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Which GUI do you use or prefer? - Page 2

post #31 of 38
3/27/12 at 12:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac The Knife View Post

Ironically, KDE4 would be really nice for someone that doesn't want to change anything about it. But if you want to do any customizations, it's like playing Myst, you're reduced to having to randomly click on everything that looks like it might be a control and praying that it won't do something that you can't reverse.

I agree KDE4 is not very intuitive. I never understood why given that KDE3.5 was perfect from that point of view, very configurable (still more than KDE4) and very logical and intuitive. That's one of the reasons why I still use KDE 3.5 and it's successor TrinityDE.
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post #32 of 38
3/27/12 at 3:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ericglo View Post

Rudy,
I would agree with you. Every time I fire up KDE, I think man this is just gorgeous. I would even live with the hour or two to reconfigure KDE to how I like it. I just have that one problem that I have mentioned a couple of times. That is putting stuff on the desktop. Every time I plug a flash drive in I think what do I do now. When I want to look for my main files, I don't want to go clicking through menus.

Then you should be using Gnome3 instead. Install gnome-tweak-tool and then use it to enable "Have file manager handle desktop". External drives are then mounted and displayed on the desktop.
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post #33 of 38
3/27/12 at 8:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

Then you should be using Gnome3 instead. Install gnome-tweak-tool and then use it to enable "Have file manager handle desktop". External drives are then mounted and displayed on the desktop.

Not an issue, since I am using Gnome 2.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

KDE4 does have the desktop icon functionality, but I guess it's not enabled by default on Kubuntu. Both on Mandriva and on Mageia it always has been enabled by default so I'm not sure how to enable it, but you could try out Mageia 2 (KDE version) which is a very nice distro, much more polished than Kubuntu.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

I agree KDE4 is not very intuitive. I never understood why given that KDE3.5 was perfect from that point of view, very configurable (still more than KDE4) and very logical and intuitive. That's one of the reasons why I still use KDE 3.5 and it's successor TrinityDE.

I used to use 3.5 and was satisfied with it. When 4 came out, I switched to Gnome and it felt right. Now that the writing is on the wall, I will eventually have to move to KDE or XFCE. I may give Mageia a try and see how I like KDE.
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post #34 of 38
4/1/12 at 6:02pm
I was using Unity and it seemed ok but then I had to develop some very efficient programs using stand-alone machines that gather video and data streams and then I realized I needed a small foot print on the GUI so I started using XFCE and I really liked the new version. It does everything I need and I am deploying quite a few of these machines and they are doing well running headless - a problem that Unity had. Anyway, I prefer less bloat, so right now I am using xfce and liking it.
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post #35 of 38
4/1/12 at 6:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelZ View Post

I was using Unity and it seemed ok but then I had to develop some very efficient programs using stand-alone machines that gather video and data streams and then I realized I needed a small foot print on the GUI so I started using XFCE and I really liked the new version. It does everything I need and I am deploying quite a few of these machines and they are doing well running headless - a problem that Unity had. Anyway, I prefer less bloat, so right now I am using xfce and liking it.

Yes, XFCE 4.8+ is the Gnome 2.x I always wanted
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post #36 of 38
4/2/12 at 12:06pm
The issue I have with XFCE is uncertainty about it's future because it's based on the old GTK2 library.

At some point in time they're going to be forced to switch to the new GTK3 library (or some other library altogether?). And my understanding is that the GTK3 library don't support all the features that the old GTK2 libraries used to support so there's going to be a bunch of breakage and lost features.

If anyone runs across anything where the XFCE guys talk about their plans for the future, make sure to post it because I'm curious what they're planning on doing.
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post #37 of 38
4/2/12 at 12:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

KDE4 does have the desktop icon functionality, but I guess it's not enabled by default on Kubuntu. Both on Mandriva and on Mageia it always has been enabled by default so I'm not sure how to enable it, but you could try out Mageia 2 (KDE version) which is a very nice distro, much more polished than Kubuntu.

Well, one major issue resolved! I did a search and no one really directly answered the question, but I found it anyway.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...napshot1z.png/
I basically went to the desktop setting and changed the layout from desktop to folder view.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...apshot2rg.png/

I still feel more comfortable with Gnome 2, but I may give this a little more time.
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post #38 of 38
4/2/12 at 6:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac The Knife View Post

The issue I have with XFCE is uncertainty about it's future because it's based on the old GTK2 library.

At some point in time they're going to be forced to switch to the new GTK3 library (or some other library altogether?). And my understanding is that the GTK3 library don't support all the features that the old GTK2 libraries used to support so there's going to be a bunch of breakage and lost features.

If anyone runs across anything where the XFCE guys talk about their plans for the future, make sure to post it because I'm curious what they're planning on doing.

XFCE 4.10 release info- planned for 4/28/12, don't know if it will make it into Xubuntu 12.04
http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1333238400

http://www.xfce.org/download/changelogs/4.10pre1/

It appears the port to GTK3 is planned for XFCE 4.12

http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4...er/029342.html

https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.10/roadmap

Quote:


About Gtk+ 3.0 and compilation with GSEAL

As discussed on the xfce4-dev mailing list; Xfce 4.10 will depend on Gtk+ 2.20 and won't be ported to Gtk+ 3.0 until after the 4.10 release.

http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=6685
Quote:


Gtk3 is not better or worse then gtk2 is atm. The api cleanup is a good thing for developers, but users won't notice this.

For Xfce 4.12 the plan is to switch to gtk3, if it is bad enough, we'll abort this and continue with gtk2. I personally doubt that. Gtk2 is a dead end in a couple of years and most often it is wise to step on the train early, to help resolving problems or point at performance issues.
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