubuntu is targeted toward new users who could easily overlook the feature & fail to do enough digging to realize what's going on inside Unity this amounts to a user privacy violation & makes Unity spyware.
I think we all know that the GPL license & much of the philosophy behind free & open software is essentially about user rights, & putting spyware into a Linux distro is a deep betrayal of those user rights. If anything is a good excuse to end politeness it's the point at which someone comes in & betrays the core philosophy of something you care about. I mean no disrespect to you or any other Ubuntu/Unity users, but I honestly care about Linux & open source & I believe that Unity is the worst thing to ever happen to Linux. If I sat on my hands & said nothing I would be both surrendering the free speech rights that inspired the GPL, & I would be ignoring an injustice. I know there are a lot of other big picture issues that are probably more important in the scheme of things, but I still care about Linux & won't be quiet about the fact that Unity is spyware until it is fixed.
83 • Opinion Poll (by Abhijeet on 2015-05-25 19:17:23 GMT from North America)
KDE
84 • Preferred DE (by Roy on 2015-05-25 19:19:33 GMT from Europe)
Having started in Linux with Mate, "graduated to KDE," I have finally settled on Enlightenment. I learned via the first two DEs that there is no one perfect DE-app combination, so the roll-it-yourself approach of a barebones E base is perfect. Although post-E17 versions are somewhat slower due to the always-on compositor, it is barely noticeable on a 64-bit system. E's fast load time and the ability to configure the system to my tastes are strong points. KDE is a great DE, but it is far too much for my needs. At the same time KDE SC applications are not always the best and integration of Gtk programs sometimes less than perfect (e.g., Firefox). E gives me the lightness and flexibility of a WM with the basic tools to have a fast, light setup.
85 • Lumina packages for Debian (by bison on 2015-05-25 21:47:13 GMT from North America)
@77 Thanks for the link, but I'm still working through qmake errors, so I don't yet have anything to package. I am a C programmer, but not a Qt developer, so it could take a while. I don't have much free time to work on this, so will probably just wait until someone else packages Lumina for Debian. It's not a high priority for me; I'm just curious.
86 • poll (by forlin on 2015-05-25 21:48:39 GMT from Europe)
The poll looks like a competition among Mint, Manjaro users.... Now, the end result will translate the Linux users preference. This has nothing to see with the best, worst. We all know what is the earth favourite DE, and few of us here would tell that's the best...
87 • Lumina (by Jesse on 2015-05-25 23:10:45 GMT from North America)
@85: I suspect qmake errors might mean you are using qmake 4 instead of qmake 5. However, your best bet is to report your errors to the Lumina team on github. They have been very responsive, helping people get Lumina running on many platforms. I know the DE compiles and runs on Debian, Ubuntu, OpenBSD and Dragonfly.
88 • None of the above! WMs shouldn't be noticed! (by oggly on 2015-05-26 00:12:34 GMT from North America)
I interpret results as meaning which WM annoys most. It's a poll that really should never take place. An analogy for how clumsy most WMs are would be: on a car, do you prefer the throttle be on a foot pedal with ratchet mechanism like parking brake, or on a twist grip like a motorcycle? User interface should never vary much or have many options. It's always arbitrary, so the bad choices made previously in the first GUIs are good as any. My preferred way is a navigator program (not a file manager, just makes easy to navigate) I've written in REXX for text mode, which has associations just like GUIs, and is of course flexible. I write this in OS/2 using Links 2.9 browser in native graphics.
89 • Opinion Poll and comparison of toolkits (by Will B on 2015-05-26 01:20:53 GMT from North America)
My Rag-Tag Desktop Environment - - - * JWM (current git version) as window manager (no Gtk or Qt deps) [1][2] * PCManFM as file manager (Some Gtk2 deps) * Xterm for terminal * No DM, just log in from terminal * Feh setting my background (all running on FreeBSD 10.1)
I like *light*, even though my machine is slightly above-average in speed and resources. I'm tired of the bloat the popular toolkits have, although I (sometimes) understand why they are bloated. I did a comparison for my friend that I will share here...
