Does anyone use MATE (Gnome 2 fork)?

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 18:06:43 +0200
Rami Rosen <rosenrami at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> The main issues I encountered in last months in KDE are:
> 1) loads application slowly compared to Gnome.
> 2) sometimes KDE plasma crashes when I press on the Kickoff
> application launcher
> 3) the kwallet pop up annoys me (though I am sure it is trivial to
> get rid of this pop up)
> 
> I wonder which other problems did you have with it ? KDE is quite
> veteran as you know.

This is such a cool thread I'm copying my local LUG...

My problems with KDE are described here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm#_Steve_You_Sound_Angry

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm#_Escape_From_Kmail

And more generally, through the whole document:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm

Bottom line, for me, KDE stands for Krash, Delay, Expand.
 
> I did not try the other Display Managers. In case this problem with
> Gnome and JEdit losing focus will not be solved somehow (which I
> doubt it will), I will consider one of them (starting with Xfce).

Yes. There's a whole *world* of Display managers out there, beyond KDE,
Gnome and (urk) Unity. Actually, I would never use any of those three
for a display manager, and have removed every KDE library and program
from all my computers, for greatly improved stability and performance.

Here are some of the display managers I've tried:

Xfce: Windows 95 type DM, capable of multiple panels (a panel is a
      taskbar. Sometimes quirky, but probably the best of the bunch,
      especially if you like having a start menu. Even if you don't use
      Xfce, download it so you can use the xfce4-appfinder program,
      which is a great way to find and launch programs. I use Xfce on
      all my laptops.

LXDE: The most stable taskbar/startmenu type interface I've ever found.
      Wonderful software whose only problems are: 1) only 1 panel
      possible, and 2) very slow mouse compared to other window
      managers. Problem #2 is best solved by using an optical mouse on
      a very clean surface.

IceWM: Old School Windows 95 type interface. Works well, not maintained
       very well, but still available and still works. I used it for
       five years and liked it a lot.

OpenBox: Keystroke driven, no start button, no panel/taskbar. Very
         stable. You need to develop other techniques, driven by
         hotkeys, which are easy to implement using an editor, to
         compensate for lack of a start button. I currently use this
         interface on my daily driver desktop. There are a few user
         interface hassles caused by lack of a taskbar, but then again,
         I have xfce4-appfinder to launch stuff, and I have gkrellm on
         workspace 1 to tell the time and date and stuff. OpenBox is an
         acquired taste: I like it. By the way, DO NOT use OpenBox if
         you want other people to successfully operate your computer.

Awesome: Lua driven, Lua configured tiling desktop environment. I tried
         it, but didn't like it. I've seen guys who are good with
         hotkeys and configuration make Awesome walk and talk. DO NOT
         use this WM if you want other people to be able to use your
         computer.

Sawfish: I think a long time ago this window manager
         was associated with Gnome. IIRC it's a Windows 95 type window
         manager.

Enlightenment: Similar to Sawfish, as I remember.

Fvwm: If your one and only priority is light weight and good stability,
      this is your Window Manager. It's the only one I've personally
      gotten to work right on OpenBSD. It's a gift from heaven if
      you're working on a 256MB RAM machine. This is like a less user
      friendly version of OpenBox, so you'd better be ready to spend
      some time tailoring your work habits to it, and setting up
      hotkeys and workspaces. By the way, this is the only WM I've
      found whose workspaces are a 2 dimensional array. One of my
      buddies has 64 workspaces, knows which workspaces always contain
      what programs, and works quite successfully like that.

Fluxbox, Blackbox: Similar to OpenBox, but I personally don't like them
                   as well. YMMV


Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance