Yep, I run Cinnamon on my daily laptop, FVWM on my build rig, and always changing DE's (XFCE, E22, MATE, LXQt, etc) on my test laptop. Just depends on how I feel that day.

You are fortunate to be able to use Linux at work. My work experience was mostly with Windows. I enjoy reading anecdotes about businesses that embrace open source software.

Thankfully, my line of work requires it. I have a Windows machine too, like everyone else, but I don't need to do anything very serious with it.

I like KDE Plasma 5 but use XFCE most of the time. It works with me and allows me to get er done

(evil grin) I decided to expand on why I loathe the Gnome 3 interface with the fire of a thousand suns.

The overarching beef is the decision, because of the popularity of tablets and phablets, to treat all computers as if they were tablets or phablets (this was also my beef with Unity--as an aside, the notion of "convergence," in my opinion, was an insult to users, in that it assumed that users were too stupid to deal with different interfaces on different devices).

My primary beef with the interface is its insistence that all applications should be maximized on startup. Fine if you're using a tablet, but on a 23" monitor--really now, what's wrong with over-lapping windows?

Also, what's with that column of icons down the left side of the screen? I like a clean desktop--translation: no desktop icons. I like my pretty wallpaper pictures and don't want them obscured by a clutter of spots.

And why should I have to type in three or four or five letters in a dialogue box to render a menu when, in other interfaces, I can render a menu in one or two mouse clicks?

I'm not a big fan of MATE or Cinnamon, but I find them tolerable, because they know that, even though a smartphone is a computer, a computer is not necessarily a smartphone.

Just my two cents.

Sounds like something that Microshaft would do. Oh wait, Windows 8 & 10 are just that. :D

Maybe that's something that they did when it first came out, but it doesn't do that anymore. Windows open normal size, at least on my system.

You mean the "Dash?" It's hidden by default and only appears when you click the super key or hover over the hot corner. Personally, I use the Dash to Dock extension to make it behave like a regular dock or panel.

The thing that really gets me is the fact that there no longer seems to be a way to type a path manually in the file open dialog. The only possible way is to click folders with the mouse. I think that supports your "they think everything is a smartphone" hypothesis.

In any case, when I am using Gnome 3 the UI usually doesn't bother me so much, primarily because of the fact that I'm doing most of my work in a terminal and file browsing with mc. I still can't avoid encountering some nonsense, though.

KDE is the best DE I have used outside of older Mac OS X releases.

XFCE is nice but not as good as Gnome2/MATE.

XFCE and MATE are stuck with GTK 2/3 which is not as good as QT which is one of the main reasons be why I prefer KDE over them.

I run XFCE because Slackware lacks KDE5 Plasma.

If Slackware 15 ships with KDE5 Plasma I'll switch to that.

Otherwise I'll switch to a distro that has it. I like XFCE and all but Plasma 5 is a significantly nicer DE and that's what I want to use.

Don't get me wrong I know of ktown and appreciate it but one too many times a -current update broke things, and Eric's patience in maintaining it while hoping Patrick adds it to Slackware someday won't last forever.

MATE serves my needs perfectly. XFCE is nice, but I find MATE slightly more user friendly. My first slackware experience was with the now abandoned FluxFLux distro, using LXDE. Loved that, and sometimes think that I should try out LXDE again (or maybe LXQt).

As long as Xfce can run XSnow, I'm happy!
:D
Yeah, I know, I'm easily amused.
:)

Xfce is an overkill for that. Try TWM ;)

What the hell have you done to my [depressing] beach scene?!

Here you go, from four or five years ago. Christmas in The Netherlands.
:)

i voted for "Other" i like Openbox, and use fbpanel for a taskbar, and rox-filer to draw the desktop icons & wallapaper, and i also keep xfce installed as a backup just in case

Okie,
Nicely done!
:thumbsup:

I have not observed that on my VM of Fedora, but it's been a couple of months since I looked at it because a Slackware update broke my Virtual Box and I haven't bothered to fix it because I've had other things to do.

It is gratifying to know that Gnomekins are capable of learning from their mistakes, but as far as I am concerned this was a mistake that never should have happened.

