[TriLUG] Distro choice for desktop

Sat Oct 23 22:27:45 EDT 2021

Adding a thought of my own, or two RE base distro:
1. Debian is solid, but they tend to have a bit of a snobbish attitude 
toward "non-free".  Which sometimes means having to find what repositories 
allow the software you want (like Firefox).
2. Gentoo will let you learn to your heart's delight, but as previously 
noted, is not for the faint of heart.  They have also had problems with 
releasing packages that broke things for a lot of people at once (this is 
scraping the barrel, but look up Gentoo and UDEV-200; I still have bad 
memories of that one).  Also, last time I tried to get Gentoo and wireless 
working (with an admittedly ancient WEP based access point ... it just 
didn't.  Fedora did).
3. Mint ... my recollection from discussions in #trilug once, is that Mint 
had a nasty admixture of various other distribution packages that 
sometimes didn't play well with each other.
4. Ubuntu ... maybe it's fixed, but there have been times when Ubuntu 
upgrades have gone sideways and the only resolution was to nuke the drive 
and start from scratch.  Otherwise, once it's up, I hear it's easy enough.
5. CentOS ... yeah ... not feeling it, with "Streams".  I have two 
concerns about CentOS now that Streams is a thing: 1. that they've 
basically made CentOS their beta track to Fedora's alpha track and RHEL's 
stable release and 2. that the continuous update thing could be as bad as 
when Gentoo released their UDEV-200 problem on a continuous update cycle 
... e.g., you never know what update is going to break something you need, 
and how badly.  Granted it's Red Hat, so it's probably stable-ish... but 
it scares me.

Basically ... if you like a particular base distro already, stick with 
what you know and evaluate window managers or desktop environments 
separately.

I should also add that for things like KDE/Gnome, especially with an 
nVidia card, multimonitor support should just work with the package you 
install.

William Sutton (with 22-ish years of Linux/UNIX experience, including RH, 
RHEL, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, and Gentoo)

On Sat, 23 Oct 2021, Wes Garrison via TriLUG wrote:

> Correction:
> for an absolutely minimal Mate Desktop, `apt install
> mate-desktop-environment-core` would do the trick.
>
> added 'core' to the package name.
>
> On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 1:54 PM Wes Garrison <wes at xitechusa.com> wrote:
>
>> I have spent a lot of time over the years building highly tweaked,
>> Frankenstein things that work, for a while, until you need to change or
>> update something.
>>
>> That's what leads me to agree with the poster from the Ubuntu channel that
>> the way to cause the fewest headaches is to use the package manager from
>> your distro of choice to install the desktop environment.
>>
>> I personally use Debian for my desktop, and Debian stable (currently
>> Bullseye) is rock-solid, but if you want reasonably up-to-date packages
>> you'll need to use testing (currently Bookworm).  I've found "testing" to
>> be very stable as well, and Ubuntu releases are more like Debian testing
>> than Debian stable.  Sure Debian testing has a lot of updates, but unless
>> there's a kernel update, you don't really need to restart.
>>
>> Overall, Debian "testing", the latest Ubuntu and Mint are all solid
>> choices, but the more important choice is probably the desktop environment.
>>
>> If you want absolutely minimal packages without the cruft, I think your
>> approach is solid: to install the base OS and then install Mate or XFCE.
>> Both are continuations of the old Gnome2-based DEs, and use GTK.  I think
>> Mate has a more modern look, but I use both, and both are familiar to
>> people who come from a Windows-XP-style navigation paradigm and fully
>> featured.
>>
>> If you want the absolutely lowest resource DE, then LXQt is a good choice,
>> but it is not as usable out of the box as Mate or XFCE.  Some Google
>> searches <https://www.maketecheasier.com/lxde-vs-xfce/> show that the RAM
>> footprint of LXQt is barely over 200MB. (LXQt is the evolution of LXDE,
>> which was GTK-based).
>>
>> Having said all of that, I personally just check the Mate desktop
>> environment box when installing Debian, and I find that there's not a lot
>> of cruft.  It does install a few things like LibreOffice and Transmission,
>> but also useful things like the Mate system monitor.  I've never felt like
>> I need to uninstall things afterward.
>>
>> TL;DR:
>> If you install the base OS without a desktop environment, then `apt
>> install mate-desktop-environment` you'll get a pretty barebones experience,
>> probably missing things that many average users expect from an OS.  I think
>> this is what you said you wanted.
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 12:20 PM via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I have used Ubuntu for decades (!). It "just works." With disk space,
>>> etc., cheap, why not just go with a standard install? If there's are apps
>>> you consider the be "cruft," just dessert them.
>>>
>>> I prefer a light weight desk top manager and use XUbuntu with the lighter
>>> weight XFCE interface.
>>>
>>> I've installed MINT for others and they like it. MINT steers away from
>>> SNAP packages used by Ubuntu even though it's Ubuntu based. MINT has as
>>> good, active use forum. I consult it even though my personal desktop is
>>> running Ubuntu, as is my Lenovo X-1.
>>>
>>> I stay with one distro to avoid confusion including deb vs. Yum package
>>> management.
>>>
>>> At its root, hdw device support depends largely on the Linux kernel which
>>> is likely to be pretty same across distros that stay up to date. Correct me
>>> if I'm wrong.
>>>
>>> -- Roger Broseus
>>> Pls excuse auto-correction induzed tiepos.
>>> The inventor of autocorrect has passed away - may he restaurant in peas.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mauricio Tavares via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
>>> To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
>>> Sent: Sat, 23 Oct 2021 6:09 AM
>>> Subject: [TriLUG] Distro choice for desktop
>>>
>>> So, I found out I did not properly install Ubuntu on my desktop and it
>>> is time to wipe and reinstall. I was thinking of starting with their
>>> server and adding the windows manager I like and any other software I
>>> need. Naive as I am, I decided to ask in the #ubuntu irc channel for
>>> help specially regarding the dual screen and windows manager package
>>> names I got this as a reply:
>>>
>>> (05:25:53 AM) alkisg: raub: that's what a desktop environment
>>> maintainer does; he finds out the programs needed for that
>>> (05:26:03 AM) alkisg: E.g. you'll need dbus-daemon, ssh-agent,
>>> policykit-agent etc to avoid various tasks from failing
>>> (05:26:31 AM) alkisg: So... you'll either need to learn about all
>>> these  low-level things, or you'd just use the premade desktop iso :)
>>>
>>> I guess it is time to consider the options. Goal is to have an
>>> installation with as little cruft as I can. Ideally, start from a
>>> minimalistic install and then add the windows manager and the other
>>> programs I need (the usual crap: 4+ different browsers, NFS, wifi that
>>> does say it cannot support my wifi card). It also needs to work with
>>> Zoom because unfortunately I need that for work.
>>>
>>> Candidates:
>>>
>>> Centos: Nope. I like the people in the #centos channel (not as
>>> condescending as the ubuntu and specially fedora), but centos will
>>> cease to exist in December.
>>> Fedora: Nope. My condescending quota has been filled thankyouverymuch.
>>> Debian: I never pictured it as  desktop, but hey
>>> Suse: Calling Dwaine. Dwaine needed on Aisle 5.
>>> lubuntu: I have used it before. What kind of support does it have? Its
>>> irc channel is rather not popular.
>>> Mint: never used
>>> ???
>>> --
>>> This message was sent to: Roger <rogerb at bronord.com>
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>>> --
>>> This message was sent to: Wes <wes at xitechusa.com>
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>>> that address.
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>>> Welcome to TriLUG: https://trilug.org/welcome
>>
>>
> -- 
> This message was sent to: William <william at trilug.org>
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