Desktop Environments vs Window Managers

Today, I am talking about the differences between Desktop Environments and Window Managers, then discuss 16+ Desktop Environments for Linux. How we got here and some of my thoughts at the end. Next time I will be looking at Window Managers
Contents
00:00 Intro
00:21 Graphical User Interfaces
00:22 PLATO
00:43 Xerox Alto
00:47 Xerox Star
01:09 Apple Lisa and Macinttosh
01:23 The Andrew Project
01:28 Bell Labs Blit Terminal
03:59 Windows Manager vs Desktop Environments
04:13 TWM on Debian
04:39 twm
04:59 uwm
07:20 X11 Architecture
10:37 Linux Desktop Environments
11:10 GNOME
11:56 KDE
13:23 Pop_OS Cosmic
13:51 XFCE
14:02 Cinnamon
14:13 MATE
14:33 LXQT and LXDE
14:58 KDE Plasma
15:18 Budgie
16:06 Pantheon
16:44 CDE
17:01 Open Look
17:52 EDE
18:11 UKUI
18:51 UDE
19:45 GNUStep
19:59 Apple Cocoa
20:01 NeXT OpenSTEP
20:25 My Thoughts on this Mess
21:45 Wrapup
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Gitlab: gitlab.com/djware27
"Brightly Fancy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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#desktop #windowmanagers #X11

[@MarcoMartin]

Kde developer here. Just as a clarification, there are no proprietary components left. What was proprietary was the version 1 back then of the Qt toolkit, which is now mostly LGPL with some pieces GPL. What confuses things is that Qt has a commercial edition, but none of that is ever used in KDE software, we take a lot of care that the licensing of all software we release doesn't have problems.

[@CyberGizmo]

I thought it might have been fixed, thanks for the clarification, Marco

[@MarcoMartin]

@@CyberGizmo no prob, keep up the good work :)

[@aaaaasssss884]

Happy to see a healthy conversation

[@veeartika41]

This channel is so underrated, as a newbie to linux and a life long lover of computers I find this channel the single best resource on KZbin. Its ridiculous how many useless linux channels and videos there are on KZbin. Bless u and please 🙏 keep up the good work.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thank you Vee Son, I will try, although it is tempting to blow up a computer now and then :D

[@JohnMiller-mmuldoor]

Agree 100% Vee Son

[@jeffhyche9839]

I did just find this channel. I love hearing Unix and Linux history from another point of view. I was around when most of what DJ talks about. Brings back so many memories.

[@anya_adora]

I found it fascinating to learn the earlier history of Window Managers and DE's. I began with a TI 99/4A with TI Basic in 1983 and while many of these may be archaic now, they are quite advanced compared to the world i knew with that computer. I did really enjoy the Speech Synthesizer and the expansion peripheral box were helpful but it was all very limited in TI's self contained ecosystem. While it began my love of computing, discovering Linux in 1999 through a friend was a far more profound experience. It's cool to learn more about the history i missed. :)

[@anya_adora]

@@focusedonpost I have some fond memories of it. I do have moments where i think about acquiring one and the speech synthesizer just to play Parsec again without emulation.

[@brianschuetz2614]

I had a TI 99/4A then too. It was pretty cool, but I couldn't afford the peripheral Expansion box. I used a cassette player instead. That meant I was limited somewhat in what I could do, but I still enjoyed it. Later I got a Commodore 64 along with a floppy disk drive. However, it was the Atari 2600 game console that sparked my interest in computers. Now I work in IT.

[@ngcbg639]

On a window manager side, fvwm was huge during 90s . Extremely popular, extremely configurable and generally speaking - extremely deep rabbit hole :) Great channel content, keep the good work and thank you!

[@abobader]

I simply love it when DJ do these project videos, well done.

[@CyberGizmo]

gtsy abobader and thanks

[@abobader]

@@CyberGizmo Thanks DJ!

[@nozyy_6]

What a knowledge base. I was not understanding difference between X11 and Xorg, now I have understood, well explained where all the components come in. Thank you.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks nozy, I have to know how things are put together, been like that all my life

[@rursus8354]

The reason for why there are so many window managers is that the book Xlib Programming Manual (Nye) contains the code of an entire window manager.