I'm just guessing here, but I bet there was a bit of a course correction once Red Hat realized they were going to actually have to deliver this product to enterprise customers. That kind of nonsense would probably not be very well received by a paying audience that needs to get work done.

Well it seems that I am not alone in my disdain for GNOME 3, preference for Xfce and feelings towards KDE. I am not "happy" using KDE, it kind of reminds me windows 8 or 10 (though to a much lesser degree" in the way it makes you feel when you use it i.u. the UI, WM and other aspects. IDK why GNOME 3 just gave up, very sad. They had a pretty good WM, power too. If KDE could be more "rationale" and think of the point of view from a grandmother-to-developer with respect to the way they design it KDE could easily become a standard. Macs have a nice, user friendly, developer friendly anti-open source WM/GUI that I think KDE should emulate. KDE to me just feels buggy - as time goes on though many students, developers and laymen should see the benefits of contributing genuine quality to open source projects and maybe KDE or GNOME will be "polished" in a rational manner with respect to the end user. When I use KDE at the end of the day I literally feel like I am on ice, when I use Xfce I feel more stable and able to use my computer with out fear of "falling through the ice" (weird analogy I know) and it just brings me back to the good old (less stable) GNOME 3 days.

Horses for courses - mac osx always felt too much like a straitjacket to me. As does, to a lesser extent, Xfce. I'm just waiting for the next stable, hopefully with Plasma 5 (for the libraries, I'm thinking of Trinity for the UI).

Voted for XFCE, because that is what I used in the last years, but I recently switched to i3 to prepare myself for the gtk3 plague. So i3, midnight commander, and other cli apps. Except for a proper office suite, they do most of the things just as good as their gui alternatives. Especially my rediscovery of MidnightCommander made me question why I ever left this great can-do-all tool.

Though once KDE5 plasma is available on Slackware I will probably use that. I'm a gnome 2.xx series, refugee, and always avoided KDE and it's applications like the plague, and used XFCE and gtk alternatives. But, recently I tried kubuntu 18.04, and I really liked kde5 plasma. It looks good, it's very snappy, and highly customizable. And konsole, dolphin and other kde applications are imo better then those you find in xfce. I think kde5 is just a good modern desktop. I really wonder what mr Volkerding is waiting for.

gtk3 is really killing xfce and the gtk applications for me. I don't like at all what it is doing to the interface of my favorite applications, nl. it's wasting interface space on them and looks ugly.

I'd vote 'other' most notably fluxbox, blackbox, xfwm4, lumina, or razor (but I'm not going to vote for MATE).

I like Xfce/Mate very much, but Cinnamon is a good and beautiful DE.

KDE for me is very inflated without need and it is very difficult to build only with the applications you want, so out of the question here.

Voted for xfce4 as that is what I have on the desktop PC that I use for doing work and that I try to keep running smoothly. It also has MATE (willy's) for trying out. I could live with stock Slackware (kde4 or possible future Plasma) as my workflow is very simple.

Those who miss Gnome 2 might want to try Centos 6 or Stella Linux on an old machine for nostalgia fulfillment. Security only updates until Nov 2020 I gather.

I still use Enlightenment DR-16. It is easy for me to configure the way I want.

From his response on the 'donating to slackware' thread. He gave a little insight on where he's at with Slackware 15 and had this to say on Plasma:

Keeping my fingers crossed that it makes the cut.

I haven't been using Slackware for very long (since 2013), but this statement is exactly how I feel.

I had xfce for a long time, then switched to KDE for a year or so (btw. because of thinking Dolphin would have a better interface and more power).

After some time I started to miss all my xfce configuration (mainly the context menu items for thunar and my toolbar icons) and I wasn't amused how the context menu is handled by Dolphin (using the usual file type associations puts too much garbage on the menu, and thunar can access those too via a submenu).

Then, at some point I noticed that all the power that could eventually be used (all those flexible configuration files) didn't help me in any way but the definition of my own window style (which used a legacy format because I couldn't figure out how to use the more modern format).
It's simply wasted power.

At the end I got back on track to xfce and I am happy now again.

