Finding the Best Interface on Linux
 

Alright, I'm a "new" user to Linux and am "exposed" to a few distro mainly, SuSe, RedHat and this distro called Xandros. I'm currently planning to migrate all my users' desktop to this Xandros Distro while keeping my SuSe Server.

The funny thing comes in when Xandros is using the ever-heavy KDE so I am wondering is there any other "interfaces" that I can load instead of KDE or GNOME which i feel that they are very heavy but yet I do not want my users to freak out from a totally different interface.

Anyone can help here maybe by providing what are the alt ones?

Thanks in advance !

XFCE is the next most popular/heavy desktop environment (and about the only other viable one). It's not too weird and much lighter than Knome. Beyond that, you get into window managers. Ice can be anything but can be very 9x-ish and is extremely light, but it may seem lacking to people expecting a full 'desktop XPerience'. So it would depend. Most other light things, like flux or, say, ratpoison :D would probably freak people out. Then again, they might be really excited and interested by differences. Who knows?

There's also an 'xpde' project, which self-consciously tries to duplicate XP but, I assume, is lighter.

Just some ideas. I'm assuming a user base familiar with XP, but you didn't say. Might help to specify their expectations and level of ability. Did you mean to say they all already knew SuSE?

Yo, thanks man! My users are well I should say sometimes cannot determine what's a left click to a right click. The most "foundational" users maybe because of their age and ther learning background. Eventually when I am to roll out Linux Boxes to them for their office work, they will have no problem in their routine jobs because all they do is use Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Email. So instead of loading the hardware system with a heavy desktop I'm looking for a lighter one. Think I will be looking at XFCE because one of my consultant did mentioned something about it. Any things to look out for for this desktop interface? Maybe you can help me a bit here too. Advance thanks-sss.

Not sure of anything to 'look out for'. If your users are truly clueless, that might actually make it easier - if they don't know how to use Windows very well, then they won't be any *more* confused by any other interface and wouldn't be very good with either one. :) It's people who have really mastered the Windows interface who would most disturbed by the little differences because they know what they're doing in one and suddenly don't in another and all their habits and methods are shot. But as far as a superficial comfort zone, xfce starts up a short, thick panel on the bottom with the taskbar on the top, which would possibly turn people off at first glance. It's possible to remove the menu groups and put in one menu, embed the taskbar into the main panel, thin it out and stretch it out, and remove the top panel. So when people went down-and-left for the menu, they'd get it and when they went down to control the taskbar, they'd get that. Things like that might help, I guess. As far as locking it down so the users can't mess it up, I don't know, though. But it's actually a pretty simple and very graphically oriented desktop as long as they just want to get work done and aren't trying to tweak it for its own sake.

I love IceWM

Okay, downloaded the Installer package but it requires me to have a pkjconfig thingy. Have to look into that further. Thanks though. Tons to read up again. sighs.

Care to explain more?

I love ice, too. :) It's actually my main gui.

I'm sure GUIPenguin has his own perspective but, as far as for me, it's light, simple, easily configured through a handful of text files, yet very featureful in the things I look for, yet again very stable. Windowing controls, winoptions files, useful taskbar, system tray area, etc. Managing windows, basically. But it has no real drag and drop, the third-party graphical configuration tools are buggy if the user doesn't want to edit text files, and it doesn't create a 'desktop' - no icons or real actions on the root window. As a window manager, it's great but as a desktop it's... not. :D

As far as pkgconfig, you may have that on your system and just need to export the path to the file. If you don't have it at all, your distro or freshmeat or freedesktop.org (I think) can provide it.