Newbie to Linux
 

I am new to Linux. I downloaded Linux Mint onto a laptop that had Vista on it so I could learn more about Linux. One thing I am trying to find is a website that explains the different Desktop environments like KDE, Gnome, etc. I think I am saying that correctly...I can find all kinds of sites that list the different Distros but when they start talking about Gnome or KDE or others I really don't have a clue where to look to find out what the differences are. I have googled it but have no had much luck figuring it out. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

The different desktop environments basically jnfluence the user interface and default applications. For Mint, I use Cinnamon, Mint's flashy flagship distro. A friend of mine running a Vista laptop (mine is made for 7, middle-of-the-line, hers is low-end) uses the XFCE desktop. Both of those have a traditional layout, as do KDE and Mate. Some others, such as Ubuntu's Unity, are just plain weird, in my opinion. Do you know what desktop your iso has?

Hi.

Opinions? I like checking them out... e.g: http://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html ***

The top GNU\Linuces can install most (DE\WM) and are used to build :newbie: distros so anything is possible... i.e: Debian, Fedora, OpenSuse, Slackware, &c... (or Mint.) I'm using ratpoison right know. ;)

Have fun, free! :)

I'm not a fan of KDE but if you want fast XFCE is just that:-
I like the Mate DE for Linux Mint 17.3.

https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/
https://www.gnome.org/
http://lxde.org/lxde_desktop/
http://www.xfce.org/
http://mate-desktop.com/

KDE needs the most RAM. Maybe that's why it's always been my favorite? :D

KDE and gnome are pretty easy and intuitive. The lighter GUIs consume less hardware resources, but as life goes on I find more and more that it saves time to junk old hardware rather than jump through hoops to keep it functional. There is some good hardware that is also older, like IBM Netburst (Intellistation ZPro) and HP xw8x00 machines. But old stuff sucks a lot of electrical power.

But the choice of GUI desktop really boils down to the capability of the hardware involved. My personal laptop has core i7 with 8gigs ram, terabyte hd, nvidia 2GB graphics, and I can run 4 or 5 virtual machines in virtualbox while editing video and watching TV in another window; all with gnome 3. It's about a 300.00USD machine.

You can pick 'em up all day long on eBay, as many as you want, forever. I looked a week ago and there were 75,000 laptops listed. There's little chance of being cheated, because there's a 100% money-back guarantee.

Any machine made in the past 10 years will run an intelligently configured gnome or KDE desktop. I have (2) pentium 4 machines, (4) Core 2 Duo laptops, (2) dual netburst xeon 3.8 GHz., and they will all run gnome, KDE or both. That's going back into the 1990s

It's better and faster to just jump in the pool than go to a website about swimming pools and try to figure it academically. You might want to look at this post, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ommand-362506/ specifically how to mirror your hard drive, so if you wreck your system you can simply boot with a live CD, write the mirror back and try again.

Your right KDE is a RAM hog:-

The Desktop Environment is almost as important to me as the rest of the system underlying
it.ie; if I like the desktop I will probably like the system. But since linux is linux we alway have options. My preference would be fluxbox, with KDE as my least favorite, followed closely by unity. KDE has all the bells and whistles, but it's too cluttered for me. Zenwalk 8.0 has a newer version of xfce that is quite nice.
But thats just my preference.

palley,

Welcome to LQ.

+1 for MATE on either Ubuntu 16.04 or Linux Mint 17.3 (or any other distro) because I like to follow the KISS principle.
Why overcomplicate things? See MATE menu thumbnail below.

Screenshots:

Ubuntu MATE
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl...te+screenshots

Linux Mint MATE
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl...te+screenshots

The attached thumbnail of the Linux Mint MATE menu shows just how easy it is to navigate around the system.

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/features/gnome-vs-kde
https://www.google.com/search?q=kde+...w=1920&bih=861

Google "kde vs gnome" and click on images in google to see the differences in appearance.

My favorite way, however, is to do VM's in VirtualBox. I use this to test OS's, see if I like the desktops and whatnot without having to test on my main working computer. For example right now I have 3 VM's, a Centos7 with Gnome3, Debian Stable with KDE 4 (Plasma 4), and Debian Testing with KDE 4 (Plasma 5).

My home machine runs Debian Stable with KDE, Mate, LXDE, and XFCE. I tried Cinnamon once, but didnt care for it, and I cant stand Gnome 3. I really only use KDE on it as ram is not an issue, even though I have all the annoying desktop effects turned off.

My work machine also runs Debian Stable with KDE and Mate. On this one I only use Mate as its very easy to use, very intuitive and stays out of my way to just let me work easily. It's stable, fast, and looks great.

Of course, these are my opinions, and you may like others.

These sites give a quick answer to your questions and links to the appropriate websites:
http://www.renewablepcs.com/about-li...-gnome-or-xfce
http://xwinman.org/

I always advise choosing the distro for the default GUI. That's the one that most developers use and the one most users have, so it's the one least likely to have problems and most likely to be featured in the distro's documentation. e.g.
Mint for Mate and Cinnamon
Ubuntu for Unity or Gnome
PCLinuxOS or OpenSUSE for KDE
Salix, antiX MX, Manjaro, Xubuntu, or ZevenOS for Xfce
Solus for Budgie
Lubuntu or Sparky for LXDE
Exe for Trinity

One of the "totally new concepts" in Linux, despite its surface similarities to the Windows environment that you're used to, is that the entire GUI is loosely connected to the rest of the system ... if a GUI exists at all. Furthermore, it is a client/server system, with two software parts (which might, or might not, be running on the same machine at the same time). There is no messy, klunky, "remote desktop" tool: you can happily run a full GUI session (or any other type of graphics) against a machine that has no graphics-card at all.

You have many choices. Which desktop environment(s) you want to use, and which window-managers. (They're two different things: a kiosk, for example, might have "windows" without having a "desktop," and so on.) You can switch from one to another and, to a certain extent, use more than one at the same time.

Welcome to Linux!

Are you guys sure? My KDE is using just 1.6% of 8GB of ram. My systems seems to run smoothly.

I included a snapshot of KDE processes using htop and it doesn't seem to be too hoggy. IMO

One being version 3, 4 or 5? Lot of variables and not always true.

https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/...inux-desktops/

Here's my two cents of DEs from my personal experience:

• GNOME: I like it, a little weird at first, but you get the hang of it. And once you get used to it, it's very fluid and it's a pleasure to use.
• KDE: Not a fan of it, tends to be sluggish and as mentioned above, a resource hog. It's even sluggish on my 8-core Xeon box, which I really don't get.
• MATE: I like it because of it's light resource footprint. It can easily run on a Raspberry Pi with 1GB of RAM. Based on an old version of GNOME.
• Unity: Can be installed on Ubuntu and Fedora, is heavily based on GNOME. The thing with Unity is that it allows you to not only search your desktop, but as many local online sources as you like, and it gives you the ability to filter them. Much like GNOME, a bit weird at first, but very fluid and a pleasure to use once you get the hang of it. Very Mac-like.
• XFCE: Much like MATE.
• Trinity (TDE): TDE is to KDE what MATE is to GNOME. I personally don't care for it because of the archaisms of KDE 3.