What Window Manager/DE do you use?

What graphical enviroment do you use?

  • twm

    Votes: 7 6.5%

  • CDE

    Votes: 5 4.7%

  • XFCE

    Votes: 31 29.0%

  • KDE

    Votes: 15 14.0%

  • GNOME

    Votes: 10 9.3%

  • MATE

    Votes: 6 5.6%

  • Cinnamon

    Votes: 4 3.7%

  • LXQT

    Votes: 3 2.8%

  • Other

    Votes: 54 50.5%
  • Total voters
    107
Used i3 for ages but then started to look something else, discovered Qtile and felt in love. Also Awesome and dwm are great and sometimes i would love to have options in Qtile from Awesome and dmw.I like dmw way of tiling - main tile is always bigger than the secondary and it fits my needs when using laptop or secondary screen when resolution is 2540x1440 and below. Awesome - i can switch between screens and workspaces way more intuitive. If i have two screens i can switch between them with mod keys+option, but can have same workspace group options . Example: my workspace groups are [ u i o p 8 9 ) and 2 monitors and same groups on both screens ). I want t o switch to workspace group 8 on second monitor i can use this: mod+2 mod+8, if i want to switch to monitor 1 + group u i can use mod+1 mod+u, unfortunatelly i can not do it with Qtile as i have to have Monitor 1 groups u i o p and monitor 2 groups 8 and 9. But i can have hidden group on Qtile, dont know if can do on other ones ...
 
XFCE is living out its last days on my old PC. I'm not going to use XFCE anymore because of its heavy specific weight. It was fast and light 5 years ago.
Since 4.20, everything has become worse for me.
I don't use KDE because of its overloaded functionality. I don't need even 50% of what is in the settings. I don't like its design. I don't like anything.

GNOME has become fat, unwieldy, and terrible in appearance. The 2nd version was ideal for me. But the times of Ubuntu 6-7 can't be brought back. These were the best versions in the history of Canonical.
MATE is good, but also tired of time...

Cinnamon - I use it. Not overloaded, fast, simple, convenient. Optimal for me.
sway - the best of all (fast, not overloaded with functionality, light). But, unfortunately, developers are in no hurry to adapt programs for it. Therefore, it is too early to use it for my work.
 
I hate to waste RAM on desktop but I am really bad with memorizing shortcuts and rather use mouse - my brain is not that fast and I often just consume content.
So no tiling or complex DE for me.
I loved to use Enlightenment 16 and 17 (Bodhi Linux) - it was snappy and the lightest and prettiest of all the standard ones. Then it got broken (systray not working and other things) so I looked around and tried Openbox CrunchBang style. But I found out when I add all the things (panel tint2, plank, wallpaper, menu scripts etc.) I get very close to RAM consumption of standard XFCE and I just spent several hours configuring it in text editor.
Therefore I usually go for XFCE. But I agree the 4.20 is a bit heavy. Maybe I try LXQT. But I will miss Settings, Whisker menu and Thor(automount). And when global menu plugin works, it is the best - but sadly I can't make it work on FreeBSD.
I tried the new Enlightenment and it is a) error ridden b) no network manager still c) my favorite default Black/Neon blue theme is no more - it just looks like cheap LXQT and moves the same!!!!
Bodhi Linux i.e. Moksha is still fine btw. But no joy for FreeBSD.

I have HP laptop with 4 GB of RAM - it will probably need Openbox and few hours of text file config editing. Even LXQT is not snappy and XFCE is barely OK if you careful. Tho, GELI takes some CPU and ZFS some RAM.
 
DanielBowman said:
I hate to waste RAM on desktop but I am really bad with memorizing shortcuts and rather use mouse - my brain is not that fast and I often just consume content.
So no tiling or complex DE for me.
I loved to use Enlightenment 16 and 17 (Bodhi Linux) - it was snappy and the lightest and prettiest of all the standard ones. Then it got broken (systray not working and other things) so I looked around and tried Openbox CrunchBang style. But I found out when I add all the things (panel tint2, plank, wallpaper, menu scripts etc.) I get very close to RAM consumption of standard XFCE and I just spent several hours configuring it in text editor.
Therefore I usually go for XFCE. But I agree the 4.20 is a bit heavy. Maybe I try LXQT. But I will miss Settings, Whisker menu and Thor(automount). And when global menu plugin works, it is the best - but sadly I can't make it work on FreeBSD.
I tried the new Enlightenment and it is a) error ridden b) no network manager still c) my favorite default Black/Neon blue theme is no more - it just looks like cheap LXQT and moves the same!!!!
Bodhi Linux i.e. Moksha is still fine btw. But no joy for FreeBSD.

I have HP laptop with 4 GB of RAM - it will probably need Openbox and few hours of text file config editing. Even LXQT is not snappy and XFCE is barely OK if you careful. Tho, GELI takes some CPU and ZFS some RAM.
Click to expand...
What graphical environment do you use?
Click to expand...
You can open your own thread and ask for help to whatever problem you have, it's simpler ;)
 
fmc000 said:
Switch done. Now I have my main laptop with KDE (X11 so far, will try Wayland in the weekend) and the spare with Cinnamon.
Click to expand...
I managed to start KDE under Wayland and it seems to work just fine. However, it looks like it works only when started in a tty with ck-launch-session /usr/local/lib/libexec/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed startplasma-wayland - it does not work when started by lightdm.

The issue seems to be that plasma6-plasma-workspace-6.4.3 does not provide a xsession file for the Wayland session but only for the X11 session. I wonder why.
 
fjdlr said:
make a backup of GTK parameters
Click to expand...
I have installed it and found those changes in color. There is a .NSCDE. But what is the GTK file for openbox configuration ? This is looking good but with lot of qt5 and p5 packages. Menu text appears small than openbox, means use its own session. Development on CDE or EMWM would be great.
 
bgavin said:
Q: are any of these file managers console based?

Years ago, IBM internals had a DOS based file manager that was superb.
It was console based so no need of a GUI environment.

I don't know if this is possible in FBSD environment, but I can't think of why not.
Click to expand...
Have you heard of misc/vifm?

pkg install misc/vifm
vifm()
https://vifm.info/

I use it and find it a nice file manager that can be driven by the keyboard and that runs in consoles and terminal programmes.
 
I find these days I am more productive in a text based UI than a GUI.

I started with text UIs and then migrated to GUIs as operating systems evolved. But I have been gradually migrating back to text UIs, though unfortunately some tasks require a GUI desktop - like browsing the web: tried browsing the web recently with www/lynx? ;-).

So I currently use x11-wm/herbstluftwm which is minimilistic, lightweight, and allows me to script virtual desktop creation as well as application startup and their window layouts - saves "start up time" when starting a task that requires multiple applications/terminals open.
 
I am surprised that XFCE is still so popular. I used to like it, it was lightweight until it no longer was. Also, the dependency on Pulseaudio (no mixer otherwise) is a no-go for me. So all my new installs that need a GUI get MATE instead. Also quite lightweight and can be deployed solely using OSS.
 
cy@ said:
I remember Mark Williams Coherent.

Do you remember its kernel config procedure. It was exactly the same as NCR AT&T SYSVR4 which was kind of neat. People who used Coherent could use it to gain experience with AT&T SYSVR4 without blowing up a mission critical system on the raised floor.
Click to expand...
Not anymore ... alas, age takes its toll. I do remember that incredibly detailed and useful Manual that came with it - nothing has ever come close except perhaps the FreeBSD handbook.
 
recluce said:
Also, the dependency on Pulseaudio (no mixer otherwise) is a no-go for me.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure PA isn't a requirement for Xfce; I recall obs-studio pulling it in on a Xfce install and not liking that :p But I don't use PA on Xfce and use default mixer.

I'm not too sure what a mixer would add, but I haven't noticed anything odd with desktop use without anything more advanced installed; pretty sure I've played multiple sounds from different apps simultaneously, and mixer commands for vol up/down/mute bind to my keyboard knob no problem.
 
Possible that there is no direct dependency on Pulseaudio, but when I had this issue about two years back, there certainly was an indirect dependency through one or more of dozen+ dependencies that xfc4e-mixer introduces. We are talking about a simple mixer. See here: xfce4-mixer on freshports
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top