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Old 09-18-2015, 03:56 AM   #16
aguador
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I think jailbait hit the nail on the head, saying more compactly the points I and others have raised. As I understand it when KDE4 was released, the developers acknowledged its instability in the first few 4.x releases so it depended on the distros whether or not to move quickly to KDE4 or stay with KDE3.

Also as he and others have said, distros tend to focus on one or two DEs: Mint on Cinnamon (therir baby) and MATE; Antergos on GNOME; Mageia on KDE and GNOME; Manjaro on XFCE (and KDE); Bodhi on Enlightenment (and now their fork Moksha); SolydXK on KDE and XFCE (only); etc. If you look at Ubuntu, Canonical takes care of the core and its integration with Unity, while other groups concentrate on integrating the *buntu base with other DEs in the "official" alternatives (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.).

Personally I have ignored the most stable, most popular to focus on what works for me -- the real beauty of the variety in the Linux world. I think KDE is a great DE, but a) I do not need all the indexing and social network integration; b) I don't care to use lots of little "applets"; and c) the "pure" experience of some distros is not for me as there are better/more capable alternatives to some of the KDE Software Center programs.
 
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Old 09-18-2015, 01:51 PM   #17
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Originally Posted by propofol View Post
Something like this: http://www.itworld.com/article/28811...vironment.html?

This is not numbers based but summarizes the features reasonably well.
Thanks a lot! Very informative. You didn't tell me? Which do you prefer?
 
Old 09-18-2015, 01:57 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK View Post
Good luck, I will be interested in what you choose.

I was happy with KDE4 as it had reached a stable state, but then when I upgraded my distribution they had "upgraded" to KDE5 which is once again unstable.

Very frustrating.
Yeah I know what you mean Alex. All new things are unstable in the beginning, but I think many get better by time. I don't use KDE though. I used to use it when I was testing *ubuntus. Kubuntu is very visually entertaining but I don't think this cuts it for me. (Is this the right expression: "don't cut it for me"? )

I faced few bugs to be honest. But Now I don't have time to deal with them. so I'm going with stable. It's a shame really that a very good looking DE has issues with Graphic cards (according to my experience I mean)
 
Old 09-18-2015, 02:05 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by Qwo View Post
After using many Operating systems for many years, (on and off) I still use Win 7 on a daily basis, alongside Linux
currently Linux Mint, The reason being that for too many years all Linux systems where and are buggy. I try to go with the principal (as most of the general public do) It just needs to work. Yes I have been down the path of using geek
stuff BUT this is the path that the Geeks and Nerds prefer. To summaries UBUNTU was in the Beginning very good in comparison to most Linux distributions. But then along came the Cell phone Internet Android Problem. Which appears to be the path that the general public have turned to. Now All systems have to be compatible to Desktops,Tablets,Cell Phones.Now there is also the Major problem of Computer compatibility with multiple systems. Like Win 10 you cannot run Win 10 on old computers even though m'soft say you can there Is the CPU problem.Linux overcame this problem many years back. Enough I am getting off track. Check Linux Org for what systems are more popular they put up the numbers.
Actually the fact that M'soft made their copies available even for pirated win8s and 7s. Made me convinced that Linux is doing something that's changing the whole game. I don't want to say I got suspicious. But their move made me more convinced with Linux. I used to try linux distros since WinXP. and I was a little more curious than an average windows guy if you know what I mean. I used to play with windows files since there was this program called "System File Checker" on win98. I copied it separately and used it on other windows versions to fix system files for my friends. I was really proud of that "Achievement", Then an engineer friend of mine said "listen. you're good. Why don't you use linux?" I said what's that? is it another windows? he laughed and said yeah, kinda. It's the laugh that got me interested and I've been researching the reason for that laugh ever since.