[@ArniesTech]

I was so deep down the tinkerers rabbit hole that I even considered Standaline WMs bloat. Now I absolutely enjoy "bloated" full fledged Desktop environments 🙏

[@CyberGizmo]

LOL its only bloat you know if you don't use it.

[@gylkag]

This channel is so underrated. Accidentally stumbled upon it when it was probably less than 1K followers and it's still not even 100K. I just wanted to thank you for your work. The way you structure your videos, providing examples, good explanation often with looking back in history, it's concise and yet not missing out on things, and generally good vibe - thank you very much, really appreciate your work!

[@jolnix]

I can't get enough of this channel. Every time I come around to check there's something better than the previous videos. Thank you kindly for all your effort in sharing your knowledge.

[@BreetaiZentradi]

Big Fluxbox fan here. What do I like? Lightweight. Nice themes. Able to dock windows into tab groups. Configuration is all done in plain text files. All hotkeys/shortcuts can be defined/redefined. I have been an avid user for 18 years. I love the fact I can take my ~/.fluxbox folder copy it to a new PC and my config/layouts/keyboard shortcuts just work. In a world where most people have had to deal with all the desktop changes to XP to Vista to Windows 7 to Windows 8 to Windows 10 and finally Windows 11, I have not had to make any changes to my desktop or workflow for 2 decades. This is also true for almost all Window Managers out there.

[@siamhie]

Same here. Been a Fluxer since 0.1.14 and currently run MX Linux Fluxbox 21.2.1 on my home computer. It's nice to see Mathias Gumz is slowly working towards a 1.4.0 release.

[@tmendoza6]

You always fire up my curiosity and leave me wanting to learn more

[@CyberGizmo]

job done then :) thanks temendoza

[@andrewpalm2103]

A very interesting video, DJ. I've used a few tiling window managers, including i3, Qtile, and Herbstluft. I've used ICEwm, Openbox, and Fluxbox floating window managers (although one could consider ICEwm a light DE). I eventually realized that after I'd customized and added supporting features to each of these (sometimes with considerable effort) I always ended up with something close to my usual Xfce setup. And I might also add that when I tried Gnome the same thing happened using extensions. All that effort was fun at the time, but I'm old, tired, and over it. So Xfce it is--for me. (But Budgie is kind of nice...) Cheers from Wisconsin!

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks Andrew and i found the same thing happening to me as well, I would go back and make it look like my favorite DE

[@Little-bird-told-me]

May I add *wise* :)

[@Wandering_Horse]

That was fun! I remember enlightenment being one of my fav DE's back in my earlier days of Linux. I also remember NextStep, played with the early versions of kde and gnome. I settled on xfce/debian for a few years and have now moved to pop-os. I look forward to the new cosmic desktop soon.

[@tmendoza6]

Excellent as always

[@PedroDominguez15]

Appreciate your work sir Many thanks for the countless hours of KZbin content 🙏🙏

[@CyberGizmo]

My Pleasure Pedro I find it fun to do (or wait, I mean wow this is really hard work hehe)

[@Ali-wf9ef]

I started using DEs such as XFCE and GNOME but I realized the DEs are designed to be convenient and appealing to everybody but lack customization for a single user. Also you may use and get used to a certain plugin and find it broken in the next version of the DE because who knows what GNOME developers think when releasing a new version. So then I went on and tried i3, a respected window manager and although in the first day I relied on help of a friend who already used i3 for setup and configuration, after that it has been an amazing experience, everything is fully customized for my specific use, nothing is redundant nothing is not how I want it to be and there is no crashes or bugs and if there is any, I know exactly what component needs change or replacement. Also switching between work spaces and managing windows in a workspace is done much easier and faster in a window manager. I can't think of any advantage a DE could bring me over a window manager right now. So I absolutely recommend you at least try out using a window manager for a couple of days.

[@andreigiubleanu]

DJ Ware is the man!

[@PJ-om2wq]

I use LXQT and I think that they deserve a lot of credit for merging LXDE and RazorQT into one project.

[@patrickmullen2914]

Great to see the different flavours at the end, as well as the pictures of at the birth of Unix DE's. A thumbs up 👍

[@Appalling68]

Absolutely fascinating, interesting and informative video. Thank you! You remind me so much of someone I worked with at Amdahl at the same time Apple’s Lisa was introduced. Those were interesting times.