Toolkit RAM Usage Comparison Test condition: A small program displaying just a small window with two buttons and a label - - - * Pure X: 5MB * FLTK: 9MB * Gtk2: 21MB * Gtk3: 30MB * Qt 5: 60MB * Java: 68MB
Yeah, I know, Java is more VM than toolkit, but I couldn't help including it. ;)
- - - [1] http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/ [2] https://github.com/joewing/jwm/
90 • Favorite desktop environment? None! (by Paul Hoffman on 2015-05-26 04:53:37 GMT from North America)
I'm running dwm on Slackware on all my computers now, no desktop environment needed. I do have Blackbox installed on my kids' PCs, though -- it's nice and light.
91 • Opinion Poll (by Ziwei Xie on 2015-05-26 06:09:13 GMT from North America)
1. What is your preferred desktop environment?
I vote KDE but I'd rather say it depends. I have two laptops, one used at home and the other at office. I run Archlinux on both machines (Arch is the best!) but with different desktops. At home I prefer KDE. It's a comprehensive intergrated with great flexibility. A default installation is completely usable and it can also be easily configured to fit my needs. It's great for those seeking a DE for surfing the net, listening to the music, playing games, writing docs... I'm a fan of Gnome 2 for a long time when my hardware was not so good as those now I have. Gnome 3 is hard to configure and Unity is totally unconfigurable. At office things grow much more complecated. I'm a system administor of an IT corparation and I need efficient accessiblity to several specific applications, especially the terminal. I need them to be well organized and easy to switch between them. So I choose a tiled wm. I used to prefer awesome but now I find wmii is exactly what I want. With the tag-grouped and two main window layouts (stacked/tiled) I can complete my tasks efficiently. Here's the list of some other applications I use with wmii: xdm, xterm, xscreensaver, feh, scrot, pcmanfm.
2. Do you prefer lots of configuration options, eye candy, simplicity?
I don't care about eye candies, simple is the best! It's import to me that the DE should be configurable. It's good to have a carefully chosen default configuration but no default covers all the needs. People always do customizations, to add neccessary functionality, to cut useless functionality, to show their chracteristics...
3. Do you like to have lots of features or would you rather have speed and a small memory footprint?
It's why it depends. I want all those features I need, and don't want those I don't need. I would custimize it to include those I need, and to exclude the others. I don't care so much about the memory footprint, as so long as it fits into my physic memory. As for speed, I don't need it to be boosting fast, it's good enough to be just as fast to fit my manipulation.
4. Does it matter to you if your desktop is built using GTK or Qt libraries?
Yes, a little. I don't prefer GTK or QT. But when I choose a DE. I'd like the UI to be unified and so tend to choose those with the same library as the DE. So I prefer QT applications with KDE and if I use Gnome 3 I would prefer GTK apps. But it's not so important, especially when compared to the application's user experences, e.g. I use Opera and Firefox with KDE at home, not konqueror or any other QT-based web browsers .
92 • Unity and Spyware (by Haider Rehman on 2015-05-26 09:13:09 GMT from Europe)
@82 I agree the spyware thing was a focked-up thing to do, but they've corrected it in the next release and apologised for it.
93 • DE poll (by Kazlu on 2015-05-26 11:49:02 GMT from Europe)
Wow, that is a topic prone to generate a LOT of passionate comments :) Allow me to join: Should this poll had occured last month, I would have voted Xfce without hesitating. It's my default DE for a couple of years now, I have my habits and I tweaked it a lot so it behaves exactly how I want it to. Even the Xfce 4.8 on my Debian Wheezy gives me complete satisfaction. But I hesitated because of a limitation I encountered only recently: I use a 1080p TV as my new screen, but at 1920*1080 Xfce becomes less usable. I can change the font size, but not the window title bar height and that makes it very difficult to reach the window control buttons... I looked a bit for information but apparently the only way to work around this is to edit the image files used for the theme... Plus you have to position your mouse pointer with a 1-pixel accuracy to resize windows or window panes... Not easy in 1080p.
Cinnamon and MATE work quite well, but Cinnamon is still too limited in customization and MATE, while very complete, lacks a good menu with search field (although the application finder with a keyboard shortcut can do the trick). Mint-menu is not really satisfying.
I stopped on KDE, which gave me a lot options to tinker with. And it has been a while since I wanted to give it a long try. I was annoyed at first by the multiple notifications and previews emerging whenever I hovered the mouse here or there, but once those turned off it is nice (I started from a Kubuntu 15.04 fresh install on an powerful machine used for entertainment). Dolphin and Amarok in particular are really great.
I still voted for Xfce because it is simpler and lighter and demands less work, for me at least, to be tailored the way I want. But KDE is a great option for some use cases, such as an entertainment 1920*1080 px machine. MATE is also quite good.
I like some concepts of Unity and GNOME Shell, but they're not my cup ot tea. I want my desktop to be shaped a certain way and I cannot do that with those.
Special mention to LXDE: You want something as light as possible while still having a traditional layout and feel quite at home (but with less furniture)? Here, try this, it's called LXDE. The savior of old machines, even for people dependant on a traditional interface.
94 • @7 : "Memory footprint is a little worrying ...." (by Kazlu on 2015-05-26 11:57:37 GMT from Europe)
KDE loads all KDE libs at beginning, so it's all in RAM and ready to use when needed, while on most others (GNOME, Xfce...) you load into RAM just what you need when you need it. So for the cost of a longer boot time and a heavier RAM usage at login, normally KDE apps open faster and your RAM usage does not increase much. It's a matter of choice and compromise but I wouldn't be too worried with RAM usage (unless, in comparrison, a fresh Kubuntu 14.10 used less than 400MB after login... I don't know about that). Actually, I don't remember if this policy is from KDE or from Qt...
95 • Package Management Cheatsheet (by Thomas Mueller on 2015-05-26 12:15:19 GMT from North America)
I looked at the Package Management Cheatsheet on this site, looked under source-based distributions, and one additional listing I would like to see is Arch with ABS (Arch Build System); I'd like to know how to rebuild an Arch system from source as I can do with FreeBSD and NetBSD. I ask in these comments because of possible responses from other users of this site.
I've been curious about conary, but is there any distribution that now uses conary, since Foresight was recently discontinued, and rPath was discontinued some years back? Or will conary die along with rPath and Foresight distributions?
96 • Opinion Poll - What is your preferred desktop environment? (by cc_INC on 2015-05-26 12:32:42 GMT from Europe)
I choose Xfce But on my older systems I revert to Openbox and Fluxbox.
97 • @27: rolling release (by Kazlu on 2015-05-26 12:40:59 GMT from Europe)
"A bug sitting around for years is an argument for rolling releases. Debian / Ubuntu sits on known fixes; Arch ships pronto."
I don't use rolling distros and use mostly Debian or (K|X)ubuntu, but I must admit: You hit a very relevant point. It's good to recall that what we always read and take for granted (stable releases are more stable and safer) must also be tempered sometimes with counter-examples.
98 • Favorite DE (by Atuin Gaston on 2015-05-26 14:16:00 GMT from Europe)
I3, no question. Who needs desktopicons anyway...
99 • Favorite Desktop Environment (by Victório on 2015-05-26 15:04:24 GMT from South America)
Pantheon. Just started using when Elementary OS Freya comes out and I'm really liking: it's simple, eye candy and fast.
100 • Favorite WM (by Torsten on 2015-05-26 15:51:02 GMT from Europe)
I choose "other" because I change wm's and de's very often. But also very often I return to e16 since 2000 ... Even installed it under debian jessie :-)
101 • @93 (Xfce themes) (by a on 2015-05-26 17:20:49 GMT from Europe)
"Plus you have to position your mouse pointer with a 1-pixel accuracy to resize windows or window panes... Not easy in 1080p."
For this and your title bar size, you should look for another theme that suits you better. The default theme and its 1-pixel borders is terrible. Try http://xfce-look.org/.
102 • @93 (1 pixel borders) (by a on 2015-05-26 17:23:15 GMT from Europe)
Oh and a gaming mouse with a "sniper" button that slows down the pointer could be useful too ;-).
103 • Favorite DE/WM (by ghostdawg on 2015-05-26 17:33:44 GMT from North America)
Mate Openbox i3
104 • User preferences (by forlin on 2015-05-26 18:06:40 GMT from Europe)
This is a very interesting pool because (as evidenced from many comments) choosing a particular DE depends on the utilization each one has on its Pc. So, it would be equally interesting to know what that utilization is; development, production, media, a.s.o. Hence the suggestion for it on one of the next pools.