Thanks for the link.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 02:08 PM   #20
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by Burrhead View Post
Just my experience and opinion: I've been using Ubuntu LTS series and Gnome for as long as they have existed. Currently I'm using a Dell 1545 laptop with 3 gig memory. Runs great. Never a problem. Using network to two other local older Dells running previous versions of LTS Ubuntu , video editing, word processing, Internet, Gnome terminal (used to be Nautilus). I'm very happy with reliability and performance. And yes I've used other releases of Linux and every relese of Windoz back to when the entire release of each was on one 3.5 floppy.
Ubuntu. It is quite solid. You see, the good thing about them is that they (now) are using mainly one DE, Unity. Not that I'm experienced with it. But I guess this strategy does grant them some stability. Although, I'm not into Ubuntu though since this "Amazon" thingy.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 02:19 PM   #21
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
This is a good guide to the ones available, with links to their sites
http://www.renewablepcs.com/about-li...-gnome-or-xfce

If you like the more traditional look, then it's Xfce, Mate, or a tweaked KDE. My vote would be Xfce. KDE I find a bit too flashy and intrusive, and I've seen the occasional (admittedly rare) bug in Mate, but Xfce just sits there quietly and does whatever you need it to.
Absolutely amazing link, David. Thanks a lot!
Yeah I've actually been into Xfce since I ever first tried DEs in general. I'm using it with mint now. And I think I'll stick with it. But wait! Sorry I'm usually curious about these stuff; "intrusive" what do you mean by that? seems like an interesting conversation! haha

tested mate on Ubuntu mate on VM, faced some bugs. But I don't know if it was the VM itself or the DE.

I'm with you 100% Xfce sits quietly and does what it should Not flash but very practical. with the least bugs I faced actually.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 02:36 PM   #22
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by NeedySaigon. View Post
just go for CINNAMON !!!

http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/
Haha. I know Cinnamon. I still want something a little more stable. I've faced very very very few bugs. I understand cinnamon is so "comfy" and breezy if I can say so. But I'm still curious.

I already am a linux mint user and I feel comfortable with it. I'm using it with Xfce btw.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 02:43 PM   #23
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by Art McClure View Post
I've had at least 20 distros running on various machines since RedHat 2.0 around 1998. At first, it was fun trying to get them to work properly. I enjoyed the challenge. I especially had fun getting Apache to work on a SuSe machine. I learned a whole lotta things about the kernel and even edited drivers. But alas, I am older now and I just want my machine to work; I don't want to fix it. For the last 4 years I've used Mint and I am totally happy with it. I now use the latest Mint Cinnamon and it has never crashed or given me any problems. Sometimes I can't configure something that I want to change (like the dull gray borders), but who really cares. Everything works.

Art
Another cinnamon opinion from an experienced person. that's really interesting. It makes me feel I'm on the right track.

Cinnamon is very easy to work with..and easy on the eye too! haha despite a few bugs though like those gray borders, no matter what theme you choose they're always there! haha (I understand that this is not technically a bug. but from a user point of view, it is! haha). But I don't know I'm lost between xfce and cinnamon. xfce is very stable and "functional" but not good looking "relatively" but cinnamon on the other hand; looks nice but with few "surprisingly" small bugs and sometimes such small tiny bugs annoy me so much! haha! If I ignored them, everything will be fine...

Okay, so a second cinnamon feedback here. ok. Thanks for your post.

Last edited by HusseinMoussa; 09-18-2015 at 02:48 PM.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 03:33 PM   #24
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by gbell12 View Post
A good idea for most people is "don't go alternative alternative". If you're picking an alternative OS, pick the main desktop it ships with.

So, use Ubuntu or Mint and don't change the default desktop/window manager used.

Your requirements are unfortunately contradictory.

The "most popular" is the most complicated because people demand all sort of complicated crap now. Nobody wants to command-line configure things any more, so you have window managers that try to do everything. And with that, you get bugs. In my 15 years of using Linux as a desktop and server OS, I've always seen bugs in the major window managers (KDE and Gnome). Major ones - stability, configuration loss, etc. etc. Sorry community, that's my experience.

SO... for the most stable, go with the most simple. This means something like Fluxbox or Awesome window managers.

You can tell from the apparent contradictions that what I recommend to others (Gnome/KDE) is different than what I use for myself (Awesome).
I'm with you on the part of using the default desktop/window manager thing. totally right. This would definitely guarantee the least buggy'ish experience. But I didn't want to make my question complicated like "What is the best distro with the best DE that work together fine?" I mean; How would I even phrase the idea of that question! haha (please note that I'm not a native language speaker so phrasing ideas easily won't be my forte xD even though -ironically- I'm an English language private teacher in my country but I don't teach "how to debate in English" haha Only grammar rules and not-so-advanced conversational English )

So I chose the easier (for me and fellow forum members) way and made the discussion about the DEs themselves and I would expect a secondary discussion about distros themselves (or not) and the default DEs that come with them. You see, The reason why I didn't choose this path of discussion is that some distros don't use/prefer/support/sponsor a single DE over another. And that will get us into trouble; The usual huge debate: "No, My distro is cooler!" etc...So I avoided this path in favor of a DE-only discussion. I'm not debating with you I'm explaining "I mean differently" not explaining "that you're wrong" or something, please don't think so.

