Comparitive Desktop Environments

[Steven Stern]

On 09/26/2011 11:11 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> This morning I decided to try the various desktop environments available
> to me, just to see how I react to each. Now nothing I am going to say is
> designed to knock any particular environment. By now everyone knows I
> have a number of complaints about Gnome 3.
> 
> So this morning I tried to get around in LXDE and KDE. I found I quickly
> got lost in both. In LXDE I could not get LXTerm (I think that its name)
> to be anything but transparent, rather than black letters on a white
> background. I could never get any of the Background Images displayed in
> the Background program to actually appear as backgrounds. I managed to
> put Xterm in  the Application menu but I could not get it as an option
> in a panel. The way to shut down was fairly well hidden.
> 
> In KDE I also had problems. I could not find a way to get a Home
> filesystem displayed so I could find a file I wanted to edit. I could
> not get Rhythmbox to play . I had to use KsCD. Just now I found the
> FileManagwer so scratch that problem. Once I found  the FileManager I
> found how to eject the Disk. A process that had eluded me for awhile.
> Logging out and shutting down under Leave is as cute as the Gnome having
> those options under the user name (+ Alt key), and equally obscure for
> the first time user.
> 
> My point is all these DEs have things you can do which are hard to find
> for the first time user. I may admit that Gnome 3 may be the most
> obscure but not by much. In each case, some time must be spent initially
> to figure out how to do things.

Until the bugs that break Gnome shell are fixed for me (alt-tab crashes
it), I'm using XFCE.  It works really well.

-- 
-- Steve