105 • Lumina (by foo2foo on 2015-05-26 18:10:51 GMT from North America)
@77 Jesse
Thanks for sharing that info, very good know know this now.
By any chance can we get a a review of Funtoo? A Debian kernel is now supplied with the Stage3 tarball during install and a lot of new and exciting improvements have been happening in general.
106 • Opinion Poll - favorite DE (by champted on 2015-05-26 18:14:25 GMT from North America)
In descending order: - KDE - LXDE - MATE - Xfce
107 • DE choices. (by Garon on 2015-05-26 18:52:10 GMT from North America)
Unity for great work flow, (no spyware now) KDE 5.x for cutting edge environments Pantheon for the kids Gnome 3 shell just for fun.
108 • Funtoo (by Jesse on 2015-05-26 22:32:20 GMT from North America)
@105: >> "By any chance can we get a a review of Funtoo?"
I probably will not be doing a review of Funtoo. Nothing against the project, I just do not have an interest in exploring meta-distributions and/or source-based distros. That being said, I am happy to entertain the possibility of another reviewer doing a quality write-up of their experiences with Funtoo and publishing it with DW.
109 • Funtoo (by foo2foo on 2015-05-27 00:54:57 GMT from North America)
@108 - Jesse
Thank you for your upfront and honest response. I'd be happy with a review of anything you haven't already reviewed as well.
110 • Desktop Environments & resource use. (by Greg Zeng on 2015-05-27 02:08:26 GMT from Oceania)
Creators of the Linux distributions choose which DE, differenty to the readers here. This can numerically shown by the living distros published on Distrowatch.
Comments here says more of the readers, including misunderstandings. "Bloated" applies to nearly every distro. The "rubbish" might be strange human or computer language bits, and some applications which I do not like or use.
Claiming KDE is resource hungry is very wrong. Nearly every sensible distro senses how much memory is unused, and flexibly expanding or contracting the memory used by the operating system. Many reviewers have been astounded with the results of using a memory-limited virtual machine. Each operating system demands differently, based on the available resource demands.
Older versions of Compiz, KDE, etc ... used to not be very good at recovering wasted memory & resources, but might be fixed, I think. Business machines have limited numbers & sizes of applications, & do not like downtime. Others like myself have almost unpredictable numbers & sizes of applications, so re-booting creates downtime, but clears any wasted resource uses on my machines.
The latest DEs now arriving (KDE Plasma 5, & Bodhi's replacement for e17,etc) may not have bugs in the latest stable releases, but they are limited with extensions, add-ons & functioning with the older apps.
111 • KDE (by Bobbie Sellers on 2015-05-27 05:07:15 GMT from North America)
I am currently using KDE 4.14.5 on Mageia 5 RC.
Some window decorations, I like bu many I do not, I started with KDE 3.x.x on Mandriva 2006.
I try not to use too many effects but I prefer a task panel configuration that is not as issued. I have one panel on the top of the screen and I guess you could call it the main panel and another at the left side of the screen. I like the glassify theme t(ransparent with floating icons) and my background image is a large yellow flower perhaps a mum that a gardener friend shared with me, before that I used a photo of a gardenia that I took myself I use two text processors Kate and KWrite and vi when nothing else will do.
I started out with a Commodore 64, updated to the C=128 running CPM, then I used two models of the Amiga to do work for my old Amiga UG, I got a laptop with Windows XP, and that was when i started using Linux,
112 • Kubuntu 15.04 - my experince to add (by GrzegorzW on 2015-05-27 10:49:09 GMT from Europe)
- One important new Plasma5 feature was not mentioned: support for High DPI displays. There is an option (in CC/Fonts) where you may declare to what DPI your GUI - espacially fonts should be scalled, and have all fonts at once scalled approprately - great feature, and works well for me. - A lot of options in Plasma5 are (I believe temporary) missing in campare with KDE4, espacially a banch of available plasmoids is quite short, there is no quick-access, no quck-launcher, no good weather plasmoid, etc. There is also no screensaver function at all. New Desktop Manager does not have "auto-login & lock screen" option. ... and a lot more is missing. - There are some bugs in session mamagement (e.g. KWrite does not open with last edited file, sometimes KMix is unnecessary opened etc.) - Warning for those upgrading from Kubuntu 14.10 - most of the KDE4 settings are lost (including stored sessions (list or opened applications)) - you have to configure everything from scratch. Also if you had balloo disabled - it is enabled after upgrade. - Another warning, after upgrade from Kubuntu 14.10 (on 2 systems) I experianced problems with systemd, new system refused to boot from time to time or did disk checks all the time. Eventually I disabled systemd (by installing upstart-sysv package). - What is good is that Plasma 5 is quite stable and do not crash frequently (in contrary to early KDE4). I experinced few Plasma crashes (with proprietary Nvidia driver), but component restarted itself (like windows explorer :)) and X session was preserved and I did not lost any data because of that.
