As I stated in my last post, I started doing some Desktop Environment/Window Manager hopping. This started as an urge to do some distro hopping but, seeing that I feel quite at home with Arch, I figured that all I really just wanted to see some other DE and/or WM’s. Most everything I’ll need will be available in the official Arch repo’s or the AUR so, there’s no real need to do the distro hopping side of it. Plus, I’ve already got the Arch dual architecture netinstall on a USB drive, might as well give it something to do.
I started using Linux with Ubuntu (8.04) until I started looking for a lighter setup. I then found CrunchBang and switched to it for my main distro. About the same time CrunchBang was moving to a Debian base, I was getting quite tired of the Ubuntu base that I’d always been using and started looking at the mothership, Debian. Somewhere in there, I installed Fedora on my EeePC and ran that for some months. Also, I did quite a bit of distro hopping with a spare partition on my EeePC throughout all that time. As far as DE/WM, I’d stayed with Gnome then OpenBox and finally XFCE for my main installs.
Eventually, I decided to give Arch a try. Somewhere along the line (most likely in my Ubuntu days) I’d gotten the idea that Arch was difficult to install and hard to maintain. This may be quite true for the new Linux user and the idea kept me from even attempting Arch initially. Once I finally did, and got it up and running with XFCE quite quickly along with it running much quicker and lighter than even a minimal Debian install, I was sold. Seems I’ve come a long way in my Linux journey but, I love the total control that Arch gives me over my system. I now run it on four different machines: desktop, netbook, webserver and HTPC.
Anyway, the whole point of this post was so that I could list some of the DE/WM’s that I’d like to visit in the near future. I only plan on keeping them installed for a week, maybe two and then move to the next. All of this experimenting will be done on my EeePC of course. In the end, I may just simply go back to XFCE on it or, I may find something else that I really like.
Last weeks Gnome3 install ended up with me cursing it. It just seemed that it lagged with anything I wanted to do. Everything took a few extra seconds to open. I was hoping that some extensions would help but, no matter what I tried, nothing helped. So, it’ll probably be some time before it hits my hard drive again.
I’m currently on my second day with KDE4. I’ve been extremely surprised that runs quite smoothly. It does seem to take a little bit to get to the desktop on initial login but aside from that, it’s quite usable. Still, it’s early for this install so, I’ll leave any other analysis of it for later.
Now, on to the list of others that I’d like to give a spin. This list is in no particular order and will have a few more entries before I’m done.
gnome3blog postkde4blog post- dwm
- properwm
- awesome
- trinity
- lxde
- razor-qt
- openbox –It’s been awhile, may revisit it.
- sawfish
- enlightenment
- notion
- xmonad
- i3
- more…
I’m open to suggestions so, if you have any, leave them in the comments below. It’s gonna take me a bit to get through the list but, it’s gonna be fun. Currently, these two Arch wiki entries DE & WM will be providing me with plenty of choices. And on a positive note, seeing that my tablet has become my go-to mobile device, this gives my EeePC some action as it’s mostly been unused since I got that tablet.
Now I’m off too go out and manage some windows.
