Desktop <not a tech question, opinion question>

[Scott Blair]

On 08/30/2015 02:32 PM, silver.bullet at zoho.com wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Aug 2015 13:28:31 -0400, Scott Blair wrote:
>> I am running Ubuntu 14.04. I'm kind of bored with the desktop. I was
>> thinking of switching to a different one. Any suggestions?
> Hi,
>
> what to suggest depends to your needs and work-flow.
>
> Instead of running a desktop environment I prefer a window manager
> without a desktop environment.
>
> You could test jwm and openbox. I prefer openbox over jwm and my
> preferred panels are fbpanel and lxpanel.
>
> By default jwm has a nice panel included, but you also could use
> another panel for jwm too.
>
> The clearly best terminal emulation is roxterm, what ever desktop
> environment or window manager you'll use.
>
> File managers are a matter of taste, my recommendation are spacefm and
> rodent, while AFAIK rodent is not available by the repositories, but by
> a DEB package provided by upstream.
>
> Pluma and sublime text are nice editors.
>
> If you wish to use a desktop environment, you perhaps should test Xfce4.
>
> I dislike KDE, GNOME and it's forks Cinnamon and Mate, but Mate at least
> provides nice applications, such as pluma and engrampa. Btw Xfce4's
> xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-appfinder are nice for usage with window
> mangers too.
>
> You could take a look at Razor and LXDE, they aren't my taste, but
> other users like them.
>
> What desktop environment are you using at the moment and what do you
> dislike of that desktop environment? It's easier to recommend another DE
> or a WM, if you would answer this question.
>
> Do you have already a few apps you won't miss? You should mention them.
> They might be based on GTK or Qt and that might have impact to the DE
> or WM to recommend.
>
> Are you a terminal user or do you prefer to e.g. use file managers over
> a terminal? Features such as automount comes to mind. You might want it
> or you hate it etc..
>
> Some users love Enlightenment, I hate it.
>
> Some users like tiling window managers, such as ion and awsome,
> depending to your needs, thy might be a good solution.
>
> Resume
>
> To recommend DEs and/or WMs and apps you need to provide more
> information about your work-flow and how experienced you are with using
> Linux.
>
> Regards,
> Ralf
>
>
You have given me a lot to look at, thank you. I'm running Unity right now.
I really use Facebook and search on stuff. I am retired so it is my home
system. I am no longer a gamer, gotten old, reaction time to slow to play
FPS any more, although I do play some games on Steam. I do a lot of email.
I also do a lot of stuff for the Marine Corps League, mostly in LibreOffice.
I am starting to use Gimp more too. I do have VirtualBox installed, mostly
to keep up on Microsoft operating systems for my friends. I have tried to
install Ubuntu 14.04 in VirtualBox, but it will only allow a 800 x 600 
resolution.
I installed the Guest additions and it didn't help. You mentioned windows
manager instead of desktop environment. I will look into that also. To be
honest, I am OK with the way Unity works and have gotten use to it. I'm
just bored with it and looking to change it. I love using the terminal, 
with it
I feel I have more control, even though that is probably not the case. I 
have
been using Ubuntu steady since 8.04 came out. I did use Linux, back in the
90s, running Slackware, then Red Hat 4.0 I believe it was 4.0, when it was
free, but at the time, I couldn't run my games that I played in Linux, so I
went back to Windows.

-- 


Scott Blair

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