Preferred DE of the FreeBSD users

Which is your current DE or WM? If not listed please specify!

  • Total voters
    242
freezr

freezr

Hi guys,

since FreeBSD doesn't have a default DE or WM I'd like to know which are the preferences here, it is only a personal curiosity, I if you want share your habit it will be great!

If you do not use any DE/WM there's no need for you to participate but if your WM isn't listed I'd like to know your choice of use!

Thanks in advance to all!

tgl
 
I won't vote because you don't have an "other" choice, but WindowMaker for going on 20yrs. It's more of a classic Window Manager instead of "desktop environment".
 
perhaps it does fall under "stacking" but I've never thought of it that way. Unless "stacking window manager" means "not tiling"
 
tgl said:
Doesn't fall WindowMaker into the Stacking Windows Manager Category?
Click to expand...
Window Maker has "applets" (dockapps), a "taskbar", program starter, sessions, etc. & much more - IMO it's more of a desktop environment than a window manager ;)
 
I personally prefer KDE... Most DE's are a pain to upgrade properly (while leaving everything else alone), KDE is no exception (Still trying to set up Poudriere to automate a proper upgrade, already 7 months into the project ;) ). KDE is pretty convenient for my needs, so I keep going with my Poudriere project.
 
jmos said:
Window Maker has "applets" (dockapps), a "taskbar", program starter, sessions, etc. & much more - IMO it's more of a desktop environment than a window manager ;)
Click to expand...
This is true but conventionally it has been always considered a WM:

Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment, although it can run stand alone. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP user interface.
Click to expand...
 
If I may ask, is there any objective in that "personal curiosity"? Like, getting ideas what to try yourself? 🤔

I personally prefer FVWM, currently using x11-wm/fvwm3 (and trying to maintain that port as well).

If asked specifically about (full) desktop environments, I prefer KDE/Plasma.
 
Zirias said:
If I may ask, is there any objective in that "personal curiosity"? Like, getting ideas what to try yourself? 🤔

I personally prefer FVWM, currently using x11-wm/fvwm3 (and trying to maintain that port as well).

If asked specifically about (full) desktop environments, I prefer KDE/Plasma.
Click to expand...
If this was a Linux forum you would had thousand of new subscriptions of people yelling at each others the Gnome is better than KDE and vice-versa.

I'd like to understand how much interest there is around the desktop space, I know the FreeBSD Foundation wants promote the OS as general purpose although the biggest interest is around ZFS, Jails and so on...

In order to create an interest around the dekstop use leaving the OS without a default DE/WM is contradictory. I heard that Lumina is supposed to be BSD DE made by the BSD folks, although I like it is not in a very good shape; but it is not alone looks like is a condition shared across all the DE and I tend to consider this more a reflex of a little interest about the desktop space more than a lack of users or developers.
 
tgl said:
In order to create an interest around the dekstop use leaving the OS without a default DE/WM is contradictory.
Click to expand...
Frankly, no. FreeBSD is a general-purpose OS. It is self-contained, (mostly?) POSIX-compliant, and capable of running any *nix software. Desktop environments (and window managers) exist as standalone projects. They're utterly unnecessary for some workloads. Having a default would IMHO kind of defeat the general purpose idea...
tgl said:
I heard that Lumina is supposed to be BSD DE made by the BSD folks
Click to expand...
Lumina really never "got there". I personally think that's kind of sad. Having read some stuff about the ideas behind it, it was promising. Having tried it myself, it was just unfinished. Would be great if the project got some love, but, someone has to do it.

One reason I prefer KDE out of the "full-featured" desktops is: they care about portability, they even have a task-force for KDE on FreeBSD.
 
Fluxbox.

The Lumina file manager, Insight, was sorely lacking a "Copy To" and "Move To" feature when I tried it and reported as such to Beanieweenie.
 
Following is my opinion, agree, disagree, tell me I'm full of crap, "it's all good". I'm trying to address this statement by tgl:

"In order to create an interest around the dekstop use leaving the OS without a default DE/WM is contradictory."

Lumina: great idea, not enough manpower to get over the finish line. Adequate desktop environment if that's what you want/need.
KDE/Gnome: My opinion like all desktop environments too much, too bloated, not what I want/need.

FreeBSD and Desktops. This has been "the topic" for as long as I can remember (and we're talking about 3.x days). I have never given it much thought. Why? Any computer use is about the applications. What applications do I need, what applications do I want. Everything else is a lesser concern.
Stability of the base OS is a good thing, it's like the foundation of the house. But you can have the best foundation in the world and a house that doesn't support your needs.

FreeBSD is a stable foundation. Maybe not always the fastest, maybe not always the latest hardware support, but in general for most workloads, it fast enough and stable enough.

Applications (the house): what are you doing. Simple text editing? Vi and a console work fine for that. Digital photography/video editing? Completely different requirements. Figure out what you want (oh darktable is pretty darn good for photo editing by the way)

So now we have a foundation and a house. What colors, what flooring, what appliances? To me that is the DE/WM bits. We are into personal preference, personal opinions. I like blue wall paint (KDE) you like yellow (Gnome). Why should there be a blue default? Why should there be a yellow default? As soon as you pick one, you'll have someone that likes greens (stacking window manager) and you can't sell the house.

If you're still reading, thank you.

I don't want FreeBSD proper to have a default desktop environment or window manager. I want it to install a solid foundation that I can build upon to create the computing environment that I like, that make ME productive. That is exactly what we get from current FreeBSD.

If you want "A FreeBSD that installs a desktop environment of KDE/Gnome by default" then look for a distribution that does that.

Sorry if this got long and opinionated, but hey, it's Friday and snow's coming in.
 
tgl said:
In order to create an interest around the dekstop use leaving the OS without a default DE/WM is contradictory.
Click to expand...
You have now seen first hand that everyone uses different environments (the most common are WMs).
Any choice for a "default" DE would effectively be unsuitable for over 50% of users.

From the sounds of the comments, Window Maker might possibly be the most popular environment. Would you really want Window Maker in the default install?
 
Zirias said:
Frankly, no. FreeBSD is a general-purpose OS. It is self-contained, (mostly?) POSIX-compliant, and capable of running any *nix software. Desktop environments (and window managers) exist as standalone projects. They're utterly unnecessary for some workloads. Having a default would IMHO kind of defeat the general purpose idea...

Lumina really never "got there". I personally think that's kind of sad. Having read some stuff about the ideas behind it, it was promising. Having tried it myself, it was just unfinished. Would be great if the project got some love, but, someone has to do it.

One reason I prefer KDE out of the "full-featured" desktops is: they care about portability, they even have a task-force for KDE on FreeBSD.
Click to expand...

That is fair enough however general purpose is that kind of label that can depict everything and nothing at the same time. A default DE is just strategic in term of documentation and for welcoming new, not very tech savvy, users.
 
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