So I am an aesthetics guy when it comes to my distro and desktop environment. I like things to look clean and visually appealing. Last night I kinda took a deep dive into the world of different DE’s. Of course there’s the popular ones that everybody knows about i.e. Cinnamon, Xfce, KDE, Mate, Gnome, etc., however there’s a whole other world of random desktops that I was never aware of! Also it’s difficult to find a clear list of all the available environments.

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Basically, how the heck do I find out more about DE’s and which distro they are compatable with. Of course I always check the distros site, but they usually list the big ones and often times will say “plus others”… how can I find out which desktops are available for which distros? I’ve find it rather tricky to figure out.

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Another thing that kinda tripped me out is that it seems not all DE’s such as the popular ones I listed, appear to be the same visually. For instance, XeroLinux is very beautiful to me and from what I’ve gathered, it runs KDE Plasma. Imo it looks nothing like the actual KDE Plasma OS… are there like different versions of Gnome, KDE, Mate, etc. that look different than others? To me, I figure they would and should all look the same. Idk, it’s all a bit confusing to me and I hope you kind folks could shed some light. Thank you

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I should mention that I have zero interest in the window manager or tiler or whatever they are called. To me, they are super ugly and very confusing to understand :)

  • borzthewolf@lemmy.worldOP
    2·
    1 year ago

    I dont understand this at all. I mean I’ve heard of iceWM but know nothing about it. The screenshots I’ve seen, it looks super minimal, complex, any ugly, but I’m sure I’m missing so much info on how you can actually use it

    • xcutieEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Sorry for the delayef answer (still short of new to lemmy).

      Basically you crasped the core of Icewm: super minimalistic. But it does everything I need.

      Over the years, I have looked into fancier desktop environments, but they all seem unnecessary overloaded to me.

      Maybe a short work flow clarifies how I use icewm:

      1. After login, the startup script starts all programs that I regularly need.
      2. Shortcuts to resize windows and move them to different desktops and circle through open windows.
      3. Shortcuts to open more common programs
      4. For everything else: konsole