[@CyberGizmo]

Nice Avatar too Bazooka Joe? Well Mort actually... Yeah seemed like never a dull moment at times. Thanks Appalling!

[@sonopro1]

Merci !! I used to work with the Intuition/Workbench duo. These were so far ahead of their time.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Was the GUI a modular, separately replaceable layer like on Linux?

[@sonopro1]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 AmigaDOS was composed of subsystems including Intuition and different libraries (graphics, icons etc). At that time, I didn't play with the software components but rather with the hardware components due to compatibility problems with the huge expansion cards and thus with the RAM.

[@andarvidavohits4962]

I really appreciate your content.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thank you Andarvid appreciate that :)

[@sinamobasheri]

Awesome video 👍🏻

[@phrtao]

You make a very good point about the vastly duplicated effort of all those teams essentially developing solutions to the same problem. What a waste of time and energy. I cannot believe that people are still developing new window managers in 2022 !

[@zizlog_sound]

You are absolutely right in regards to amount of WMs and DEs. The same applies to “Linux Distros”. Just too many. I always liked KDE 3 but was put off by its successor KDE. Now I’m debating a switch over to a Tiling WM. It’s much more efficient to work with.

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

Great video! I would love to see your take on FVWM. It has to be the most powerful WM ever made, and being good enough to be the default in OpenBSD I just had to get into it. I haven´t even scratched it´s surface in my years of usage, but man it is good. Takes absolutely no resources at all, has absolute stability and whatever you can think of, it can do it. And IIRC both XFCE and Enlightenment are childrens of FVWM. And again. OpenBSD has it as default since forever. And that says a lot! Again, thanks for this video. I´m a bit of a sucker for old stuff like CDE and UNIX history.

[@CyberGizmo]

I have a 2nd part coming I want to cover WM in its own video, there are so many of those

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

@@CyberGizmo I´m looking forward to it :) (and hoping for some FVWM goodness... ;)

[@SahirSiddiqui]

Yeah, I’m old. A lot of the history he talked about was brand new when I was in college 😮

[@franklemanschik_de]

AS Always good pitch you will Like the new Desktop concepts

[@CyberGizmo]

There is some cool stuff coming for sure, Frank

[@misterverloc]

This video is why I come to this channel. It offers a 30,000 foot historical perspective on Linux and computing.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks Mr. Verloc for the kind words

[@momomaniac1234]

Sir i learned much about desktop environment and window managers is like i known just 3% about them before watching this video i thank you for making this super informative video it teach a lot

[@bmmartin1684]

Loved the whole history lesson. A sub from me.

[@owoled282]

Awesome video, awesome content. comment written from Awesome wm.

[@alx8439]

It's a really good question why over the years the efforts to develop new DEs and WMs were so spread. It's probably having the same nature why we have so many different distros. Not the enterprise backed distros, like Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse - it's quite clear, but community ones. There's just no central force or authority who can aim or tilt all this development effort. But I do agree, that if such a power existed, we would have had a 10 times better Linux by now :)

[@raphael2407]

I found my home on Debian with XFCE back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Nowadays I tinker with different distributions and different windowmanagers and even though I might run with something else for a while, I always find my way back home. 🙂

[@jeffhyche9839]

so many windows managers out there. You can makes some really pretty desktops with them but I prefer the clean professional look of CDE and Motiff. Give me a clean professional looking display over bells, whistles, and pimp lights.

[@JohnDDavis-iq8dx]

I set up my first webserver on a cheap VPS host. Given its limited resources I realized a minimal Linux server was the only way to go. So i skipped DE's, WM's and went face first into command line. As a Windows 7 user, it wasn't exactly a smooth transition but eventually got the hang of it.

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

mcwm, cwm, fvwm, icewm, fluxbox, blackbox, openbox, i3, ratpoison, mwm, twm, so much more man umm great video i have tried and lived in a lot of WM one of my all time fav and still is today is fluxbox :) ... for DE i really like KDE the best ... though i like what Ubuntu is doing with Gnome i think it looks very professional and think the Ubuntu Desktop should be the default linux desktop its pretty polished.

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks Caustic will compare your list with mine and see if I missed any of the WM for the next video.

[@philomelodia]

You mentioned it in passing but, I think it deserves its own special mention due to its increased popularity, unity desktop by Ubuntu.

