If somebody wants to use a WM with a desktop, then it's possible to e.g. use spacefm or rodent for the desktop. If just a wallpaper is wanted, then feh does the job. FWIW parcellite is a nice clipboard.

I suppose I should have elaborated on that setup, but yes, pretty much. I use nitrogen for the wallpaper, I do without a dedicated file manager, Dired and GNU coreutils do it for me, but my wife has a similar setup using pcmanfm. udev/systemd take care of mounting things.

clipit is my choice of a clipboard manager.

XFCE wins. It has all i need. Simple and light.

On 12/28/2015 04:40 AM, Storm Dragon wrote:

Howdy, mate is nice, and seems to be pretty actively developed. Of course it wins for me because accessibility issues for blind users get fixed in a somewhat reasonable amount of time. XFCE hasn't had accessibility improvements, as far as I know, in like at least 3 years, maybe more. HTH Storm On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 09:06:57PM -0500, D C wrote:

...

XFCE, is that really future-? It looks dated as heck, not bashing it or anything, just saying. If Gnome Shell wasn't my long term desktop I would prob use XFCE. Gnome shell only comes alive tho if your machine isn't slow as Fu*%

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 6:43 PM, Francis Gerund ranrund@gmail.com wrote:

...

Just a call for opinions: if you use Arch, and you wanted to choose and stay with a desktop environment long-term, what would you choose - and why?

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On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 09:06:57PM -0500, D C wrote:

XFCE, is that really future-? It looks dated as heck, not bashing it or anything, just saying. If Gnome Shell wasn't my long term desktop I would prob use XFCE. Gnome shell only comes alive tho if your machine isn't slow as Fu*%

Depends on how you define "future-proof." Personally, I'm glad XFCE hasn't gone the way of Gnome, so I see it as future-proof in the sense that it's not likely to go "tablet crazy" like so many other things have. So while you may call it dated, I call it relieving. Change for the sake of change is never a good idea in my book.

--Sean

On Mon, 28 Dec 2015 15:02:17 +0800, Gener Badenas wrote:

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Francis Gerund ranrund@gmail.com wrote:

...

Just a call for opinions: if you use Arch, and you wanted to choose and stay with a desktop environment long-term, what would you choose

• and why?

Regardless of distro, I always go for LXDE.

I assume with openbox as it's WM?!

Since Arch is a rolling release and following the KISS principle, the less issues are to expect, when using something simple, instead of something bloated.

I don't know the actual state of affairs regarding LXDE's transition from GTK to Qt, however, since my recommendation was openbox with e.g. lxpanel, I suspect that LXDE likely is a good choice, without ever using it myself.

Another user mentioned GNOME and another user retorted Mate. IMHO Mate is a better choice than GNOME (and Cinnamon). Mate provides a steady work-flow, GNOME has broken it's work-flow (as KDE unfortunately has done too and seemingly Xfce4 is going to do). I'm using a few Mate tools, since I'm still used to a few GNOME 2 tools from my first Linux steps. Among other issues GNOME and Cinnamon suffer from slowness, this has nothing to do with a slow computer, it's related to the task the computer is used for.

I started with KDE3 (never tested Trinity), then used GNOME2 (Cinnamon and Mate are installed for testing purpose) and after that I used Xfce4 for a very long time. When Xfce4 started causing issues with updates (e.g. braking themes), I completely had enough from desktop environments. I used a few other DEs and WMs within my more then 10 years Linux experience and ended with jwm and openbox without a desktop environment. I prefer openbox over jwm, but both are ok.

LXDE usually is used with openbox, perhaps it's worth to test LXDE if somebody prefers a DE over a WM. However, using openbox without a DE I don't miss anything.

Regards, Ralf

Francis Gerund, we forgot to mention that some users prefer configuration files that aren't human readable over classic human readable KISS configuration files, this might be important for you too, when you chose your desktop environment. Seemingly not all Arch Linux users consequently prefer the KISS principle, instead they prefer desktop environments with opaque configuration files. I don't know the advantage of opaque configuration files, I prefer the human readable files, but seemingly opaque configuration files have got an advantage.

