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Desktop Environments

For when terminals just don’t do it

DE’s have two portions

  • Window managers, which manage
    • windows
    • icons
    • menus
    • pointers
  • widget toolkit
    • used to write applications with a unified look/behavior

Top 9 DEs

GNOME3

  • easy to use
  • “most” popular
  • Nautilus is the default file manager
  • uses more of the system (CPU, RAM, and storage)
  • Not a ton of customizability
  • Widgets built using JavaScript

KDE Plasma

  • dolphin file manager
  • easy to use
  • uniform software stack
  • efficient
  • tons of widgets
  • easy to customize

You can make KDE look like any other DE.

“If your KDE looks bad, you’re doing it wrong”

XFCE

  • Lightweight
  • doesn’t eat battery
  • easy to use
  • Thunar file manager

Manjaro uses XFCE

Cinnamon

  • Fork of GNOME3
  • Nemo file manager
  • “Christ look”
  • tons of desklets
  • very stable

Mint uses Cinnamon

MATE

  • extension of GNOME2
  • Caja file manager

essentially just GNOME2

Unity

  • technically not a DE
  • extension of GNOME
  • desktop environment shell

This is where Ubuntu gets its sidebar. (Ubuntu used to use it, now uses base GNOME3)

LXQt

  • extremely lightweight
  • easy to use

Someone has used it… at some point… probably…

Pantheon

  • DE designed for Elementary OS
  • OSX like interface
  • looks amazing
  • due to its simplicity, its missing some thing that are commonplace in other DEs
    • prevents you from doing tons of customization
  • good if you just want it to work, no modifications

Deepin

  • Simple
  • Elegant
    • “looks like a kids MacOS”
  • Developed by a Chinese community
    • could be a security problem because the Chinese government
  • All of the widgets use JavaScript

Would be amazing, if not for the Chinese.

club devolves into Chinese discussion and evidence of backdoors

Deepin outperforms gnome

performance

EDE

  • Looks like windows 95
  • extremely lightweight
  • last stable release was in 2014
  • extreme efficiency

Window Managers

Specifically controls placement and appearance of windows

Doesn’t come with ANY other tools

There’s no apps, plugins, etc. etc.

  • GNOME
    • mutter/gnomeshell
  • KDE
    • KWin

3 forms of Window Managers

Stacking

Traditional desktop design.

Act like pieces of paper. Most major DEs use a stacking window manager

Tiling

  • Nothing overlaps. heaviliy uses keybindings

  • automatically tiles windows when opened

  • most commonly split screen space in half

  • made to maximize screen utility

  • no fancy animations

  • strong kebinding support for minimal mouse usage

Examples:

  • i3
    • Fun fact: you can run i3 inside other window manager
    • technically can be stacking, if you force it to
  • BSPWM
    • technically can be stacking, if you force it to
  • Sway
  • Herbstluftwm

Zephyr allows you to start an X session within an X session. This allows you to test out various DEs within your current one.

Dynamic

Switches between the above two on start

  • Awesome
    • written in Lua
  • dwm
    • written in C
    • Part of the suckless project
  • xmonad
    • haskell

WM vs DE

Pros for WM

  • highly configurable
  • text-based config
  • lightweight
  • doesn’t come with bells and whistles

Cons for WM

  • long time to set up
  • still need to handle
    • displays
    • power management
    • etc
  • doesn’t come with bells and whistles