In summary: - Do rather fresh installation than upgrade from 14.10 - If you do not rely on KDE advanced features - Plasma5 may be good, but if you rely - do some test installation and check if your favourite options are available. - My personal opnion is that KDE is going in good direction, but needs some more time to polish and catch up with KDE functionality. I count Kubuntu 16.04 LTS may be ready for my "production" use. As for now I downgraded to 14.04 LTS and Debian 8 as spare system.
113 • Re:#101 and #102 Xfce (by Kazlu on 2015-05-27 10:51:29 GMT from Europe)
@101 If the 1-px border accuracy for the pointer is theme-dependant, then good, I could try that. However, about title bar size, this would be much less flexible that a title bar which automatically adapts to a setting of font size or has an independant setting, like KDE, Cinnamon and MATE have.
@102 It's not a problem of aiming, it's a problem of being able to actually see your target ;)
114 • Still spyware (by M.Z. on 2015-05-27 19:32:21 GMT from Planet Mars)
@107 As #92 points out, the removal of the offending spyware features from Unity is still pending, unless you are running some beta grade version from a ppa or something like that. It's still a problem for anyone unfamiliar with the offending technology & is still actively harmful to users & the reputation of Linux. From what I've seen Canonical is fairly quick to apologize & offer half measures, but they are short on taking real corrective action. Given the sheer volume of delays that were likely inevitable in 'the next big version of Unity' I'm fairly cynical about Canonical & their promises. They could have just fixed the current version, but they keep holding out for a fix in the hot new version that will allow convergence with their smartphone platform. Are they just indifferent to doing the right thing, or has Amazon contractually locked them in to shipping with this abysmal spyware feature turned on by default? Either way I have very little confidence in Canonical/Ubuntu to do much of anything besides talk & delay action, though I'd like to be proven wrong.
115 • DEs (by G Savage on 2015-05-27 19:45:59 GMT from North America)
Two, no, make that three things:
1. I see two main user camps; one that likes lots of customizability, and the other that likes a full or light set-up that's ready to go.
2. So much XFCE love - It's true, it does it, and it does it well.
3. For me the UI of the DE is really important, so I'd like to give a shout out to Zorin who gave a home to so many XP refugees. Bravo.
116 • @ 114 (by forlin on 2015-05-27 21:08:38 GMT from Europe)
What a crusade M.Z. Gorgeous!
117 • @116 (by Chris on 2015-05-28 01:48:04 GMT from North America)
M.Z. may be on a one person crusade but he/she is correct. Canonical/Ubuntu has put spyware in their OS, delayed making amends, and offered a poor 'Opt-Out' based solution.
Many propriety OS users are looking to Linux as a way to escape the malware of their daily computing lives only to fall for the Linux distro (or one of its many respins) offering itself as a user-friendly alternative with the hidden catch of continuing to be ensnared due to their inexperience. Canonical/Ubuntu is the true modern definition of a Trojan horse.
M.Z., Fight On!
118 • @114, @116 - Ubuntu soapbox (by subg on 2015-05-28 02:22:30 GMT from North America)
Point made many times, but perhaps we can move on: some of us like Unity as a DE - it's simple to use and stays out of the way. Ubuntu LTS is stable on my gear, is well supported, patched regularly and lets me get on with my work.
And privacy? Well...it's the net. One could argue that privacy and freedom are not really part of the equation, regardless of software feature disclosures or reassurances in a terms of use.
119 • Ubuntu and spyware (by foo2foo on 2015-05-28 02:30:45 GMT from North America)
The advertising spyware and Unity are the reason I left Ubuntu to Linux Mint. Then systemd made me move to Funtoo.
