So... I have been using linux for a few years (ubuntu, mint, crunchbang,Fedora, Slackware (albeit briefly - i confess). Being a mathematician I suppose, on some level, consistency and structure are often more of a lure than ease or 'candy'. Having used gnome2/3,mate,cinn,K4.8+,E17(briefly) and Openbox, I am curious on the opinion of users here:

Question: while not strictly easiest or most configurable (or the reverse), which WM/DE do you find most consistent, most configurable withing a specified framework/philosophy, and which (you feel) has a potential longevity, or 'forkability' which will allow, if not its reincarnation, at least its transmogrification?


Thanks in advance.

Although I decided to pursue my other major in graduate school, I do have a BS in mathematics, which, I believe, gives me some appreciation for your search for what I would term "elegance" in your WM/DE. I started with GNOME-1.4 with sawfish as the WM, and have moved through many DEs and WMs over the years. No DE/WM stays current forever. Toolkits change, philosophies change, features required to use modern software change. All GPL software is forkable, but I have no desire to fork any of the ancient DEs or WMs I've used over the years. I currently like and use LXDE (Fedora-18, Lubuntu-12.10) and Cinnamon (Mint-14). YMMV (and obviously does, since you're using KDE). Free software is about choice. Choose what works best for you.

I think the most "adhering to their philosophy" WMs are the *boxes and some the tiling WMs, those that try to get better over time without feeling the need to change things just for change's sake. May be you can add Enlightenment and XFCE to the mix.

For constancy over time, I agree with TobiSGD about the "boxes."

My own favorite is Fluxbox. I got an update to it the other day. It just kept on keeping on.

It just does what it does and does it very well, helping me get things done without getting in my way.

Consistent? I am not sure how consistency relates to GUIs, but every one does follow a philosophy, which is why they are on different paths of development.

Most configurable? Openbox can be configured any way one wants to configure it. As long as one possesses the requisite knowledge. I have not used Awesome, but it also has a reputation for tremendous flexibility of configuration.

DEs by nature have a restricted range of customisation. What you refer to as a framework. Most, but not all, WMs have a framework of freedom in that regards.

For example, the ArchWiki states that . This is something that for me would be an example of negative-consistency; whereas while XMonad might adhere to a strict philosophy, configurations via Haskell might be a skill rather lost if the project where to be discontinued.(This is not to imply that learning Haskell is a skill not worth having). Lets compare this to the admittedly unifying concept in Enlightenment: speed: . While for me, unification and singular focus is great, the lack of a portable skill,standardized text configuration is something that seems a bit of an issue from the standpoint of elegance.
So, I suppose what I seek is a project which, if not long-lived itself, is likely to be forked in a way which maintains some central focus or philosophy, ie the Black->Flux/Open seems to be a smart model therein.

Ah, I see.
I cannot make a blanket statement, because there many WMs, but the "boxes" are set up by creating a start-up file and adding the things one wants. Other changes and customisation of items like panels can be done by making changes to configuration files. One does not need to learn a programming language.

The boxes are all based on the original Blackbox. The evolutionary path has resulted in a family of WMs (the issue of forks you mentioned) that are consistent in design and configuration. So no radical changes that require learning a new way to do things.

I cannot shed any light on Enlightenment and its binary files, because I have never used it.

Enlightenment stores its configuration in EET database format (binary) but on every installation you have the eet tool with which you can decompile the database to plain text so that you can change it with your $EDITOR if you so wish (instead of using GUIs and whatnot).

Thanks for that information about Enlightenment. I'd always considered binary format files un-Unix and a Bad Thing. I wonder if there's any way of getting into Gnome's dconf?

I do too, however the EFL do not only target the desktop or servers but also embedded systems where speed is a big requirement (thus the need for binaries).