I use i3 with xfce4 session, It took me a while to figure out, but in the session and startup dialog for xfce4 you canchoose a display chooser on login, I disable all xfce4 sessions except xfce4-panel and xfsettingsd, install i3 with urxvt and all the plugins for urxvt (tabs, perls etc). In my ~/.cache/session I have the sessions xfce4 and i3 beneath eachother.So now when login from tty, the display chooser appears (when checked in xfce4 session and startup manager)  with i3 or xfce4 as wm.The xfce4 is only xfce4, the i3 is in combination with the xfce4 whisker menu, and 2 panels with mainly xfce4 features. Also took a while to make the i3 config as I want, but to be honest, with this setup I am 10x times more productive.Switching workspaces, with dual monitor setup , the second monitor almost feels as overkill.Especially with laptop or 1 screen, things are super. So for me i3 and xfce4

IIRC, I won't read the thread again, all the mentioned WMs and DEs have a past and most likely a future. You might have noticed another thread, "plasma 5 crashing". The bloated DEs, especially GNOME and KDE do not provide a steady work-flow. New major releases often are released before they are stable, but again, even if those releases would be stable, the way they work changes and breaks the work-flow. I don't know if a version of LXDE still will be based on GTK in the future or if they will completely switch to Qt, the Internet might inform about this. You shouldn't worry about the future, you should care about your needs regarding configuration files, the work-flow, how the DE interacts with your computer usage. It perhaps wouldn't be smart to chose a 3D DE, if your install is based on linux-rt.

Ralf Mardorf writes:

IIRC, I won't read the thread again, all the mentioned WMs and DEs have a past and most likely a future. You might have noticed another thread, "plasma 5 crashing". The bloated DEs, especially GNOME and KDE do not provide a steady work-flow. New major releases often are released before

What is a "steady work-flow"?

they are stable, but again, even if those releases would be stable, the way they work changes and breaks the work-flow. I don't know if a

More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past?

/M

-- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0x927912051716CE39 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

GNOME

For example, GNOME once provided menu bars and then dropped the menu bar, you can see this by simply installing e.g. gedit or file-roller. GNOME requires priority for 3D graphics, if you have bad luck the combination of graphics driver and graphics doesn't work anymore, if you run GNOME, even if e.g. google-earth shouldn't cause an issue. If you set real-time priorities for audio, it will make the situation likely more worse. Even the name for idiotic crap, such as configurations that aren't human readable changed from gcrap to dcrap or similar.

Somebody already gave a few KDE examples, so just a note regarding Qt.

Qt was "improved" by dropping qtconfig, this is an issue what ever WM or DE you're using. GTK fortunately still provide .gtkrc-2.0 and .config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini.

Xfce4

After an update e.g. a small window title bar with a clean design, became a fat thing with a Microsoft appeal.

Enlightenment

Was steady in always being buggy whenever I tested it and always providing blatant nineties look, with no option to get rid of it.

Many basic DE applications are simply crap. E.g. try to disable or enable the bell for xfce4-terminal by the GUI. Then try to do the same by an editor to edit it's configuration file but find this configuration file for an older version and a new version of Xfce4. Resize the window of what ever terminal emulation that belongs to what DE ever you're using. What happens to wrapped lines? In the end you anyway will install a file manager, terminal emulation, editor or something else that doesn't belong to the DE.

Some DEs make pluseaudio, GVFS and other things you might not need and that ould cause serious issues, a hard dependency, while those things could be optional dependencies, since if you replace them by empty dummy packages nothing evil will happen. At least GNOMEish apps allow to get rid of the green HDD killer GVFS by simply replacing it with an empty dummy package. I never found out what to remove to get rid of KDE's green HDD killer, after launching e.g. K3b my green HDD spins down and up and down and up ... until I restart the computer. The developers of those bloated DEs don't care about their broken virtual file crap. OTOH when I experienced that libfm-gtk wakes up green HDDs, used for e.g. lxpanel, a developer immediately fixed it.

The long and the short of it, if you want to decide how your environment should work, what you need and what not, then better do not use ad DE such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce4 or similar, instead use a WM such as openbox, jwm or similar.

2 Cents, Ralf

On Wed, 2015-12-30 at 04:49 -0700, Leonid Isaev wrote:

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:57:48AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

...

Xfce4

After an update e.g. a small window title bar with a clean design, became a fat thing with a Microsoft appeal.

Wrong. It's not xfwm4, but the default gtk3 theme. Just use a gtk2 xfwm4 theme and be happy :) Or better yet, recompile libxfce4ui w/o gtk3 support.

Zen{,x} are gtk2/gtk3 themes, however, I don't remember if the chosen window bar belongs to the Zen{,x} themes, however, it was ok for years and _within_ a major release it got broken.

tiling WMs (i3, jwm)

JWM isn't a tiling WM, it's a stacking WM very close to openbox, with a neutral, not blatant look. AFAIK it's the most lightweight WM. The look is timeless nineties, not fashion flashy nineties. For serious work I can't imagine any bad it could lead too, when being steady. The look is not as blatant as Win 98, XT, Win 7 look, other than the window title bar I got after the Xfce4 upgrade, it looks much like Windows.