Users sometimes evolve as time goes on.
But all new users should be aware of the issues with Ubuntu, until they actually fix it.
120 • Desktop Env. (by Stone on 2015-05-28 02:30:56 GMT from Planet Mars)
I prefer xfce with the old menu, even though wisker look good I personally feel it cumbersome to work with.
121 • spyware (by M.Z. on 2015-05-28 05:06:26 GMT from Planet Mars)
@118 To paraphrase an old saying, bad things are allowed to happen because good people stand by & say nothing. Displaying indifference/ apathy toward the problem does absolutely nothing but encourage the situation to fester. The privacy issues may be large & long term when it comes to the Internet in general, but we are talking about a privacy breech built right into a Linux DE here. Why should users put up with it from Ubuntu? I think #119 hints at the best answer, stop using Ubuntu & discourage others from using it until they fix the issue. If Canonical feels impacted by their mistake they will change, but if you dismiss privacy as something all ready lost you'll never even win a tiny piece of it back.
The reason that the GPL was created was so that users would have rights & protections from abusive software makers. Saying no to a distro that wants to throw your privacy away is a fairly small sacrifice given the magnitude of the privacy issues across all software platforms today, & well worth doing for anyone who cares about what free & open software is supposed to be about.
Best regards to those who still care about software freedom,
Michael Z.
122 • Desktop BSD alive and well . . . (by Rick Withers on 2015-05-28 13:46:19 GMT from North America)
. . . just installed it. Works very well. Time to take it off the discontinued list.
123 • distro qwestion (by alberto gorin on 2015-05-28 13:59:15 GMT from Europe)
i have zorin os a xp like or xp by linux was also a distro like vista ? mi qwestion is is there a distro was like vista name was victa or victra ?
next to zorin os is there other distro based or look like windows ?
124 • @123 (by jaws222 on 2015-05-28 15:21:37 GMT from North America)
Yes, Q4OS. You can actually download and install XPq4 from sourceforge and it looks like Winows XP
http://xpq4.sourceforge.net/
125 • 122 • 123 (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2015-05-28 15:31:06 GMT from North America)
122 • Desktop BSD (by Rick Withers) Glad you got an ISO from 2009 to work on something. Do they actually have any developers (code, not just website)? Could you add other software, find documentation, source, or support?
123 • distro qwestion (by alberto gorin) There are several ways to get look-alikes. Of course, that's a far cry from working like Windows, and no Linux distro is based on Microsoft Windows, though there's an academic project hopes to be similar (ReactOS) someday.
126 • @123 Windows-like Linuxes (by Kazlu on 2015-05-28 16:21:16 GMT from Europe)
I don't know any distro that looks like Windows Vista, but Zorin OS is made so that it can look like Windows XP or Windows Seven, according to the user's choice. Windows Seven looks a lot like Windows Vista, so I suppose Zorin OS in "Windows Seven" look should be ok. Normally the "Windows Seven" look of Zorin OS is the default, but it you have the "Windows XP" look, you can use the Zorin Look Changer software that is already installed in every Zorin OS to switch from one to the other (there are a few other available choices).
127 • @118 Privacy (by Kazlu on 2015-05-28 16:35:17 GMT from Europe)
"And privacy? Well...it's the net."
You're right, you are at risk, even if you take a lot of care, as soon as you go to the Internet. And that's particularly why Unity has a problem: everytime you do a search for an app or a document in your computer, meaning that is a *local* search, your search is sent to Canonical (and forward to Amazon and others, but we have only the word of Canonical convince us that the data is anonymized). A web searching field integrated in the desktop is not necessarily a bad idea in itself, I understand it can be useful to some people. But it should be clearly separated from what you use to search in your computer. For example, a double dash (no reference to any fast driving red plumber here) with one field for your computer and another one for the web, eventually with an *option* to merge the two in a unified search field would greatly improve the situation because it would no longer be hidden.
128 • Mangaka Linux, and an aside RE: Privacy (by Corbin Rune on 2015-05-28 19:38:10 GMT from North America)
Now there's a name I haven't seen on DW in a while. I used to use it, back in my more 'buntu-friendly days. Pretty fun default wallpapers, typically.