As for contradiction, I meant it from the user point of view (I guess from your opinion you sound like a more experienced user than guys like me) the less complicated it is the more graphic-based it is usually. I understand that, from a programmer/developer point of view, it will be more "complicated" to add commands for the users instead of them doing it themselves. But I meant the so very end-user's end. Basically, What I meant, is to try to find together what the popular and least buggy (at the same time) DE is. I mean like, there's this "A" DE it's 99% popular but it's 30% buggy. and there's "B" DE 80% popular (the 2nd most popular) and 5% buggy. So my choice would go for B. Because it would meet the "most (or more as I wrote in my OP) popular/least buggy) criteria.

And regardless of this secondary debate, and to prove that I was just explaining myself and only aiming with good intentions for results: After I would finish the research here and get results, I'd take the number 1 DE (concluded here) and look for the most popular distro that mainly uses it and use it myself (which means I will definitely go with your far-sighted opinion about the "default DE the distro is shipped with" just like you said.)

I'm so interested in your point of view btw. It seems so unique. I'm going with KDE/Gnome anymore. We're so over! haha. But please tell me, What's the history of "Awesome"? I'm a little traditional but I don't mind learning about things I don't know. like, let me rephrase my question, not just the history and the "when" but "why"...Why did you choose Awesome?

I can't wait to read your next post.

Best of Luck, Hussein.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 03:56 PM   #25
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by aguador View Post
As you may be getting the idea, there is no one answer because it is what works best for you. I personally love Enlightenment, which most find an acquired taste!

That said, I think the best bet for stability, independent of distro, would be XFCE. It has been around long enough and develops slowly enough that it is rock solid. The basic interface is nothing to write home about -- very classic (think XPish ascetically), but can be customized no end to the point that it is nearly as slick as KDE. (Along these lines see the Voyager distro. Incredible!)

Cinnamon has come a long way, but I find it to be mostly MATE with eye candy and "desklets." Still it is solid. The relatively new entry LXQt is now solid and probably in the path of refinement rather than remake.

Note that none of DEs are standing still (perhaps with the exception of Trinity?) and you can expect growing pains as they move forward. KDE was great from 4.9 on, but 5 is still a work in progress (although some are using it on production machines). GNOME3 may be stable these days if you like the interface, but the changes in GTK3 keep breaking themes for apps no matter what DE you use.

In the future, both MATE and XFCE will *eventually* have to transition to GTK3 -- and LXDE will then disappear leaving its newer cousin LXQt. Oh yes, and every distro, regardless of DE, will be affected by the shift to Wayland.

As Alex Atkin noted with KDE, major DE overhauls generally have a shakedown phase, so the distro becomes important. If you want stability, you don't want a distro that seeks to be on the edge like Arch or Fedora. Rather go with something like Mageia where the last release remained with KDE 4 because of stability issues. (KDE 5 is available for backporting.) My point: DEs cannot be considered independently of distros.

A short list of recommendations:

Mageia - solid distro, KDE4 in place for a least another year or until KDE5 settles down. (Other DEs available including primary alternative GNOME, plus Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, LXQt, E.)
Voyager - XFCE as good as it gets. (Go with the Debian version!)
SolydXK - XFCE or KDE - stable Debian base
Mint - Swiss army knife of distros, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, KDE (Remember Debian Edition here for MATE/Cinnamon!)
Xubuntu - always solid reviews
Manjaro - XFCE (Distro close to cutting edge, so I'd stay with XFCE here as it gets a lot of attention as the flagship DE for the distro.)

(Disclaimer: I am not a Ubuntu fan, part of my reason for leaving Mint behind. The reasons are philosophical, but, as you can see, there are good non *buntu alternatives. My main distro is Manjaro, still periodically use [and like] Mageia and have tested Voyager and SolydXK.)
Yeah this GTK thing gives me a hard time sometimes with programs. Although I don't fully understand it yet. I'm gonna do some more reading about it later though.

