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Well,XFCE is doing fine. I know many people who switched to it, as I did at work. (Me uses Windows at home, Arch with XFCE at work.)

If you're referring to recent DE releases (e.g., Gnome 3, KDE 4.7 and Unity) then I don't know where you've been getting your information. KDE 4.7 has for the most part received raving reviews. KDE 4 is all grown up and has been a welcomed refuge for many users fleeing Gnome 3 and Unity. While KDE 4 might have been a mess at its initial few releases (4.0 through 4.3) it has greatly matured over the past two years and is now a paragon of stability and usability. I suggest you give KDE 4.7 a serious look if you're seeking shelter from Gnome 3 and Unity, at least until these latter two DE's mature.

If you're referring to recent DE releases (e.g., Gnome 3, KDE 4.7 and Unity) then I don't know where you've been getting your information. "

It's not an information, it is an impression, and, you know, impressions are subjective.

Yes, i was kde user 4 years, after kde4 i switched to gnome, and after gnome3 now i use lxde..Lxde is great, i dont need fancy effects and inventions, i need something to start my laptop and to run the apps i use, nothing else..

I use LXDE too, in fact I'm posting from Lubuntu. I switched to LXDE back in 2009 and never looked back.

Try OpenBox with tint2 panel. Forget LXDE.

That dream died years ago.


It's not that people are moving from Linux to Windows or Mac, it's that Linux never offered a compelling reason to move to it and stay.

Your opinion only. Feel free to express it but understand that opinions are useless to anyone but the author.

I have been using linux and freeBSD for 8 years now so your statement contains no logic. Troll much?

Maybe. Or it could just be that the unhappy people are a small but noisy minority. It's hard to say one way or another, since as usual, people make more of a fuss when they're unhappy than when everything is working fine.

If I can chip in my 2 cents, I'd call myself a pretty average Linux user. I used Linux with gnome 2 for about 7 years before gnome released v3. I used gnome 3 and unity for a bit and thought they had some good ideas. However, the usability failures and bugginess of both environments (Unity literally died on me twice for no apparent reason) ultimately drove me to a tiling window manager, and I believe my next computer will be a mac.

People hear what they want to hear and then they echo it. Especially if some of those people are high profile like Linus. I don't actually believe the number of people who "hate" the new desktops is anywhere near as predominant as a casual glance at tech sites like this one and /. would have one believe.

I also think a lot of what you saw in the early days was kneejerk reaction to the initial attempts to use the new environment without learning to make it work for the user instead of against. That'll improve as they get more polished and features find their way back into the codebase.

Of course there are people out there who legitimately want to stay with the old way of doing things, like the Trinity folks, and are willing to put forth the effort to preserve it. I applaud those people for taking the initiative and wish them nothing but success in the future.

If there is a problem with the new Linux desktops Gnome 3, KDE 4+ and Unity, I feel it is because they are being ambitious and innovating rather than simply copying the Windows desktop.

These new desktop environments are released early lack polish and are incomplete and quirky. However, all of them either do or in the very near future will offer a complete and engaging user experience, even if there is some learning curve for users of older desktops. The old tree menus seem to be a thing of the past.

Personally I find KDE 4 difficult, I dislike the kicker menu and don’t like Lancelot much either – however, I suspect that most of this is my fault as I’ve never bothered to get my head around the activities system in KDE 4 – which I suspect is good. For my part I like Unity which is greatly improved in 11:10 and presumably will be more so in the next Ubuntu release, I find it easy to work with multiple desktops and as I tend to use only 5 or 6 apps so the doc works well for me. I friend of mine likes gnome 3 a lot and the multiple desktops system here look very promising and better than I can see in any other DE including Mac OSX or Windows. I don’t like the icons being so large but this will no doubt be adjustable shortly.

The changes to the DEs are innovation and the nature of open source means that the initial releases are unlikely to have the polish of OSX but if you are prepared to be a little tolerant and climb a little learning curve the DEs will be as good or better than proprietary ones, if they are not already – I prefer Unity to the Windows desktop now, as it has more features that I use and this will only increase.

Edited 2011-11-02 06:59 UTC

No. Wrong. The KDE4 desktop lacked polish and was incomplete and quirky back in 2008 when it was first released. It has put all that well behind it now, and is quite polished and easily THE most complete desktop of any.

The "old tree menus" are still there under the Kickoff menu. Just right-click on the menu icon, and select "classic" mode.



Lancelot is a lot like the "new" mode menu of XP, except easier.

http://www.coolnerds.com/XP/StartMenu/xpStartMenu.htm

http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/images/screenshots/lancelot-main-wi...

Kicker classic mode is a lot like the "classic" tree menus of XP and KDE3.

If you have these opinions of KDE, do you also have them for XP? If not, then you have a clear double standard, I'm afraid.



OK, a lot of people seem to have a similar comment. I'll try to explain without too many words.

On KDE's Plasma, everything you see on the desktop is implemented as a widget. This includes panels, the task bar, system tray, notifications, icons (representing either shortcuts, URLs or actual files), the wallpaper, folder views, and true widgets such as weather monitors. All of these are different types of widgets in Plasma.

As do most desktops, KDE4 lets you arrange these desktop elements however you like. You can change the wallpaper, change the size and placement of widgets (of all kinds), add quick-launch icons to the panel ... whatever. All pretty much standard. The thing is, KDE4 lets you "save" such a setup as a named "activity". You can save as many such "desktop arrangement definitions" as you like, under different names. Then later you can "load" a previously saved "desktop arrangement definition" (or activity, if you will) back on to any virtual desktop.


https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/358560:kde-45-desktop-activiti...



Very powerful. More flexible than any other desktop.

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/08/16/kde-desktop-activities-explained/

http://lifehacker.com/5668873/use-kde-activities-to-create-differen...

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/kdes-desktop-features-activities-widge...

You don't have to use this feature if you don't want to. If you do want to use it, it is only available with KDE4.



None of this is outside the scope of KDE. KDE can easily do all that for you.



KDE is better than the OSX desktop. Unity has quite a way to to get anywhere near the OSX desktop.

Edited 2011-11-02 10:28 UTC

I can tell you I don't like the direction the New DE's are taking. I did like KDE and then 4 came along, at first it was awful and it's gotten better; but in the meantime I moved to Gnome and than Gnome make's this new DE and Ubuntu makes Unity. Both personally I do not care for and ended up in XFCE which I like a whole lot. The DE developers of Gnome should have stuck with a classic look imho.

They've lost the plot, that's what's going on....

Edited 2011-11-03 09:28 UTC