As for the privacy concerns, I can arguably see both sides. The "Canonical" side being that they're trying to get a bit more loot in their coffers, and I can see how that type of software could help out there. However, the "Privacy-oriented User" side is also valid. Overall, my issue with the situation comes down to how Canonical (originally) was rather ... sneaky about the whole thing. It's one thing to default into an "opt-in" system, and another thing entire to do the inverse.
129 • Beauty has been served!!! (by Ari Torres on 2015-05-28 19:42:16 GMT from North America)
when it comes to beauty,ease of use,glamor and all that nothing beats elementary os or eOS as i described it.gala and pantheon :) beauty has been served!!!
130 • Fedora 22 Xfce (by Bushpilot on 2015-05-28 19:46:39 GMT from North America)
Truly pleased with Fedora 20 and 21. However, Fedora has several bugs...will not allow autologin and passwd issues to name a few. Perhaps it was released too soon? Sticking to Debian 8 as my preferred distro. Will give Fedora a month or two before I try an install again.
131 • @121 Spyware. @127 Privacy. (by Kubelik on 2015-05-29 00:31:50 GMT from Europe)
MZ and Kazlu, please go on. We are talking principles here. No GNU/Linux without principles. Canonical/Ubuntu is a bit of a mixed business: Some good initiatives, gifted developpers, some closed source things, some really secret things, some maybe a little strange alliances. - Well maybe going to the market, raising some money? - Canonical is a private compagny, owned by Mark S. He decides everything. He accepted/adopted Debians' decision to go with systemd. But then there is the Mir/Wayland controversy. And the already marginalized Kubuntu going with Wayland, just like KDE and mainstream Linux. And see what is happening!
My ideal of GNU/Linux behavior: In the Mageia forum someone asks for help to dualboot Ubuntu and Mageia. A Mageia develloper says he knows there are some bugs, but also some workarounds. He will try to contact someone he knows in Canonical who might have an answer to the problem. - An hour or so later he publishes a fairly elaborate answer from the guy in Canonical.
- Problem solved. Could we please have som more of that:)
132 • @123 Vista like Linus Distro (by Rev_Don on 2015-05-29 00:34:10 GMT from North America)
"was also a distro like vista ? mi qwestion is is there a distro was like vista name was victa or victra ?"
I think you are referring to Vixta which has been renamed Open Xange. I haven't tried it since it was renamed, but Vixta didn't work that well when I tried it, and I did try it on an Intel Quad Core Q9550 with 4 gigs of ram so the system wasn't underpowered at all (at least for 2008 when it was released). It was too dependent on Wine from what I remember.
133 • Netrunner 16- Plasma at its best (by Muthu on 2015-05-29 06:51:55 GMT from Asia)
Netrunner's Latest version 16 is very Responsive and looks good.After Installation, It failed to automatically detect my Radeon Graphic card and very slow and sluggish. After that, i have entered 'Radeon' in ubuntu distro's synaptic manager and find out the driver name to install for my Radeon Graphic Card(ATI Binary X.org Driver).I Came back to Netrunner 16 distro and entered the driver name ' ATI Binary X.org Driver' and intalled it. Now, my Netrunner 16 is very Responsive and PLASMA(5.3 Latest Version) at its best.Kudos to Blue Systems for such a nice distro with Latest Technologies.
134 • PekWM (by ransom on 2015-05-29 14:25:19 GMT from Europe)
+1
135 • emulators (by jamie on 2015-05-29 20:18:06 GMT from North America)
i like ubuntu i been using it since the first one came out it had gome2 and gome the best thing i liked about it was its emulators mupen 64 can you please bring back the old school os but with modern modern but updated interface so i can play my emulators now
136 • http://prostolinux.ru (by prostolinux on 2015-05-30 08:43:58 GMT from Europe)
I most like gnome 2 put it on ubuntu and everything is like in the good old days!
137 • DE poll (by Barnabyh on 2015-05-30 10:27:53 GMT from Europe)
Wow, sure fire way of eliciting a lot of comments this week.
For me 1.) Openbox 2.) Xfce (for when a more graphical UI configuration is wished for)
This hasn't changed in many years now. Xfce took over from GNOME 2 and Openbox from KDE 3. Scaled down, nothing more is need when paired with a couple of Qt apps it just hits the spot.