Very cool list btw. Manjaro and Mageia are next on my to-be-tried distros. This is amazing, Your feedback, guys, makes me sure I'm doing the right research already! haha

Really appreciate your post. Thanks a lot, aquador.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 03:59 PM   #26
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by 9Linux9 View Post
I've tried a dozen different distros over several years. Always go back to Mint. (17.0 Cinnamon now.)
Yeah, Mint FTW! haha

I've always tried cinnamon but now I'm trying xfce. I mean: Mint -> breezy and xfce -> stable. A good combination!

Last week a had a difficult week removing Debian to get back to home sweet home; Mint! haha

Thanks for your post.
 
Old 09-18-2015, 04:13 PM   #27
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by deepclutch View Post
As somebody earlier said, the best bet is the default DE (Desktop Environment) in each distro. I believe Linux Mint is a good distribution and their Cinnamon DE is good enough. Unity, Gnome also are not that bad for average user. KDE is not bad either but I guess it's not that popular apart from Europe. KDE has lot of configuration options and those who uses it swear by it for it's eyecandy, apps and configurability. Some of them are die-hard KDE fans who even recommends/forces for it as the default DE blanking out other DEs and X Window managers.(Oldies - remember the tuxmagazine controversy, where they blindly believed kde is used world over while the reality is not so). (I've a feeling that KDE users enforcing their choice over others. Remember KDE vs Gnome flamewars where so rampant in the yesteryears.)

I'm hoping Linux Mint go up with the Debian way (LMDE) which can help that distro grow independently instead of relying on Canonical and Ubuntu.
http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

Other issue is the taking over of Linux by systemd groups; whether it is a plot by government or other vested interest groups to create securitywise weaker desktop linux distros so that security agencies and hackers can sneak easily into Linux systems. I hope major distros shoo away systemd and settles for openRC or whatever free init systems that exists including dead project like upstart.
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/inde...gainst_systemd
Wow, Deepclutch. Your last paragraph where you mention systemd groups (first time I read this expression; systemd) is dead-on interesting to me (is dead-on interesting a correct expression here? haha). I'm into these stuff and you're so right. I'm reading about it everywhere actually.
The main reason I left Windows for good is their move of selling win10 for free! Linux is gaining ground in the market. And microsoft is trying to win back users. and not only this, but also, upgrading for free for everyone, even for pirated copies! That made me so suspicious to be frank!
Ubuntu; With this amazon incident. Not cool.
OpenSUSE; with their Microsoft Novell agreement/deal/whatever it is. Also not cool.
I also think I read about the instability or something negative about lmde somewhere. distrowatch, maybe. dunno.
And I can see in more than one place this security-wise weak thing.
Let's not stop there.

Tell me what is "openRC"? and what is an "init system"?

Please if you have links on where to start. post them.

and please if you have recommendations on other distros to try, let me know.

Thanks for your post
 
Old 09-18-2015, 04:15 PM   #28
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by jailbait View Post
The solution to how buggy a desktop is has more to do with what distribution you use than what desktop you use. All desktops go through development cycles and are buggier at some points in time than at others. Different distributions have different philosophies on the trade-off between bleeding edge and stable code. If you are worried about bugs in your desktop then you should pick one of the more conservative and stable distributions whatever desktop you use.

Alex Atkin UK said, "I was happy with KDE4 as it had reached a stable state, but then when I upgraded my distribution they had "upgraded" to KDE5 which is once again unstable."

The solution to the KDE 5 instability was to switch to a more conservative distribution which was still on KDE 4.

-------------------
Steve Stites
Totally logical and reasonable.

So what's your suggestion? KDE4 then?
 
Old 09-18-2015, 04:34 PM   #29
HusseinMoussa
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Originally Posted by aguador View Post
I think jailbait hit the nail on the head, saying more compactly the points I and others have raised. As I understand it when KDE4 was released, the developers acknowledged its instability in the first few 4.x releases so it depended on the distros whether or not to move quickly to KDE4 or stay with KDE3.

