poll: Desktop environment of Slackware users
 

hi friends
with all eye candy stuffs and new improvements in various desktop environments, i like to know(most of the slackers) the preferred desktop environment of slackware users. and why ?

main cause of posting this poll is because of a debate in one of the thread


i go for xfce4 for slack12
Edit: xfce4 is slim, and its way is exactly suited for slackware like distro, compositor works fine, thunar file manager, xarchiver, risteto image viewer, etc.., all makes xfce the top preference of my choice

Fluxbox. KDE as a newbie, but too slow. I can include any kde app in the fluxbox menu, so that's how I do it.

e17 (which isn't here), no bloat, optimized coding, etc...

i dint know. is it possible for me to add it again?

Edit: looking at few screen shots, me too like e17

fluxbox, with fbdesk. ive come to the conclusion that when i just want to do normal day to day stuff like listen to music, watch video, the easiest and quickest way for me is via icons on the desktop.

i tried kde once. i tried gnome once. not for me. way to much going on for my liking.

i just discovered Thunar file manager. the right-click 'send to' context menu is very good, easy for moving files around to backup folder and other static folders. not too many features, just the right ones. simple and functional :)

wmaker(patced to include history for runbox) with ROX-Filer-1.2.2(also patched to add several features) plus taskbar-1.0.2 as a panel. I use a specially modified version of wdm for GUI login(with animated penguins!) following bootup with grub with splashscreen and bootsplash with -get this: animatations. Yes, folks, I have bootsplash working with animations on slackware! Take a rope and hang me if you like, but my 4 year old son enjoys the penguins and my wife like the GUI login. The bootsplash animations are there just because I've never heard of anyone getting them to work except in gentoo and in SuSE (where there were there by default). I know real die-hard slackers will laugh at this, but part of being a slacker is being able to get things working where others have failed.

As for the rest of my desktop it is nearly all GTK-1.2 applications with the exception of using opera(I'm spoiled). I even use my own hacked version of GTK-1.2 which has a file-chooser like no other you've evr seen.
Up until two years ago my fastest machine was a 233Mhz so I really needed very light weight stuff. Now I run a 700MhZ(wow!) machine. But using the same old lightweight apps lets me get a huge amount of work done without having to wait around fro apps to start. For instance, sylpheed-1.0.6 takes slightly less than one-half second to start. Over the years I've built up a very large colection of lightweight stuff.

BTW, I find wmaker to start much faster than fluxbox and uses only slighty more RAM than fluxbox once running. wmaker is the only lightweight which includes its' own GUI configuration tool. And there is another available if you don't like the one included. wmaker is extremely stable, mature, versatile and elegant.

I've no particular favourite. I like KDE, xfce, and fluxbox. I don't dislike Gnome, not used it on Slack though, only on Debian and Ubuntu.

I used KDE almost exclusively when I started with Linux, as so much was available via the menus. It was a great learning environment. I also like it now with the compiz eye-candy (which can be useful if I want to have lots of documents open or a Windows refugee to impress).

Then I wanted a light weight window manager for some old machines, and played with xfce, which was somewhat faster and saved a lot of disk space if no KDE installed. Did not find it so productive as I spent too much time playing with look and feel options :-)

Then I tried WindowMaker, which is my current default. It is a pain to set up by comparison, but I now have a clean, quick interface that allows me to move through my preferred programs with ease. I would not recommend it to someone with little knowledge of Linux though.

This sort of comment always makes me laugh.

Whatcha runnin' there? A PII w/128Mb RAM?
You gotta be kidding me. Do you really notice the tenth of a second difference?

KDE for me. Nothing else feels as complete or well designed.

Usually I run fluxbox, but once in a while (Depends on the mood), I like KDE with eyecandy. That "kick" lasts a few days before I return to fluxbox.

fvwm with rounded corner patches and SVG support, usally in combination with pcmanfm.

Otherwise, Gnome.

Fluxbox once but kde now. I really like the support for udev/hal/dbus. I tried xfce once but there were no programs in the menu and I couldn't find out how to add them.

I'm happy to see other Slackers running older hardware like me:-) I'm running Slackware 12 on an 800Mhz IBM with 768 MB RAM. If I had a P4 I'd probably run KDE. For me XFce does the trick as it has a few more bells and whistles than Flux or Blackbox. On Debian I like Gnome.