Use what ever suits you. Best wishes, Barnaby
138 • DE Poll (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2015-05-30 11:40:25 GMT from North America)
KDE for me. It was the first I started with, andI still go for it. I really like its configuration settings. I'd rather have too many settings than not enough.
139 • Preferred Desktop Environment (by Carlos Lopez on 2015-05-30 13:25:25 GMT from North America)
I mostly use Linuxmint 17.1 Cinnamon Edition because it is fast, beautiful, has all I need, prefer lots of configuration options, would prefer eye candy.prefer lots of features but still want it to be fast, don't know dif between GTK or QT library
140 • Mangaka Linux (by Reyfer on 2015-05-30 14:51:43 GMT from South America)
The concept of the distro is quite unique, but I have a big concern.....they are based on Ubuntu and Debian, as their page says, so they are derivative, right? Yet, they license their distro not under GPL, but under Creative Commons non commercial NO DERIVATIVES.......anybody see a conflict there?
141 • 140 • Mangaka CCSANCND (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-05-30 23:17:22 GMT from North America)
Hopefully this is for their artwork, and cleanly separated from software. If not, clearing up the mess may be exceptionally challenging. I didn't see any way to contact the developers, though they are on file at SourceForge (and what happens to "dormant" areas there!?) - perhaps someone registered there can inquire.
142 • 141 Mangaka (by Reyfer on 2015-05-31 02:15:15 GMT from South America)
The wording they use points at the license being for the whole OS: "Our Linux Mangaka Operating System is based on CCBYNCND (Creative Commons Attributive No Commercial & No derivative) license."
143 • DEs, license & libraries (by M.Z. on 2015-05-31 04:45:34 GMT from Planet Mars)
It's looking a lot like a narrow win for XFCE in the poll for most preferred DE, with KDE in a near tie. Of course these sorts of polls aren't scientific & there is likely no margin of error, but there are a few other interesting trends. It looks like the two child projects of Gnome (Cinnamon & MATE) are also nearly tied have about 3x as many users as Gnome proper if combined. It's very interesting given how Gnome 3 was rolled out to so much controversy, & seems to indicate a large loss of users for Gnome who you would guess went from 1st to 5th after the version 3 drama. It looks like Unity is also surprisingly low give the momentum that Ubuntu has had over the years, though I suspect the spyware features are dragging them down. Barring any big changes before the poll closes these are fairly interesting results & above all they seem to show a strong diversity in DE preferences.
@140 - 142 It would be perfectly above board to change the license of a BSD that way so long as an indication of the original license remained; however, being as we are talking about a GPL licensed copy of Linux it clearly isn't legal to change the license. There may be stuff buried deeper that reveals the other license applies only to artwork, but if not & assuming the near impossibility of getting agreement for a license change from all upstream developers, there could be big problems.
@139 The most basic difference is that everything in KDE by default is Qt such as Dolphin file manager K3B disk burner & Okular image viewer, while similar programs in Gnome like Evince document viewer & Nautilus/Files are in Gtk. There are also independent apps like Firefox that use Gtk & VLC that use Qt & I'd say each is best in class no matter what DE you use.
144 • DE (by Ionut on 2015-05-31 09:19:22 GMT from Europe)
I don't use a DE, I use windowmaker, it's light and simple, and I can easily customize it the way I want. I hope it will continue to be maintained and why not, maybe some new features implemented.
145 • Favorite desktop (not listed) (by 3m on 2015-05-31 21:45:27 GMT from South America)
I wish you have mentioned Window Maker as an option at the poll.
146 • MZ (by forlin on 2015-05-31 21:54:17 GMT from Europe)
MZ, this is not a win, not a loss of nothing. As you well mentioned, it's not scientific, the sample is too narrow. Its a poll of DW's users who happen to come to vote. Anywhere else very different preferences may be voted. Google a net and see by yourself.
147 • semantics (by M.Z. on 2015-06-01 00:01:16 GMT from Planet Mars)
@146 That sort of comes down to semantics, but it's something of a minor win for the two that are tied for the lead. Much like the top distros on DW page hit rankings, this just provides one interesting if minor indication of buzzworthyness of the DEs. Nonetheless the results probably feel like good positive reinforcement for any KDE & XFCE devs who follow distrowatch.
Number of Comments: 147
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