Comments on: 8 Great Alternative Desktop Managers For Linux

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:11:08 +0000

I like the look and feel of XFCE, but I really don’t feel that it can truly be called “lightweight” anymore. It’s footprint isn’t all that far removed from Gnome at this point.

As a general rule I prefer IceWM over JWM, simply because I find JWM looks outdated, even though it is perfectly functional.

I’m currently enjoying Openbox a great deal. It forces me not to abuse my desktop, and has a nice elegant way of doing things. Plus I love the fact that it gives a really fast boot time.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:49:07 +0000

I wrote an explanation of the differences between a DE, a WM, and a window decorator.
http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2008/12/compiz-emerald-metacity-what.html

By: Duncan

Duncan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:44:53 +0000

i use WMII at work, been using it for around a year, I can’t stand dragging windows around with a mouse now, haven’t used any other tiling window managers however I think WMII despite being pretty basic does everything you could want, tag based window management so that windows appear on a range certain desktops, simple customizability, and a pretty code base what more could you wish for?

By: youknow

youknow — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:06:00 +0000

actually it looks like ulite is the way to go.

http://www.u-lite.org/

By: youknow

youknow — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:02:56 +0000

I tried xubuntu on my parents old p4 256 ram. The 256 ram was the bottle neck and made the system suck. so I installed lxde. which I loved and made the system much faster and a decent usable speed except for the rox desktop. I found it unintuitive after using the folder style file managers all my life. While I don’t have a problem relearning things like that my parents would hate it and never use it. They ended up upgrading ram but I found this link that might be of interest. Haven’t tried it myself.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=746131

Just a thought

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:59:15 +0000

e17, when setup like it is in Elive w/ Compiz and the new OpenGEU is the most beautiful desktop. I prefer it heavily over even GNOME and KDE. It actually gives me better battery life, somehow, than wm’s like openbox, it seems, which makes no sense to me.

However, I’m an Arch user, and I personally love FVWM-Crystal now. Even large applications open obsurdly fast and, without ever having programmed in my life, my friends are in awe at what I can do to my desktop by just changing one config file (or even just typing into the FvwmConsole). Try Fvwm-Crystal.

The one problem is that when used in conjunction with Nautilus (as a Desktop Manager) FVWM (the Window Manager) takes about 10 seconds to turn on after log in, as compared to a usual 0.5. I’m looking for an alternative, but I don’t like ROX.

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:52:08 +0000

To install Enlightenment, you have to type in

sudo apt-get install e16

e17 is not in the repo yet.

By: Matthew C

Matthew C — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:05:40 +0000

I really like Fluxbox, it’s better than many window managers and doesn’t use much screen space.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:41:00 +0000

I can’t believe the author missed ROX-Desktop.

Then again, maybe he just doesn’t like it

By: serbianlad

serbianlad — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:33:35 +0000

I’ve just installed fluxbox. Well I’m using it right now. It’s a rather new experience. I love the “almighty right mouse button” Is there any way to create shortcuts on the desktop or that is considered too heavy

I tried to install enlightment as well, but apt-get says that package isn’t available or something like that… Do I need another repo or is it something else that’s causing the problem?