Currently the results are similar to the same poll from 2006.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...t=desktop+poll

I tought wmaker is a almost dead project. Don't see any progress since 2006.

yes..

i think, i gave option to check more than one option!!?
i sometimes use kde, but now in my machine only xfce.

xfce users equals with fluxbox users.

kde. Sastisifed with it and never had the urge to try anything else.

KDE/XFCE on one system and XFCE on an older laptop, both running Slack 12 smoothly like a swiss watch.

This is different from the choice awards because the polled population is Slackware users not all Linux users.

I use fluxbox. I've tried pretty much all the window managers and desktop environments, and I think this is the most balanced one. It's light, fast, and still looks good. What more could I want ?

(I use ROX as a file manager, also very good)

I use KDE on newer hardware, mostly because it's so tweakable and the eye candy isn't bad. On older hardware that runs KDE too slowly for my tastes, I use Fluxbox, because it's light, simple, nice looking,easy to configure, and does the trick.

I like Xfce, but I tend toward Fluxbox for lighter weight environments because I know it better and prefer its interface.

And I can't stand GNOME. It seems like every new release they've oversimplified things even more and removed more and more functionality. Eventually it won't do anything, I imagine, if they keep going down this road. But that's why I don't use it.

KDE, XFCE, and Blackbox but that is only on the server

C, Perl, Gtk+ & simple, natural DE => Xfce

It isn't dead, it's rock-stable. That nothing has changed since 2006 means that nothing needed to change. It's a Very Good Thing for a window manager.

My setup is similar to gnashley's except I use IceWM and don't have any eyecandy to entertain a 4 year old.

When I tried fluxbox, it kept getting in the way of what I needed to do. That doesn't happen when I use wmaker or IceWM.

X Other


I have been using UDE for about two years now and find it very satisfactory.

I checked both kde and fluxbox because I use both. Lately, though, I find myself using fluxbox more because of the speed and simplicity and I can still use my kde apps. I also like the plain text config files. I prefer simplicity more than eye candy.

Well, I voted for XFCE, 'cause that is what I'm using now, but disk space is cheap & I have both KDE & GSlacky installed. There are a couple of KDE & Gnome apps that I want to run.
Regards,
Bill

I like short cut keys and right-click menus and fluxbox was easy to set up for both. I don't like icons on my desktop but I do like that fluxbox stays out of the way now that I have it configured the way that I like.

Very much like gilead said, I don't need bells and whistles on my desktop; the only icon I have now (KDE) is the trash bin, and mainly due to me not bothering to remove it yet.

I started with KDE a long while ago but moved quickly to Fluxbox when I realized my hardware (at the time) wasn't up to the task. I loved Fluxbox, even enough to use it on this little speed demon of a machine. It was lightweight, didn't give me anything I didn't need, was infinitely customizable, and provided me with the GUI control that Slackware itself awarded me over the CLI.

I installed KDE with Slackware 12 and am pleased that a lot of the bloat has been removed, and am looking forward to KDE4 where memory usage is even less. I still have it minimalistic as possible, but it provides the opportunity to have exactly the extra bells and whistles I may one day find myself wanting. That, and I figured I'd better start getting used to it if I'm going to set up an "anyone can use" computer for the house with it.

Neato. I just might have to try that out on an older machine of mine I've been meaning to rebuild. Thanks for the link!

XFCE + ROXFiler most of the time, fluxbox when I feel like a change.

Kde + Twm
 

Here I have a fast unit that runs KDE and to my left is a slow unit that most often is used command line only.

However there are times when I need just a little more screen space. At those times the slow unit runs TWM and the fast unit exports a GUI to the slow unit. Also, running x2x on the fast unit allows me to work on the slow system display with the fast unit keyboard and mouse.

My wife thinks KDE is Slackware. As long as she is happy, life is good.

I use fvwm which is very flexible.
Sure you have to spend a lot of time to tweak the configuration but at the end you have the desktop that YOU want.
I use also ROX-Filer as the file manager.

Just started using wmaker couple days ago, so i voted on that.If i had faster PC i guess i would be using KDE.

On my slack boxes I use KDE or FVWM2 depending on my mood.

I used FVWM for years and only recently have started switching to KDE. KDE provides quick and easy setting of keyboard macros, which is important to the way I work. I find KDE to be a bit heavier than I am used to but on my modern machines it is snappy enough.