Btw. acoording a problem I had, Dolphin and network access to sftp...
after switching I wondered why thunar is so much faster (I knew that before but I thought something in the network configuration must be damaged).
Well, I found, with Dolphin you should use fish://... instead of sftp://..., but even then, Thunar is still faster and more convenient.

I have always used KDE since Caldera OpenLinux days. It's not perfect but it's what I'm used to.

I had no problem using the KIO infrastructure to access sftp through sftp://. Of course as you have found, fish:// is also a way. However, it's a legacy KIO and it requires the transfer of a perl script to the host. But I found it that it behaves better under certain high-latency, low-bandwidth settings.

KDE all the way
..and Dolphin is outstanding

See, (voted for XFCE) the DE boils down to be more like the Mandriva kernel or the Slackware kernel:

The former being too worked out by patches and attempt to squeeze in as much as possible - you will most likely fail to add anything more - should you find something still missing in the first place.

And - I know as i did both find and fail...

too worked out

Then there is the later Vanilla kernel - rock solid with quite a thing lacking, but woe and behold - accepts patches like a charm and can be gracefully brought to compile about anything - as long as you don't update it :D for a too fresh one.

Been there - done that - quite a few times now, and across more than only i386 and AMD 32/64 club...

...

When i have a silly idea and try to go by it on a WM/DE, and i happen to have it once in a while, KDE just looks at me with that "you won't ride this horse boy" in the eyes.

The XFCE, that has grown quite mature last couple of years, however has that seducing look of "anything goes", and while some things are lacking, we're been places other have to go yet...

:hattip:

my 2c for a decade and a half of GNU/Linux; maybe two of x86 PCs and 3 decades of computers and programming and hacking altogether.

Good News!!
XSnow lives!
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...73#post6003273

I recently went back to this setup:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5797385

Current components are:

• OpenBox
• Plank (as the taskbar)
• pcmanfm-qt (as the desktop and the external drive mounter)
• lxqt-notificationd (as the notification manager)
• stalonetray (as the system tray)
• dmenu (as the application launcher)

Why do I love Window Maker so much. Because it is light, it runs all the XFCE and KDE apps without issue, and I can make menus easily. Oh and it is still maintained, is stable as everthing else, supports scrolling workspaces with thumbwheel. I voted other. I've used O/S 2, all MS from DOS 3.22 upto Win10, android, IOS, MAC, Atari's GUI, Enlightenment, Lumina, all of them are over complicated compared to Window Maker. Maybe I can't get rounded corners (or can I) and themeing is one size for all screens and work spaces, but it gets the job done. Cheers, BrianA_MN

A draw! c'mon!
:D

This poll is not well designed. When I write these words there are 53 votes on KDE, 54 votes on Xfce, 1 vote on GNOME and 42 votes on other DEs/WMs. In well designed poll the category “other” is the smallest one.

Slackware 14.2 offers by default seven DEs/WMs:

● Blackbox,
● Fluxbox,
● FVWM2,
● KDE,
● twm,
● wmaker (Window Maker),
● Xfce.

Your poll should include those seven DEs/WMs and the category “other”.

It is not enough to be Slackware fan boy. A bit of common sense would be very helpful.

(Although I appreciate your enthusiasm.)

Then, again, short of tiling window managers.

They seem to have got a bit of traction as of late?

i3, awesome and the like

My vote use to be for FVWM, but I started using wmaker and realized the simplicity of it over writing (programming practically) menu's and xdg associations missing in FVWM. Also the FVWM project is leaderless right now, or at least the project leader is not getting cooperation from the few developers who help, so development is on a hiatus as of now, in my opinion. Wmaker on the other hand does have active development, they have updated the website and are looking to modernize the default interface. So I'm willing to have a tiling manager that is quicker, is xdg compliant, is EWMH compliant and works with my two displays of different size easily. Not everyone is looking for eye candy and automatic everything. Plus my 2005 820D Pentium CPU hardware with 4G of memory seems to become confused by both KDE and XFCE's power management, but not with xscreensaver or xdm. It's Linux and you can customize your PC the way you want, that's free beer. Cheers, BrianA_MN

I use Xfce, though it feels very 'unfinished' compared to KDE out-of-the-box in Slackware. Well, there's SBo to install everything I need, so not a big deal.