[@RafaCoringaProducoes]

nice vid, my cup of tea: xfce+i3wm+vala global menu or lxqt+i3 (easier to set up)

[@CyberGizmo]

Nice, thanks Coringa for that

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

20:56 The cost is actually very low. Remember that most of these efforts are run by very small teams. Don’t be misled by the fact that, when proprietary companies try to do something similar, it ends up costing them lots. That’s a key difference between proprietary and Free software, which extends to all levels of the platform stack.

[@DeeperSoul]

14:35 which distro for that LXQT?

[@javabeanz8549]

Another piece of ancient history that I didn't hear you mention, GEM. I remember using it on my XT Clone with my amber CRT.

[@CristianMolina]

But that run on DOS, right? Or was available on Unixes?

[@javabeanz8549]

@@CristianMolina correct, it ran under DOS, just like Windows up through 3.11. I don't remember if it was released for other systems.

[@wa3261]

thank a lot. what about new shiny things, like a web based UI htlm/css/js developed under V8 and node? we already have web CLI for GCP and etc, long history web control for HyperVisors and etc. Why not use it as DE/WM?

[@CyberGizmo]

That would make a good video for the future and yeah I agree that seems to be a more modern approach to things

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

If you thought GNOME was bloated, that would just take resource hogging to a whole new level.

[@notgiven3114]

Did you not do the follow-up video about window managers? I can't find one on your channel.

[@CyberGizmo]

Nope not yet

[@joschafinger126]

As for your final question of where we'd be having concentrated on just one or two DEs, I'd say we'd likely be with something very similar to KDE.

[@Fanatic17]

I use a KDE Plasma DE with Xmonad on top (based on distrotube scripts). I’ve been using just the WM for a while but i linke the eye candy of plasma, unfortunately using xmonad means i don’t get to see the title bar of all my windows

[@domdj9476]

Is ukui safe? I love it's look and it provides my laptop with excellent battery but I'm wondering if it has surveillance software built in.

[@CyberGizmo]

I would bet there is all kinds of surveillance in it, but yeah I like the look of it as well, maybe it can be cleansed.

[@domdj9476]

@@CyberGizmo do you know how I would go about cleansing it (or any other software)?

[@eugrus]

Is "W" what provided the GUI on the AT&T UNIX PC 7300?

[@CyberGizmo]

The AT&T UNIX PC 7300 was way under powered, it couldnt run an X11 GUI so they used curses to do it. I remember trying to use one as a workstation, traded it for a 630 (commercial bilt) an ran the billter software on it.

[@eugrus]

@@CyberGizmo thank you!

[@rashie]

👍👍

[@emvdl]

Thanks @dj

[@OcteractSG]

From what I’ve read, the K in KDE stands for Kool. KDE is indeed a Kool Desktop Environment.

[@CyberGizmo]

Yep that used to be true, but today it they just call it KDE

[@RonJohn63]

It's been more than a decade since I've thought about WMs like e17.

[@Ancipital_]

WindowMaker and Enlightenment were my first. I use xmonad with key shortcuts now.

[@thexavier666]

Great video, however I did not like the concluding statement regarding regarding investing our effort into a few DEs. It's like the research community, why focus on so many different research avenues instead focus on those which makes sense and are profitable. Sure, there is a definite fragmentation of effort in the WM/DE community but each have their own strengths and weakness, which become even more pronounced as time goes on. We should always encourage diversity in the open-source community. Unpopular forks will die down naturally. Having said that, the history lesson in the video is really great.

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

I've been using only IceWM happily since maybe 2003 or so. Tried others on occasion, but eh, icewm has all I need and is easy to configure the toolbar and root window menu. I'm not the only icewm user. But Icewm is not mentioned anywhere in the video?

[@williamshenk7940]

hilarious!!

[@CristianMolina]

I remember in the 90s trying Info Magic CDs packs, with tons of distros and software. A couple of wms were beautiful, like olwm from Sun OpenLook desktop(?), Motif was nice but proprietary at that time and Lesstif was incomplete. I remember compiling the first versions of KDE, Enlightment and Gnome, with some difficulty. I still think that OpenStep and Window Maker wm in particular is beautiful. It's a pity that GNUStep never was a big DE player

[@nozyy_6]

There was a news that budgie will move away from gtk and implement enlightenment libraries. not sure what is the update

[@CyberGizmo]

I heard that also, will be nice to see what they do with it

[@guilherme5094]

Plasma is my personal choice, but I like what Canonical has done with Gnome and I really appreciate Budgie and Mate. Another awesome video DJ 👍

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks, Felix yeah I agree Canonical's 22.10 version is looking pretty good. I agree about Budgie its just beautiful yet functional. I use MATE on my NVIDIA Jetsons and ugh, its terrible what NVIDIA did to it but that's not MATE's fault.

