What motivates you to choose a DE/WM?

[figueroa]

I like the MX traditional XFCE desktop, but it's not my favorite environment for day-to-day use.

I want my environment to be:
1. Lightweight
2. Stable (no crashing, works as intended, mature/rarely updated)
3. Silent (no nagging, no reminders)

Therefore, my favorite environment is just the OpenBox window manager with LXPanel at the top and PCManFM to manage the desktop, lxpolkit for desktop permissions. I use the xfce4-screensaver for timed screen locking. I also use conky. Those are the only things loaded by the OpenBox autostart.

An oversimplification, but everything else is application software.

If I must have a full DE, it would be LXDE.

[siamhie]

For me it will always be fluxbox. I discovered it when Slackware 9.0 included version 0.1.14 in it's release back in 2003.
Up to that point I had tried out KDE 1&2, Gnome 1&2, FVWM, Afterstep, WindowMaker, IceWM, Sawfish and a couple of others that escape me but fell in love with fluxbox's simplicity.

[rambo919]

I'm a simple man, at this point it has Dolphin and a functioning multiline taskbar.

I do however consider KDE to have the best combined systems settings solution of the lot. SUSE tried and it became a mess a long time ago.

[Arnox]

Honestly, it really depends on the system I'm running. For really old or really underpowered systems, I'll just throw antiX at it along with its default IceWM (I trust the antiX team to set very good defaults) and call it a day. For laptops, I think XFCE is the best, having a mixture of features and efficiency. For a full phat desktop workstation though, it'll be KDE.

[masinick]

Baldyeti commented that "no DE is magically going to make one 10x (or even 2x times) more efficient/productive."
oops said "I stay with a light WM/DE (IceWM)"
Richb prefers "Extensive configuration capabilities. Hence KDE Plasma for me through its very capable Settings Manager".

Each person has specific reasons for making their choices. I've tried somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen desktop environments and a similar number of window managers. In terms of capabilities nearly all of them are good to very good. In terms of resources used there is a huge difference between the efficient window managers and the full function desktop environments.

The one thing that most people can agree on is that there are choices, and since this is a free software community each individual can choose one of the options provided by the distribution of choice, build their own, use something supported or support it themselves; CHOICE; we all appreciate it.

[amlug]

Activities
Desktop Effects giving various methods of window popup
Hot corners
Easily configure panel options
Widgets

I am not just curious about what motivates as I said in my first post, but also to know what functions are available. For example, I was reading about the Hot corners, start the screen saver when you move the pointer to the top-left corner, or lock the screen when you move the pointer to the top-right corner.
The question is, what would we like to have in each corner? Personally, I like the idea of Desk OverView in the top-left corner. In the top-right corner, could be Tiling. Bottom-left corner, configure and customization. Bottom-right corner, virtual desktops.

[Lotsenbruder]

XFCE, because after the installation he functions without which I have to rumble big. In addition to the adjusting the start bar, it is not necessary to set something.
Simple and extremely reliable. You don't need more to work.

Moderator comment: Bitte, nur Englisch hier.

[Eadwine Rose]

@Lotsenbruder Tagging you or the moderator comment will get missed. The forum language is English, please post in English.

[jeffreyC]

When I first started using Linux I used GNOME 2 which was the DE for Ubuntu and KDE 3 which was the DE for Knoppix at the time.
Then GNOME 3 replaced GNOME 2, I looked at it and it did not work as I wanted so I looked for a another DE, Xubuntu had Xfce and I liked the way that worked.
I have also used and liked Fluxbox.
Along the way I have tried Cinnamon, Awesome WM, Openbox, IceWM, PekWM, JWM, TWM, Enlightenment.
My latest DE I tried out was KDE on MX-21, but setting it up to get it the way I wanted was more work than I wanted to do, especially when Xfce on MX is already so close to what I like.

[MXRobo]

shiney wallpaper