I use Trinity (TDE) full time now. I always liked KDE 3.5... KDE 4 made me throw up in my mouth, especially in its early days.

Plasma 5 is pretty slick, and I like it, but it's bloated and messy as Hell... it makes package management a nightmare, and it spams your home directory with configuration files all over the place. That will never be going on any of my systems again.

I keep Trinity and its "tqt3" self contained in /opt/trinity and only build the parts and enable the functionality I want. It's the snappiest desktop I have, and while you couldn't say it's lighter than XFCE, it's certainly faster. I'm quite unhappy with what has become of XFCE (modern versions... gtk+3 bites the weenie, I really hate it) it's far from the light weight desktop it used to be.

I just noticed people are talking about Slackware 14.2, probably an older XFCE. I still have an older 4.12.x version of XFCE on an older box that's fast and light. Mostly GTK+2 still, at that time.

The latest ktown is pretty nice. A lot of improvements.

Bloat? As in? Sure there things that come with Plasma 5 I don't use, just like there are things that come with Slackware I don't use. I've been using Plasma 5 since Eric Hameleers (aka Alien Bob) introduced it in ktown. Quite satisfied with it.

Spams your home directory with configuration files all over the place. Perhaps you are referring to Dolphin and it's ".directory" files? I turned that off ages ago. Just for grins, I searched my home directory, found 44 (now zero) of them, oldest was Jan 10, 2011. My home has 215.6 GiB, 136998 files, 10900 sub-folders. Of course if you want Dolphin to remember properties for each folder, then you get those.

Make package management a nightmare. Unless your referring to maintaining your own set Plasma 5 packages, perhaps I can agree somewhat. With Alien Bob's ktown (Many thanks Eric!) set, it not much of a nightmare at all. Even better add slackpkg+ to slackpkg and it's the nightmare is totally gone. even better.

I switched to XFCE years ago when Gnome went off the rails. I've tried KDE several times since then, the most recent with 14.2's default install, but it always felt a little slow and klunky to me, a little too complex. IMO XFCE strikes a good balance between minimalist DEs and KDE with the options it presents.

KDE FTW!
 

I voted for KDE, although I agree with w1k0: It should have been titled "What window manager do you use?"

Plasma 5 meets my needs; it has several programs I just couldn't live without. As for those who claim it's "bloated", Plasma 5 is more memory-efficient than you may realize. I also had a bad taste in my mouth from the time of the transition from KDE 3.x-4, but I have moved on since then. I don't let one bad experience color my impressions of a certain thing forever. Change is inevitable, and it can be for the better, which it clearly is in this case. The KDE developers have learned their lesson, and have produced a world-class desktop, at least IMHO. :D

Just my :twocents:

You might want to look in ~/.cache and ~/.config
There are 67 plasma related file in ./config alone, not counting the subdirectories and whatever might be in them.

Slackware 14.2 had XFCE 4.12.1 (with some packages still 4.12.0, like the appfinder and dev-tools) and 14.1 even had 4.10.1 still, with i.e. the xfce mixer 4.8.0

Even back then the bloat was starting to occur.

I was at that box today (Crux Linux, 2016'ish), it's XFCE 4.12.0 and I compiled it so it's not linked to a bunch of gnome junk or anything. I quite like it, it's snappy happy.

I remember how snappy XFCE was when it was a GTK+ 1.2 environment. It also had funny boingy sounds when you clicked shit (which very soon got disabled when the novelty wore off) lol

I do fondly remember the XFCE in Slackware 10.x (which was a 4.2.x one).
One thing I really disliked about XFCE is how the config files kept on being totally redesigned every 4.x version, you couldn't easily do all your modifications again in the upgraded version.

With the GTK3 path that Xfce is taking, maybe it's time for me to consider an alternative for when Slackware 15 comes out. I can tolerate individual GTK3 programs, but a whole desktop environment will be too much. Pity.

Agreed. Plasma 5 is memory efficient on my Arch box. I do know that one can't make direct comparisons to Slackware. KDE-plasma boots up using less than 400 MB RAM.