What motivates you to choose a DE/WM?

[richb]

@AVLinux LOL. I do not blame you. I will leave it as is to keep your post in context. A good laugh is; well good.

[rokytnji.1]

KDE dyslexic here. Icewm or XFCE for me .

With Tint2 and wbar. I can make a fake gnome look desktop in fluxbox.
https://antixlinux.com/forum-archive/fl ... t6200.html

Always been run what ya brung though. I kinda quit tweaking window managers and my Desktop Environment.
Time for the younger generation to take over.
Pioneering can be tiring by the time you reach the later years.
I am comfy in rox filer and thunar equally through practise.

[asqwerth]

But in KDE I have to rely on third party widgets that I have no idea how they work, that's why after installing a very simple tool, I can end up with an empty desktop without any panels or widgets and with no idea how to fix it.

I have been using KDE for many years and installed many third pasrty widgets. Indeed they may not work, but never has it destroyed the basic system.I think that assertion is a bit over the top. In my experience at any rate.

An example is Event Calendar, if you are on a rolling distro with KDE, or say you try to run an in-place upgrade of a fixed release distro. There were a few times where an old version of Event Calendar borked a newer version of Plasma desktop in exactly that way.

I had to run MX live, access /home of that KDE install, and delete that Event Calendar plasmoid file before the desktop appeared again.

[ADDED] For that reason, I think it's safer to go to the relevant page of the plasmoid in KDE Store to check on any notes by the dev about which version of the plasmoid file is suitable for which version of Plasma desktop. You don't get those notes from the window that opens when you "get new widgets" from within your PLasma desktop.

[Artim]

I like a plain and simple window manager like Openbox, but I remain a Xfce4 fanboy for two reasons:

1. Xfce doesn't radically and suddenly change, forcing it's users to practically learn a whole 'nother environment out of the blue.

2. Xfce development is deliberately slow (like Debian, now that I think on it), so it's much more stable, not introducing new bling and sparkle just for the sake of bling and sparkle.

Simplicity is king!

[asqwerth]

I have a variety of DEs running on my various distros in my multiboot PC: XFCE, Plasma, Budgie, Gnome, MATE [I find MATE rather meh, to be honest].

However, XFCE is the DE that is most present in the distros.

Personally I find XFCE the most predictable, comfortable and easy to set up. For rolling distros, I find it the most trouble-free DE (not counting things like LXDE that isn't much developed anymore). When there is so much churn and upgrades in a rolling distro, at least you can count on XFCE to be stable and continue to work.

Plus it goes well (for now!) with Compiz [for Arch-based, only Compiz09 works], which I really like as a window manager.

[richb]

Another attraction; familiarity

I was introduced to KDE with Mepis which quickly became my distro of choice. So even with that early edition of KDE it was easy to migrate to MX with KDE when it was added, despite the changes.
I was happy with the XFCE version but was delighted when KDE was made available.

[LU344928]

KDE was the first one I used also, back in the old Mandrake days so was pleased when it became available on MX. It has better font rendering and it just looks clearer and sharper than Xfce.

Also, Dolphin is way better than Thunar (which I've never liked) and Kfind beats Catfish hands down.

[CharlesV]

XFCE for me - as so many others have said... speed and the ability to tweak as desired is what makes it all work for me. I use my computers hard, and I want them to just work, AND to look / feel good - and I can turn a simple xfce into great DE with just a few tweaks.

I have used KDE for a long time, and xfce just about as long, trying to seriously compare aspects of how I work, and really for me it comes down to production. But, sadly it seems that I can bend KDE into a pretzel pretty quick and while I prefer the eye candy of KDE ... xfce just flat out keeps working regardless of the bends. (And I can usually always unbend it pretty quick on those rare occasions I seriously mess it up ;-p )

[Gabriel_M]

Xfce is my preferred desktop environment, it doesn't offer fancy mods, it's more performance oriented and compact with full user interface.
It shows installed programs so I can locate them quickly, and includes a variety of simple and efficient add-on applications and plugins, enough for me.

[rasat]

Compared to the different DE/WMs, there is one WM that can do things of what they can do. This is FVWM because many of them originated from this WM. There are functions that FVWM can do that I have not come across in others, such as using the left-click mouse cursor for 4 different purposes. For example, having one push button that can do four different actions depending on the mouse left-click. The common single or double click is quite limited compared to this feature. Would be nice, if this could be adopted by other DEs and WMs.

Code: Select all

#####
#
# DestroyFunc FuncName
# AddToFunc   FuncName
# + I (Action to happen immediately)
# + C (Action to happen on a mouse 'click)
# + D (Action to happen on a mouse 'double click')
# + H (Action to happen on a mouse 'hold')
# + M (Action to happen on a mouse 'motion')
#
###########

https://www.fvwm.org/Wiki/Config/Functions