[ubuntu-studio-devel] testing other DEs

[Len Ovens]

I downloaded and installed Ubuntu Desktop (Vanilla even) and installed it. 
After mucking about in it, adding some bits... I was able to get something 
that is quite workable. Aside from the way everything seems to have been 
gelded and have less options and functionality, if we wanted to make 
Studio on top of vanilla we could:
http://www.ovenwerks.net/paste/screens/Screenshot%20from%202018-04-12%2016-44-13.png

There are a few things we would need to add:
gno-menu
gnome-tweak-tool
artwork (but we add that anyway)
our menu and config file tweaks
the lowlatency kernel
and of course our metas.

Really this is way better than the last vanilla I tried (unity based) or 
the last gnome shell install for that matter. However, I have got a newer 
i5 since then when I had a P4 with 2.5 G and gnome shell would not even 
run and unity was sllooww as could be. And honestly, when I installed 
ubuntustudio 17.10 on the same machine it barely runs too.

So if we want the biggest support base for our DE, that is probably it.

I was told there was a way I could run plain gnome shell from vanilla, but 
I could not find it and there does not seem to be a Ubuntu flavour that 
runs gnome shell anymore. If someone knows how I can do that... I will try 
that also, but in all honesty, if there is not a flavour there to borrow 
from I do not know that is a good idea anyway.

So there are more to test:
Kubuntu - as plasma has trouble with some of our applications I am less 
sure of it.

Lubuntu - I was not going to bother as it has always felt unfinished to me 
but, I hear that they will be switching to lxqt for 18.10 so it will be 
worth a try for older machines.

Ubuntu Budgie - ??? ok, I'll at least try it. Hmm this seems to be a gnome 
3 based DE... for the moment. They seem to wish to follow the same path as 
Lxqt and will be switching over to qt as their GUI code. I don't know if 
the roots will remain gnome3-ish or not. However, with three people doing 
most of the dev work and a major change like switching toolkits. Stability 
may be less than we want.

ubuntu MATE - this seems to be top of the list for a number of people

xubuntu - we are already there and we know it works.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net