I use icewm, but that was not in the list of options for the poll

Fluxbox all along. Even on my newer machine (An Dell Inspiron 9400, with Centrino Duo at 1600Mhz) I only run fluxbox. Why? Well, I like how much and how easy it is to configure, I like the fact that it loads up fast, and I also like to leave the processor power to the apps, not the WM/DE. Plus, I've never liked having icons on the desktop.

fluxbox for me seems to be my favorite.

icewm should have been an option. Polls or estimates of all users in the linux world usually put it ahead of fluxbox. Used to be lots of gnome users around here, but once PatV dropped it they seem to have scattered -I noticed a distinct drop-off of activity on this forum when the announcement was made. Even though there are third-party providers of gnome for slackish systems, most gnome users simply went away. Of course, activity on this forum is no indicator of what Pat's paying customers thought or think about the current choices.

Some of the polls provide some very interesting figures though, like the one where over 30% of users here are running on computers 7 or more years old and that around 75% use slackware as a desktop distro and not as a server. I have a strong suspicion that the figures for paying customers are pretty different.

yes i should have atleast put an option called "Xother".

icewm : i used it long back

gnome : i was a true fan of gnome, even after gnome is removed from slack, first i tried linuce's gnome, then freerock, then finally dropline, and i can tell u dropeline is quite good, once i created a dvd with dropline included for slack (i think it is for slack 11 - also with openoffice). these 2 are the two great part missing in slack

exactly... i never tried gnome for slack12

insted moved on to xfce

for the past 6 yrs i am using slackware, first and only one linux i used (personal), i have installed many linux for my friends, even used gentoo on a laptop for my friend - longest ; usage nearly 6 months,

the funny thing is i tried slackware only because of its blue logo, and the color on slack box(shipping)

regards

The WM/DE I prefer really depends on my mood and what I am doing. As a general rule, however, I tend to prefer using a keyboard over a mouse, and this is true even when computing in Windows environments. I am very fond of scrolling pages with a mouse wheel, though. I almost never use application menus, but I always use keyboard shortcuts for my common programs, and I typically either use a 'run' box or the command line to launch other programs. However, sometimes when I am too tired I may start using the mouse more instead of just going to bed.

I don't like desktop shortcuts for programs what-so-ever, and I dislike having minimized windows going into "desktop shortcuts". However, I do like having a nice picture on my desktop, along with some type of weather program. I like to have things like a clock, and a workspace switcher, though I only really need to see them. Even though I dislike desktop shortcuts I regularly store files on the Desktop. However, I only stores files there on a (hopefully) temporary basis. Kind of like an Inbox, it represents the work that I need to get done. I probably would just keep them in a folder, but I like to be able to visually group the files, and I am encouraged to get some work done when I have a bunch of files covering my beautiful desktop picture :)

As most people do, I also want something that is responsive, and preferably it would be fairly usable or configurable "out of the box" (no twm, please).

As a result of all these preferences, on decently fast machines (like the one I am using now) I use KDE. KDE has way more than I need, but it is easy to setup for using keyboard shortcuts, has all my desktop needs (I like Liquid Weather), I like some of it programs (kate, k3b, Akregator), and in Slackware it works great with DBUS/HAL. I don't care for konqueror, though, and only use it as a browser in Akregator. I sometimes use Dolphin, but I usually just use the command line (maybe some mc) for file management.

If there was no dolphin I'd probably use thunar, which brings me to my other choice: Xfce. In all actuality it has everything I need and I tend to use its programs over KDE's (Terminal, mousepad), but the built-in support in Xfce for Slackware is not as good as KDE. Sometimes (one of those times I should be in bed) I don't feel like using pmount-hal to mount X and I'd rather have it mounted via my filemanager. I know Xfce and other WMs/DEs can have this, but I don't use it often enough to make it worth my time. However, if I am using an older machine such as my Thinkpad 600E (400MHz PII 288MB RAM) then tweaking out Xfce is very much worth the effort. With all the SlackBuilds out there for Xfce this is much easier than it has been in the past.

Fluxbox is also one of my favorites, and I am pleased it is the default on many LiveCDs. On older machines I sometimes use this instead of beefing up Xfce a little.