[@TheAces1979]

The list of WM's and DE's is dizzying. I agree with you that if resources had been consolidated, a much better product would have been the result. As it is, trying to figure out which one to use feels like death by a thousand paper cuts.

[@TheSolidSnakeOil]

Gnome 3 was the reason I stopped using gnome initially. With ubuntu, it was unity. I loved gnome 2 so much, even with it's issues, that I started playing around with xfce and eventually tiling window managers. Now, you couldn't drag me away with wild horses from dwm. I did use KDE for a while but it can be configuration hell. There are so many options and menus that you can get lost easily.

[@dr.elvis.h.christ]

Cinnamon!

[@rursus8354]

Another problem with the KDE environment is the connection with a non-standard version of C++ containing the exotic type signals. C++ is not easily integratable with other languages, and inventing a new dialect of C++ with a special preprocessing module creates an obstacle against C++ updates. Gnome does it right: good old C in the foundation, and a lot of program bindings. The Gnome developers compensate this apparent superiority by ignoring backwards compatibility and driving the interface in a bad Windows-like direction. This they do in order to humiliate its developers. The documentation of Gnome is also inferior.

[@j0rp]

I think the splintering is a signal of inefficiency in the 2D bitmapped interface we currently know and love, or maybe endemic of genetic overdiversity at the tech's end of life. The species aren't diversifying enough, so maybe the later. UDE at least was trying something new, even if it ends up being a failed experiment.

[@zenmaster24]

budgie is great - been using it for the last 4 years

[@adjusted-bunny]

One more to add: Deepin. However not mine.

[@leothegeek4432]

I loved KDE but is so so bloated nowadays that I seriously think of going back to a window manager. On my desktop KDE feels heavier than Gnome.

[@jaime57473]

Variety is the spice of life...

[@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi]

Mate +1

[@tonywise198]

I remember using GEM on top of MS-DOS back in the day before Windows 3.0. Basic by todays standards, but then so was my 286. Happy days though; no bloat and could never fill a 20MB HDD. I suppose GUIs are fine, but I find it faster to use the terminal.

[@CyberGizmo]

omg, GEM I almost forgot about that

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I have about 20 terminal sessions open under KDE. The nice thing about using terminals and text editors under a GUI is being able to copy/paste between them. GUIs on their own do not support copy/pasting sequences of actions.

[@mytech6779]

I would say focus on 3-4 DEs would be near optimal. Partly because one size doesn't fit all, and partly because having all of the eggs in one basket is very fragile.

[@an1rb]

Wayland should be called 'Y'? Or 'Yayland'?

[@John7No]

what would happen if the same effort for these 16+ DEs were concentrated into 1 or 2 or even 3? If the same happened for the packaging formats then Linux I believe would be taken seriously as a desktop OS and not a niche of 1%

[@DrZingo_]

dwm is all I need. I use the terminal for 90% of my work. I don't even have a file manager or display manager installed since my ssd crashed 5 yrs ago.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I too am "mostly terminal" and just messing around with dwm now having used i3 for a while. Sorry, I don't know if I am missing something but why does an SSD crash stop you using a file manager or display manager? Can you not just replace the SSD?

[@DrZingo_]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 Nice! Yes, I replaced the ssd, but never installed things I didn't use anyway, like file manager etc. And if I log in on the first TTY, I have X launched automatically. Dwm is nice, i3 is also a favourite I may revisit some day.

[@CB0T]

I prefer how it is, a live 'ecosystem', managers/environments popup from nothing, or fork. Some managers/env die too. And leave or not your contribution as a new manager/env.

[@DCM777.]

A major tweaked fully loaded WM is the same as a DE! So might as well just install a DE from the get go!