Also as he and others have said, distros tend to focus on one or two DEs: Mint on Cinnamon (therir baby) and MATE; Antergos on GNOME; Mageia on KDE and GNOME; Manjaro on XFCE (and KDE); Bodhi on Enlightenment (and now their fork Moksha); SolydXK on KDE and XFCE (only); etc. If you look at Ubuntu, Canonical takes care of the core and its integration with Unity, while other groups concentrate on integrating the *buntu base with other DEs in the "official" alternatives (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.).

Personally I have ignored the most stable, most popular to focus on what works for me -- the real beauty of the variety in the Linux world. I think KDE is a great DE, but a) I do not need all the indexing and social network integration; b) I don't care to use lots of little "applets"; and c) the "pure" experience of some distros is not for me as there are better/more capable alternatives to some of the KDE Software Center programs.
What is this "indexing" you said in KDE? Could you please tell me more?

Or if you don't have time maybe send me some links about that?

Just curious, What's your favorite distro(s)?
 
Old 09-19-2015, 02:51 AM   #30
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My favorite distro, bar none, is Manjaro. Arch-based, but a bit easier to deal with than Arch itself and a good community. Compared to Mageia or Mint it requires a bit more attention as you receive updates every week (in general) and on my system with limited disk space I need to purge old program versions manually. (I could probably write a script, but it is not that big a deal.) With access to the Arch User Repository (AUR) it has everything you would want available. Program versions, including DEs, are the latest or very close, always. If you go with XFCE you will have a stable DE because of XFCE's advanced development and slow evolution.

My second choice would be Mageia as I have implied above. Since you are an XFCE fan, I mentioned Voyager. It is a French distro originally based on Xubuntu, but now with a Debian edition as well. What Voyager has done with XFCE is fantastic: attractive with a lot of tools and desktop shortcuts available (as a sort of slide-out from the right side of the screen). It really takes advantage of XFCE's stability while giving lots of tools (rather than building them as in KDE). The Debian version has two advantages: it comes default with LibreOffice and other full-power applications (unlike Xubuntu), and it is untouched by Ubuntu.

The GTK issue I mentioned has to do with the rapid evolution with GTK3/GNOME3 of different ways of doing themes -- which broke good existing themes for GNOME apps (e.g., Evolution, Evince). With GTK 3.14 or so (current 3.16 as I recall) things MAY have been mostly finalized in a CSS-like style. Note that the default GNOME theme is now Adwaita which has thousands of lines of code and is so complex that it ships in compiled form. My guess (no better than anyone else's) is that all the breakage and the emergence of LXQt may speed the development of good Qt apps.

KDE has two advanced features that can be turned off (and often are by default). One is the destop integration of social networks, the other is the so-called semantic desktop, originally Nepomuk, now Baloo. It allows indexing of virtually everything on your machine, including e-mails and (I think) instant messages. It may be powerful, but it takes a lot of horse-power to run -- and I suspect most users do not need it. (I have never turned it on both for lack of need and the problems the indexing in Win7 caused.)

I noted before that I use Enlightenment (aka, E, with no intention of changing). The reasons have to do with lightness and speed. I am still using two 32-bit laptops on a daily basis and KDE will run on them, but there is a lot of overhead. In addition, I find myself making eclectic choices of software, not just Qt or GTK -- and certainly not just KDE. (Why Calligra when we have LibreOffice?) So I do not need to be tied to either world, and E gives lightness, flexibility, and configurability. Could I run the same programs in XFCE? Of course, but I would be doing as much work or more setting up the system. (E.g., Thunar is now very good, but I would still prefer DoubleCmd with its dual panes and built in file search.) With E I largely start from scratch choosing the programs that work best for me -- something one learns after a couple of years with Linux.

PS you inquired about Awesome. It is a Windows Manager, like OpenBox. I have not used it, but like most WMs, there are people who swear by it. Most WMs are either tiling or stacking WMs, but I think Awesome may be configured either way. I will let you research that one! I will confess that where E to disappear, I would likely shift to OpenBox and have no DE at all.

PPS Init programs are for initializing your system, Xwindows etc. Systemd has raised objections first for violating the Unix philosophy of doing only one thing as it integrates several functions and second for not being faster as originally claimed. OpenRC is modern alternative that a FEW distros have turned to. For example, Manjaro offers one or two OpenRC options. Gentoo and Slackware, as I recall, still use one of the pre-systemd init programs.
 
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