However, since I do prefer the keyboard over the mouse sometimes I'm more in the mood for something really minimal like Ion or ratpoison. I am a big fan of using screen sessions, so using these is kind of like a natural extension (I really like the fact that it is quick to organize windows by splitting the screen). These take some good effort to setup to how I want them, though, and I miss the motivation of files covering my desktop picture (perhaps I can accomplish this with Ion :)).

Overall, I'd say Xfce and Fluxbox represent the best balance for me, and if I don't care about wasting resources then going with the prettier KDE is also nice.

My Prefs concerning KDE vs GNOME
I don't care for GNOME that much even though it gets a lot of the same stuff done with a quarter the amount of code as KDE. As said before it hides too many settings and using GConf to manage them reminds me all too much of regedit. Some programs (eg. Firefox) do seem to integrate better into GNOME than KDE, but if Slackware had dropped KDE and kept GNOME instead I'd probably be using Xfce or Fluxbox on this machine.

KDE, then XFCE, then Fluxbox/Blackbox or IceWM.

shadowsnipesi like konqueror, the only thing i like in kde ;)
it has the split view, fish: for accessing ssh, and is all in one

wht i like xfce, use it with risteto, and xarchiver and thunar pluggins, all transparencies without any difficulty(in kde it is buggy)
gnome

I use ion3. It is a lightweight tiling window manager . This basically means that you split the screen into smaller subscreens in which each window is maximized.
The cool thing is, that your windows cannot overlap and it is easy to split a window and resize an application. Although it has a steep learning curve it is well worth it. As Tuomo put it "Usability simply does not equal low learning curve, and hiding system details from the user, as the Official Truth seems to be these days."

If you ever feel like trying something totally different give ion3 a try :)

I doff my cap to the3dfxdude for using twm.

My sencond fav is missing though.
I use KDE on my laptop, but I use IceWM on my second box which is a bit slower.

Why KDE? I don't know, in the war between GNOME and KDE I allways say, everyone uses what he wants and what he's used to. So I guess I'm just used to KDE, but I always find great usability in it's easyness of accessing to SAMBA networks and other neat stuff.

Why IceWM? Because it's EXTREMELY adaptive I even used it on my laptop for a long time, and still use it from time to time on the laptop. And because its the fastest WM I've tried out, and because it was developed by someone who comes from the same country as me. And because I just LOVE configuration files to configure everything. I'm just faster with the keyboard than I am with the mouse.
Why I stopped using it on my laptop? Because I've figured out that I use the same SW as on KDE and KDE is not that much slower on the laptop so why not use it, and again, because I'm used to KDE(Read above).

It's called ristretto image viewer.

I like the many desktop choices that are available. I can no longer run KDE on my AMD-K62 now, since it has become quite heavy in load. Whenever I build a new computer I will play with KDE again. Ever since then I have been using Fluxbox, its nice and functional for what I need, and because I don't really use any kind of file manager like ROX or anything. Just xterm, but if I do use a file manager, I use midnight commander. Ah memories. :D

I recently also played with XFCE4 which is available on Slackware12. It is nice and I like it, but even XFCE has become quite heavy on my system. So back to Fluxbox, which isn't a bad thing. :p

I also have been doing some digging around on other enviornments, and found out about CDE (Common Desktop Environment). Looks pretty neat, but it is proprietary and the OpenGroup doesn't look like they are going to release the code any time soon. Sure there is LessTif/OpenMotif, but CDE looks so much more interesting.

sorry for the mistake and thankyou for the correction. anyway it is slim

so Jeebizz's choice was flluxbox??
if there weren't any multiple choices, i suppose kde % would have been below 50%

Jeebizz wrote:what about image viewer, go for ristretto!!

I must admit that my personal favourite is KDE.

There's a larger support base, some pretty funky apps, and probably one of the better ones to look at. I also find it easily configurable to do pretty much whatever I want it to do, find it easy to navigate, and it's pretty snappy on my system.

Although I do confess to not having tried all the environments available. I've tried GNOME, but didn't fancy it much, as was also the case with XFCE. I've also tried a few others a while back (can't remember exactly what they were now though) but wasn't too impressed with those either. Probably because I was too used to something else at that time and didn't feel like a change. Who knows...

Either way, Smurfs like KDE at the moment :p

Cheers,
- Smurfed