Neither. They're both slow, entangled pigs. Gnome has a weird,
inobvious user interface. If you want something performant, simple and
clean, LXDE is the way to go.
I just wanted to rebut this...
GNOME, I would say, is different, not weird. It's designed in a way where the desktop environment gets out of your way, only appearing when you really need it. What you do see by default is stuff that you really want to see at a glance, like what program is selected, what the time is, how much battery you have left, etc.. If you want to see more, you can open activities or a menu to see more.
If you're worried about RAM usage, my GNOME installs use about 1G of RAM on boot, but that also includes several other programs I run on startup like Syncthing, a Syncthing GUI, Solaar, etc.. If you have even a modest amount of RAM, say at least 8GB, this is not a problem. What else are you going to use that RAM for anyway? If you're always trying to maximize "free" RAM then you're just wasting your money by having more RAM than you need.
GNOME is also not slow, in fact on any hardware made in say the last 10 years, it's incredibly fast and smooth. Even in a non-graphics-acellerated environment, it's still fast as by default it disables all animations. Even Core 2 Duo machines can run GNOME like a champ.
Lastly, GNOME also integrates well with standard systemd services.
Now, if you want to talk about KDE, I've had it take 10-15 seconds to start up on a brand new machine where GNOME would start in a second or two. That and it kind of wants to do its own thing for a lot of stuff makes me not want to use it.
But to call either of them "slow, entangled pigs", no, I absolutely cannot agree with you.
If you have a relatively modern computer, you're giving up a lot going the LXDE route, and will overall add more frustration to your Linux experience. I'd only use "lightweight" environments on really old/slow computers.
Not to disparage the maintainers of LXDE or LXQt either, but GNOME and KDE have much more resources put behind them, constantly improving. LXDE has been abandoned and LXQt is slow moving. On top of that LXQt even pulls in some dependencies from KDE, so you can't really argue much about LXQt being more lightweight than KDE when they're using the same core features.
On Mon, Oct 24, 2022, at 2:00 AM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 23 Oct 2022 11:04:51 -0700
>
>My first question has to do with what desktop KDE or GNOME?
Neither. They're both slow, entangled pigs. Gnome has a weird,
inobvious user interface. If you want something performant, simple and
clean, LXDE is the way to go. Or if your distro doesn't offer LXDE,
LXQt is almost as good.
By the way, except for Redhat which likes to keep their monopoly close
to the vest, you can use any wm/de (Window Manager/Desktop Environment)
on any distro.
>
>I want to use Ubuntu. Ubuntu desktop used GNOME. Kubuntu uses KDE
>and has the Plasma desktop. Not sure what the Plasma desktop is. I
>will look into that once I have sent this email.
The computer you describe has paltry resources, by today's standards.
Ubuntu will consume a lot of those resources. Also, if you sign up with
Ubuntu, you sign up with the incredibly entangled and complexified
systemd. Just saying.
>
>I eventually would like to edit videos on Linux. According to what I
>hear and read, Kdenlive is said to be the best free Linux editor.
>
>I need to do a handful of things with this Linux box. Mail,
All email clients suck. Claws-Mail, Evolution and Mutt suck the least.
> Internet
>surfing,
All distros I'm aware of come with lots of great browsers. Get to know
them, and which ones work best in which situations.
> virtualization using oracle VirtualBox,
Or qemu or others.
> programming using
>Visual Studio Code,
I use VSCode every day to do websites. It's fantastic.
> and video editing using Kdenlive. I hope I did
>not leave anything out.
>
>List of initial questions:
>
>1) Is it GNOME or KDE?
Neither
>2) What mail client should I use? I have been using Thunderbird for
>years and am not married to it.
Thunderbird's fine if you don't have a lot of emails stored. When you
have lots of stored emails in your various mailboxes, Thunderbird can
actually come to a standstill. I've had it happen. Claws-Mail,
Evolution and Mutt are much more performant.
>3) For FTP I have been using FileZilla.
For file transfer I use sftp. For whole directory trees I use rsync, or
tar=>gzip the tree, transfer it with sftp, and then ssh to the
destination and untar it.
>4) For watching DVD videos I have been using VCL media player - any
>thoughts?
Different media players work in different situations. Whatever distro
you pick will probably have lots of choices. VLC, Totem, SMPlayer are
just a few of your many choices. I use them all.
>5) For SSH I have been using the Win 10, I think it called the Linux
>subsystem. This new box will have command line access so that should
>not be an issue.
>6) I will be using a wired non-routable static IP.
Here's my simple, distro independent script for obtaining a fixed IP4
address. Just have your rc.local script run it.
And here's my complete script for hosts of qemu guests:
>7) Eventually I will need to configure my printer/scanner. From a
>quick search it looks like KDE makes it simple compared to the old
>days...
Before you select the massively entangled KDE, read this:
The preceding article is specifically about Kmail, but KDE does the same
krap to all its apps.
>
>I apologize in advance for all my future questions. I'm sure I will
>drive you crazy over the next few months while I try to understand and
>learn.
Welcome to the world of desktop Linux!
SteveT
Steve Litt
Summer 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
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