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 06:47:49 -0700, Leonid 'Beef Marsala' Isaev wrote:

If it is something that uses system resources efficiently and alows you to disable unnecessary bloat, then we agree. But this also implies that you'd like to use graphics card to render windows, not CPU.

I like that the graphics driver works with a rt patched kernel and that I don't get xruns at high DSP load and low latency, when doing real-time audio work, while the GUIs still must remain responsive and fast. It doesn't matter in which way this is provided, it only matters that it proves itself in practice.

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 15:01:56 +0100, Maarten de Vries wrote:

​Lack of compositing has nothing to do with rendering on CPU or GPU. Applications can still get an opengl context and render things. Compositing simply means that the applications wont be rendering to a directly visible buffer but to a buffer that is used by the compositor. That way it can add effects and eye candy.​ If anything, lack of compositing will increase performance by cutting out the middleman and having applications render directly to a visible buffer.

This explains why without compositing performance doesn't slow down and that it could have a positive effect and not a negative one.

Compositing might cause xruns for audio signals or at least might increase MIDI jitter. At best it doesn't affect audio and/or MIDI, but if it affects audio and/or MIDI, then it would make it work worse. Each additional interrupt could cause issues. If audio or MIDI signals are delayed by a fixed time, that isn't too long, it's possible to adjust this without causing an issue. If timing too much fluctuates randomly, this could cause serious trouble. I suspect that CNC machines are more prone to jitter, than MIDI is.

On 12/30/2015 04:19 AM, Maarten de Vries wrote:

On 30 December 2015 at 10:19, Magnus Therning magnus@therning.org wrote:

...

More generally, what do you mean by "work-flow", and how have DEs like KDE and Gnome broken "the work-flow" in the past?

​For a good rant on some things that are wrong with Gnome 3 ​ (and GTK 3): https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/

Yep, that was a good read, and it made my skin crawl. The part that disturbed me the most was the bug about removing the systray icon in Transmission. Imagine supporting all those incompatible configurations. It's absurd!

It's amazing how the pattern of removing features and changing things arbitrarily for the "greater good" is spreading around nowadays. It has invaded Firefox recently. Mozilla is talking about deprecating XUL this year.

(And if you are unhappy about the current state of Firefox, check out Pale Moon [0]. We don't tolerate the nonsense that is boiling over in GNOME 3 and Mozilla.)

On 30 December 2015 at 12:49, Leonid Isaev leonid.isaev@jila.colorado.edu wrote:

...

On the contrary, things like {open,flux}box and tiling WMs (i3, jwm) still use a design from '90s. And from olden days of Win98 we remember what it leads to.

In my experience, it leads to very productive and happy users that don't have to change the way they use their computer every time some dev or designer decides to "streamline the user experience" by removing useful features or adding extra empty space everywhere.

Amen! I'm using Window Maker here. It's the same GUI it has always been for 20-something years. Except, it is still actively maintained. There is even an option to ignore window caption hints in GTK applications because of the GNOME "Client Side Decoration" nonsense.

Long live no-nonsense 90s GUIs!

--Kyle Terrien

[0] https://www.palemoon.org/

On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 11:48 PM, Patrick Burroughs (Celti) celti@celti.name wrote:

On Fri, 1 Jan 2016 11:53:45 -0800 Kyle Terrien kyleterrien@gmail.com wrote:

...

It's amazing how the pattern of removing features and changing things arbitrarily for the "greater good" is spreading around nowadays. It has invaded Firefox recently. Mozilla is talking about deprecating XUL this year.

Deprecating XUL (and XPCOM) actually has a good and logical reason, which is making Firefox properly threadable and removing many security holes that the present architecture has. It's not change for the sake of change (which I will admit some Firefox changes have been) — it is change for the sake of keeping up with the modern world.

~Celti

No, threading isn't the problem. The main reason is that the entire system is too flexible and exposes lots of internals. Because of this, every Firefox version so far had to strike a balance between breaking addons and making necessary improvements. Creating a new, smaller API would ease cleaning up Gecko while keeping ported extensions working. XUL would still get used, but only internally.

Secondly, it's a step towards replacing Gecko completely. I guess we'll be seeing Servo as the content renderer within a year or two. Gecko will only be used for the chrome and eventually will vanish completely, taking XUL with it.

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 12:22:46 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:

Personally I've not come across anything in new releases of Gnome that has been even close to that irritating.

Dropping the menu bar isn't irritating? Employers need to re-train staff, if such a radical change happens, not to mention that there even could be the need to buy new hardware, because the graphics could be to slow, when 3D capability is required. It's not only expensive, but also polluting. I don't know another DE that made such evil changes as GNOME does, IMO it's the most worse DE of all DEs.