[@hamesparde9888]

I don't agree. Most of the DEs are very bloated and buggy, also most of them aren't tiling (which in my opinion is a definite negative.) I think for most people that use computers a lot if they took the time to learn how to use a tiling WM / DE they wouldn't want to go back. I use I3 and probably the only thing it doesn't come with / do that I want that a DE would come with is a file browser. So I just install one when I'm setting up a new system and it's definitely a lot more minimum than a DE. I think a lot of the DEs are too bloated (such as GNOME 3 and KDE.) I actually think KDE is okay but the thing is that most of the larger DEs have a lot of little bugs and I think it's because their trying to add too many features and probably don't have to man power to do it.

[@hamesparde9888]

That being said I do quite like Mate and i think XFCE is okay. But I mean with a TWM you basically just need a launcher and a file browser (at least that's all I need.) I'm having trouble thinking of anything that I really miss from a DE. I mean yeah you don't have a desktop as such, but you don't really need one and it wouldn't really make much sense the way I3 works anyway.

[@DCM777.]

@@hamesparde9888 We can agree to disagree!

[@hamesparde9888]

@@DCM777. Let's just say that you hypothetically agree that tiling WMs are good. What else would you need apart from a launch (one of which comes with I3) and a file browser? I'm just curious, because I can't really think of much else.

[@DCM777.]

@@hamesparde9888 No you only have a launcher and a browser! Lol

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Thanks for another great video but I must admit that I got a little annoyed with your final comment - in your defence, I hear it a lot from other Linux users too. It's this concept of "splintering" or "fragmentation", which I only ever call "choice" - and choice is never a problem, especially in the FOSS world which is all about choice and "having it your way". So I do not think it is constructive to criticise any single developer or team of developers who take the trouble to create applications, software and, indeed, window managers and desktop environments that are just about them exercising their choice to have software the way that they want it. I don't consider that to be a waste of time, money or effort on their part - and do you really think that if you stopped developers working on "Another Minority Window Manager" that they would all then go work on KDE or GNOME? I don't include you in this category of people but I have very frequent discussions with newbies getting into Linux who post comments like "Linux is too hard because there's too much choice and I don't know what distro to use". I always reply to them in the same way - namely that nobody came into this world knowing how to use a computer and everyone has to spend time familiarising themselves with a computer from new, whether it's Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, whatever.... People forget that using a computer for the first time at school or work, probably a Windows one, took them time to learn - and therefore it is not fair to compare Linux to Windows if you haven't spent time getting familiar with it. I don't care about most things considered "mainstream" or what it even means as a definition - but Linux is not that and it may never be that. So don't use Linux just because you want to show your friends how "l33t" you are, you have to commit time and effort to learning it properly. "Choice" is simply about doing proper research, testing things out and eliminating all but one of the choices to end up with one that suits you. Or, go learn Linux From Scratch or Gentoo Linux (which has been my sole distro since 2003) and build Linux how you want it - exactly the same as those people exercising their choice when they build their own distros, applications or desktop environments. So why's it okay for such people to restrict the choice of others, just because they can't be bothered to put in time and effort?

[@CyberGizmo]

Thanks Terry, all I am saying is you dont get as much spreading it around, you get better software with better teams of people, and they usually dont work for free.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@CyberGizmo I don't think that logic works at all, to be honest. It's a bit like saying to a bus driver "Don't worry if you lose your job because there are plenty of job vacancies for truck drivers." It makes the assumption that people always end up doing something similar to what they are currently doing if what they are currently doing is no longer necessary. For example, do you really believe that someone who develops for, say, i3wm would go and program on kde if the i3wm project was no more? And, more importantly, why didn't that person just go program kde in the first place rather than putting time and effort into a much smaller project like i3wm? I think it's a very easy rationale to make but I don't think that it stands up in real life.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

People work on what they want to work on. If something isn’t to your liking, contribute a patch to fix it. Too many users have been indoctrinated with a mentality more appropriate to proprietary systems, where you cannot actually fix anything, you can only passively complain and hope that somebody is listening (fat hopes).

[@PaulMrPKcom]

You forget GEOS on Commodore 64 in late 80s!

[@anilraghu8687]

proprietary software cannot have such interesting history.

[@alexxx4434]

Why so many different DEs? It's variety of evolution.

[@davidweeks1997]

Hey? You forgot eyes. What would we be like without it? I like Xfce on old kit, so that it still works well enough to use. I've settled on gnome because Debian uses it. Fact is, I like Debian most of all, even over Gentoo, because it mostly works, and still leaves the system mostly at the discretion of the user. I reject anything that makes choices for me. You forgot BoxDM, the desktop manager for the display furniture props used by the managers in Dilbert.

[@matthiasmartin1975]

Let's scrap them all and use enlightenment exclusively and then let's bribe Rasterman to bring back E13 default theme.

[@Technoid_Mutant]

Just port SOM and the Workplace Shell to Linux. You'll gain back the 30 years we've lost spinning our wheels.

[@andynn6691]

Kinda miss FVWM2 actually

[@capability-snob]

"what would happen if we concentrated our efforts on one or two [desktop environments]"? We'd have something nobody could be happy with. Once we got to a point in GNOME that we could see HedRat were taking it in an unproductive direction, avoiding extensibility and trying to lock down the ecosystem, it was clear that exploring new ideas was the right move. I don't think we've settled on one idea either. There's much more research to do here. In the mean time, not having to live with somebody else's opinion on how windows should be managed is the winning scenario.

[@adriancoanda9227]

Mac dropped support for xquartz since Catalina

[@CyberGizmo]

That is true, however XQuartz is still actively maintained in fact they released an update to it yesterday 12/9/2022

[@adriancoanda9227]

@CyberGizmo it might be so, but you can make the use only on legacy. Mac os so on ventura it won't integrate

[@CyberGizmo]

@@adriancoanda9227 It's not meant for new development its meant to support running X11 applications on MacOS and it does work on ventura. I think most of us would agree don't develop something new on X11 but we still want to run some of the old applications, I run several of them on Ventura even today

[@adriancoanda9227]

@@CyberGizmo cool did use that program since Catalina back then y used to merge linux kernel with mac os one to allow to run linux apps within macos without the necessity to dual boot saved me alot of time back then maybe you are using it for something simpler or you applied a patch to mac os to allow gl apps catalina was the latest mac os that had support for it on non graphical software it might not be that sensitive

[@ericneo2]

Asking the real question here, how much better would the OS be if the community hadn't splintered.

[@buuf456]

In open source nobody order people like in corporation, that why they do own thing. Still don`t understand why community develop Wayland? X11 works very well.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Because of all the well-known problems with X11.

[@rursus8354]

21:00 The desktop variation is not a real problem. They conform to each other via usage and trends. Adding developers to one project doesn't necessarily improve the quality of it. There is a factor n² (or more) of coordination effort, over n the number of developers. The real problem is the chaotic state of the underlying graphics libraries Qt and GTK+/Gnome Core.

[@billfarley9015]

If you don't like the DE's for Windows or Mac you're out of luck. So it's good to have choices. But I agree that there seem to be too many choices, too much splintering, similar to Linux distros where there are countless hundreds. Lots of innovation but also lots of duplication of effort. Have to convince people that some standardization would be a good thing.

[@RonWolfHowl]

It's also a problem of difficulty accepting new features into a big desktop environment. GNOME folks have their own roadmap and bugs to deal with. So it makes sense that they wouldn't accept patches trying to innovate on things that are still buggy. Let's not blame people for innovating!

[@sylviam6535]

Fragmentation has forever been the problem of Linux, together with support for proprietary technologies.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Only somebody who grew up on a proprietary platform would complain about “too much choice” ...

[@sylviam6535]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 - Fragmentation IS a problem in Linux, but it is practically inevitable with open source projects.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

@@sylviam6535 Problem for whom, exactly? Do you find “fragmentation” a problem with different models of cars?

[@mhavock]

Yeah, you are right about 'every time someone sneezes there is a new window manager." Typical problem with opensource, devs want their own project inventing the wheel from scratch instead of forking / merging. Next we will expect someone to make a window Manager for all the window managers. 😁

[@gregmurdoch3264]

If it doesn't exist, can someone make “Sneeze WM”

[@hamesparde9888]

I think KDE and GNOME 3 are too complicated. The reason I say this is because every time I've tried them I've found them to be pretty buggy (usually it's just small stuff that doesn't matter too much, but you do notice it.) I think maybe if they had more people working on their projects this wouldn't be a problem (and yes I know that doesn't always work.) Although I don't think anymore effort should be put into GNOME 3 since it's an abomination and was a total mistake in my opinion. 🤣

[@hamesparde9888]

#MAKE GNOME 2 GREAT AGAIN! 🤣

[@benjy288]

I like lxqt with kwin, its like a simplified kde.

[@hamesparde9888]

@@benjy288 I've not tried either of those, but that sounds good. I am a fan of software that has more of a minimalist flavor.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

So what stops you trying a simpler desktop environment like XFCE or LXQT then? You've answered your own question. I stopped with GNOME when GNOME 3 arrived - I went over to MATE initially but that was very buggy and so ended up on XFCE which has always been less buggy, in my experience. With that said, I am now going back into the command line and TUI applications a lot more (in Gentoo Linux) and am now trying out i3 and dwm.

[@benjy288]

@@hamesparde9888 You just install lxqt then install kwin, which is kde's window manager, you can also install systemsettings5, which is the kde system settings control panel, then you basically get a kde experience without the plasma desktop, I still think kwin is the best window manager on linux.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

Hey, The problem with the whole idea of combining efforts to produce just one or two of anything is that human beings vary widely in tastes and preferences. Otherwise, Linux would not be needed. We already have Windows and MacOS. The same goes for clothing, cars, houses, appliances, etc.

[@CyberGizmo]

I understand what you are saying Donald, but that doesn't seem to bother people using WIndows and MacOS. The question I have is do we really need 60+ WM and 20+ DEs to make people happy?

[@donaldmickunas8552]

@@CyberGizmo We probably don't NEED that many DEs or WMs. Part of that, I think comes from github and the idea of sharing software. As for it not bothering people using Windows and MacOS, I am not so sure about that. I spend a fair amount of time reading comments and forums. Over the years, I've read a lot of gripping about Windows and various software packages. Consider too the influx of people from the Windows and Mac world into Linux in recent years. If they were so satisfied, they wouldn't be so likely to look at another OS. Having said that, the vast majority of people hate change. They know the OS they are using and are very reluctant to change. Further, they may be tied to a piece of software available only in that OS even though their over all satisfaction with the experience may be low. My perspective is a bit different. I'm more nerdy and I want more control over my computer than most. So, Linux was a natural for me even before Distros like Ubuntu made it so easy to get in to. I am not, however, representative of the majority in any way. LOL

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@CyberGizmo The people that develop Windows and MacOS do not the have the freedom of choice to develop applications how they want to - that will up to teams of graphical designers who draw out the look of the desktop and then give it to the developers to create. That's the core difference.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@donaldmickunas8552 You or I may not NEED that many DEs or WMs because we've probably chosen the ones we like and stick with them. But we do not have the authority to restrict the choices of others to make or use other DEs or WMs if they want to. Choice is core to the world of FOSS.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 Agreed.

[@chrismcdonaldracing]

Heard this argument before it's a very Nad argument. Open source developers work on what they want what they think is a good idea. Open source is about choice if you want uniformity and to be told what your system should look like Microsoft and Apple will always be there for you. This playground is not for those who can't handle choices.

[@1oneguythat]

BLOATWAARE

[@hamesparde9888]

I really like I3. After using it for a while I'm always amazed at how slow and inefficient non tiling WMs / desktop environments. As far as desktop environments I think Mate is the best. GNOME 2 was the best. I think GNOME 3 sucks hard. Almost everything about it is wrong in my opinion. I think XFCE is decent as well. I use Pcmanfm as my file browser under I3. It's not perfect, but it's relatively lightweight and has most of the features that I need. I don't use a TUI file browser because I think that it's the sort of thing a GUI is better for. I think that for me apart from a file browser (which is a moot point since you can easily install one) I don't think there's much that a desktop environment offers over a WM that I would want or need.

[@twb0109]

Have you tried to actually use GNOME 4? I love dwm, spectrwm, bspwm, i3 and a lot more TWMs, and I'm an active user. But I main GNOME 42, and if you adapt to the workflow, it's very good, and more polished than any other DE in terms of UX/UI.

[@cmarano]

comPOSITing window manager? Because a composting window manager would just be s**t. (The term compositing btw comes from printing where it refers to assembling photos and text into an organized page.)

[@QueeeeenZ]

I see nothing wrong with many desktop environments, the more the better. You will never get all the developers working on just the 2 desktop environments in the world. How boring would that be.