[conspire] Desktop survey

[Michael Paoli]

Don't need no steenkin' Desktop Environment (DE).
For X11 (well, if you really want more than just text ... sometimes a
picture or diagram, etc. is useful), all you really need is some
window manager (WM).  Too many choices?  Ooh, ooh, lots more than for
just the (bloated!, buggy!, ...) DEs.
STFW (Search The Fine Web), e.g.:
site:debian.org window managers
https://wiki.debian.org/WindowManager
If you *really* want DE ...
https://wiki.debian.org/DesktopEnvironment
And if some of that information/documentation is out-of-date, hey, it's
a wiki, you can fix that!  :-)

Personally, I prefer/(mostly)use fvwm ... but may or may not be what you
want/prefer.  I most notably like about fvwm:
o can do darn near everything without need of / to touch pointing device
   (some folks like/prefer ratpoison for similar reasons)
o highly customizeable/extensible (basically I can spend some time maybe
   about once every 2 years or so with a new Debian stable release, and tweak
   things to get it to behave exactly the way *I* want it to ... rather
   than someone else's preferred default configuration (folks would generally
   save a lot of wasted time and disappointment if they bothered to actually
   look at documentation/configurations, and adjust things to their preferences
   rather than toss stuff else and look for something else where they prefer
   the defaults, and mostly do nothing other than see which (e.g.
   distribution's! defaults, they preferred over all the others))
o most all config changes can be made dynamically and take effect immediately
o not bloated - sure, there are even more lean smaller WMs - but those teeny
   ones aren't very capable/flexible/configurable ... or at least not nearly
   as much as fvwm
o It's not a DE - I don't want something that pulls in some huge bungle of
   a whole lot 'o cr*p I mostly don't want and am not interested in.

Oh, yeah, Debian :-) ... no shortage of choices!  Yeah!  So, ... can try 'em
out, ... maybe fiddle with some configs a bit ... try some others, after a
bit, settle on one you (mostly) like, and tweak/configure to one's
satisfaction ... should likely end up with something one's quite to
highly satisfied with.  Also doesn't hurt to keep some other WMs around
too (like I do) ... might want to fire 'em up on (semi-)rare occasion ...
just to see what they look like, or how some stuff behaves/looks/feels under
'em for a bit, or to examine some potential issue or whatever.  Sometimes
some apps are written for or to take advantage of some particular WM or
DE ... in many cases it'll also run under other WMs ... but might be
sub-optimal (for certain definitions of such) ... e.g. might lack
some "decorations" or some particular (generally minor) bells and whistles
or styling that some particular WM or DE offers, that many/most others
don't have that particular special snowflake additional widget decoration
thingies or whatever.  (E.g. I commonly fire up apps for KDE or Gnome under
fvwm ... stuff mostly works - at least "well enough", though sometimes has
some artifacts of not being in its designed for native environment).

<We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.>

> Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2018 16:48:00 +0000 (UTC)
> From: "paulz at ieee.org" <paulz at ieee.org>
> To: Conspire List <conspire at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: [conspire] Desktop survey
>
> Before installing Debian on my new machine, I need to decide on  
> which desktop: cinnamon, gnome, kde,lxde, mate, and xfce.? Too many  
> choices.
>
> I am asking everyone to name their personal preference and a brief "why".