Hi folks, I'm running mint 12 kde and ubuntu 11.10. I've got a few desktop environments accessible from the login screen on both. Just wondering if anyone had some general advice about how best to do this sort of thing? Also, are there any distros that are better or worse for this?

Hi.

To do what sort of thing?

Sorry, should have been clearer. My question was regarding running multiple desktop environments on the same install (ie. mint 12 kde) where the desktop environments are accessible from the login screen. I just tried to install cinnamon on mint 12 kde (with sudo apt-get install cinnamon) and found it seemed to bloat things on my standard (kde) desktop environment. I've also installed kde over ubuntu 11.10 as well (accessible from login screen). Just wondering if this is a good idea? if there is a better way of doing multiple desktop environments than just standard sudo apt-get install? Or is it better to just do another install on a separate partition?

You can certainly run multiple DEs on the one install, but, as you have already noticed, if you aren't careful you can end up with alot of things you do not want. The easiest way to do what you are trying to do is to install only the bare minimum DE packages. I don't know what the bare minimum is for KDE but Gnome has gnome-core which installs Gnome and a basic set of Gnome programs. If you don't want the Gnome programs you can just install packages such as nautilus, gnome-shell, mutter, and menu, this shuld give you the absolute bare minimum Gnome DE.

Having said all that, I think you may be just better off with multiple partitions with the individual DEs.

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Yes KDE is built using the QT libraries and Gnome is built using the GTK libraries with that in mind be aware that if you install them both in the same distribution it will take some space from your hard drive. But if you have a good size hard drive and good CPU power then it wont hurt anything to have different desktop environments.
LXDE and Xfce are also popular desktop managers I believe built using the GTK libraries with the objective to be the light weight and fast.

Good luck to you.

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I would second Tron. If you have enough space on your /home partition, then you can have as many different desktop environments as you want. It does tend to clutter things up a bit, especially if you don't know which applications can be used with which DE's, and k3lt01's suggestion of only installing the bare minimum may make this easier.

CPU power doesn't matter as long as both are not being ran at the same time (which is impossible anyway).
Nevertheless I think it wouldn't be wise to install 2 or more DEs in 1 distro. There are two main reason which support my claim. First of all, one DE can take a lot of space itself alone; can you imagine having two or more? The second one is that you will be spending your time and efforts installing and setting up from the start another DE.

Aside from that, I assume that there are some possibilities which could make them crash (might be false).

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Actually I have both xfce as well as gnome installed and since both use the same libraries there is no compatibality issues. Even if I had KDE installed there would be no problem except of course if I try to run a gnome app in KDE. When the DE is installed it pulls in all dependencies, so there will be no issues with crashes. Yes you will have extra space utilization but in the context of HD space, the standard KDE installation takes up about 800 MB of space. Everything else is what you add to the top.
The biggest problem will be clutter. All applications that you have installed, across DE's will show up in your menu. And you will have three different apps performing the same functions. It all leads to confusion, because sometimes an app will open, and will even seem to work, but will not. It's very interesting if you are inclined that way, and very irritating if you aren't.
The best part though is that you have the choice of choosing different DE's for different purposes. May sound odd to most, but hey, it takes all sorts to make the world.

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Well I think it will make a good learning experience anyway so if you have the power required then go adhead and Install Gnome and KDE to the same distro. Then you can develop a real taste for applications like Banshee or Amarok, Dolphin or Nautilus, Rekonq or epiphany or firefox or chromium. Is all about choice.
There are lots of people that talk bad about a Desktop Environment without even trying it first so try as many as you can!

Good luck to you.

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+1 to that.

Thank you all for your responses, I've tried a few environments and settled on KDE for the moment. I have made the jump to LMDE and KDE seems to run well on that. I dig that you can customize the menus to include root actions and the general eye candy of KDE. I did notice the thing about applications not running in different environments. It has posed no problems so far though. There are a lot of nice environments about. I'm looking forward to seeing what innovations come out next