Re: FN-FORUM: Best Linux Distribution?

date posted 18th August 2004 21:29

Joe Freeman wrote:

>
>I'm using Gnome on RedHat 9, though it seems alot better that KDE on
>SuSE 7.2. I would like something more light-weight, but everything
>seems to be in two extremes - there is KDE and Gnome at one end and
>all the other windowing-systems (probably not the technical term) at
>the other end.
>
what things do you like about gnome and KDE and what (apart from the
resource hungry nature of a desktop environment over a window manager)
do you like?

There's a window manager for everyone these days ;-)

>Would be nice to have something in the middle - ie, not
>as many options as KDE/Gnome and more to it than the others. Maybe
>there is and I just havn't come across it. I'm not really complaining
>about Gnome, just dosen't seem to perform as well as Windows was on
>this machine.
>
>
Gnome 2.6 is a lot quicker than 2.4 on my 1gig laptop. (also running it
on G3, Alpha, and ultraSparc didn't someone say something about hardware
support, lol ;-) ) So you might get on better with the newer version.
The filemanager is model and works a lot like the older MacOS one (and
GEM, riscOS and other older but very cool windowing systems) so if you
have ever used one of these you will find it very natural.

I used to use the ROX desktop. It's very much like the archmedies
window manager and if you have used RiscOS or are a fan of GEM and other
lightweight but cool desktops you might like it. It uses app dirs so
it's very like MacOS. I used it with sux (a panel that is a little like
the mac menu only not enough to be really like a mac, more like the
gnome panel) and found it very usable.

I used to be a big fan of KDE and did some development for the project
back in the late 90's but it got a little too silly these days with an
option for everything. So much so that my mate jono bacon who used to
rave about it daily has now moved to gnome dispite the fact that he was
one of the people that kept asking for options to be added.

if you like the *box managers waimea is a pretty good. Development
slowed down a while back but I think it's back on now. It's very fast
and I used to have it as a second manager for when the desktop
environments started to piss me off with the slow down they sometimes cause.

IceWM is a lot like windows explorer (or was last time I looked at it)
and is (was?) considered a good choice for slower hardware. If you like
clicking the button and seeing a menu of programs appear (like windows,
gnome and kde) but want a bit more speed this could be one for you.

Don't forget you have about 20 years of window managers out there with
loads and loads of good developments over the last 5-10 years so you
should find one you love.

>Regards,
>Joe.
>
>
>
sparkes