Le 30/12/2015 10:37, Moritz Bunkus a écrit :

• Plasmas calendar widget (the one opened from the tray) did not

contain week numbers anymore. I often consulted that widget when scheduling meetings with other people. I had to switch to other calendars, and this feature hasn't come back yet.

Just answering this (I agree on the whole point being made) : this was an issue for me too, but it has been fixed for a long time now. Just do a right click on it, go to settings, and it should be the second checkbox right below “Show date” (or something like that). ;)

Hey,

Just answering this (I agree on the whole point being made) : this was an issue for me too, but it has been fixed for a long time now. Just do a right click on it, go to settings, and it should be the second checkbox right below “Show date” (or something like that). ;)

Ah, that's good to know, thanks. I have to admit that I haven't checked the widget's settings since back in the day when I first encountered it and found a corresponding bug in bugs.kde.org.

One more issue I'd like to point out as extremely annoying during the transition phase: kwallet, KDE's password management facility.

There's a wallet subsystem provided to all applications that need to store and access secret information in a safe way. Additionally there's a management tool, kwalletmanager, which the user can use to look up the stored settings and adjust changed passwords.

KDE's developers decided to create kwallet5, a subsystem that is only available to apps already using KF5 libraries. This kwallet5 system converts the existing kwallet4 library to a kwallet5 library on first start. So far, so good.

However, all existing apps that still use kwallet4 (at that point most of the old KDE applications like the whole of KDEPIM, nowadays still Chromium for example) where still using the old wallet database.

This is fine as long as they don't diverge – which they do quickly, of course. So a new KF5 app would be using an updated password while e.g. kmail was still using the old one and vice versa. Do make matters worse kwalletmanager, the user's only tool to actually inspect and edit those passwords, hadn't been ported to KF5/kwallet5 yet. Therefore you couldn't really fix such issues either.

On top of all of that Arch only ever provided one version of kwalletmanager.

So now I've been running two separate wallet systems for a couple of months, and at each point in time I've only ever been able to manually inspect/change/fix one of them.

One of the reasons I'm incredibly glad that KDE4 is phased out in Arch.

Anyway, I've always been and will most likely stay a hard-core KDE/Plasma user (even though I've taken a serious look at LxQt, xfce lately). But I understand every other user who's frustrated and switches away.

That being said: I'm also a developer. I know that library transitions require an immense amount of work, and I also understand that a lot of issues in Plasma 5 weren't actually due to KDE but to Qt (I think one of my aforementioned Alt+Space issues was one of those, as are several multi-monitor issues that are still around). I highly appreciate all the work the KDE/Plasma/Qt developers are doing. The same applies to Arch's KDE maintainer(s) – thanks to you, too.

Kind regards, mosu

On 29 Dec 2015, Bennett Piater wrote:

I'm another extremely satisfied i3wm user.

Dmenu is amazing, and everything about i3 is so clean. The config file syntax, the design principles, the container system, the looks...

I use ranger as a (text-mode) file manager and dolphin when I want a graphical one. Gwenview as image viewer. I tend to like KDE apps though. I use VimFX for Firefox.

It's incredibly fast, stable and very configurable while remaining much more approacheable than awesome. You can even upgrade it without logging out and back in or losing the layout, which is a *huge* bonus. You can have x sessions running for months without having to log out.

I have decided. I don't think I'll ever leave i3.

I agree that i3 is good but I find that spectrwm has the same merits and, at least for me, is more intuitive to use. It too has a simple configuration file and changes can be made on the fly. At least worth a look, I suggest, for anyone who is interested in tiling WMs.

I used to use gnome 3, but later found that there were many things installed by default that I never use. Another problem that I got to is that many times when I opened nautilus, it got stuck for some time. It was awful.

Then I tried KDE, but I didn't like it's style.

So I turned to WM, and finally chose awesome. The reason is that its configuration file is written in lua, which is easy to understand and learn to write.

I think the advantage is that you can control almost everything, and it will stay what it looks like. The appearance does not change for it's up to you, not the developers. And you can configure it once, and just use it without change.

On 12/28/2015 09:00 PM, Magnus Therning wrote:

Francis Gerund writes:

...

Just a call for opinions: if you use Arch, and you wanted to choose and stay with a desktop environment long-term, what would you choose - and why?

Gnome, of course :)

It's been around a long time, with steady improvements over the years. Nice integration resulting in a desktop environment that I find to be a joy to use. It's pretty to boot ;)

/M

-- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0x927912051716CE39 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus

Finagle's First Law: To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.