Desktop Environment/Window Manager Comparison

[benplaut]

These are just the biased opinions of one person, so i encourage you to try them all and form your own opinions (post them here, too!)

These are on a scale of one to ten, with one being worst.

--KDE
Graphical Tweakability: 9
Text-file Tweakability: 7
Theming: 3
Eye Candy (Kandy?): 8
Speed: 6
Applications: 7
Number of Users: 9
Ease of Setup: 7
Stability: 7

--Gnome
Graphical Tweakability: 6
Text-file Tweakability (and Gconf): 8
Theming: 9
Eye Candy: 7
Speed: 7
Applications: 7
Number of Users: 9
Ease of Setup: 8
Stability: 8

--Fluxbox
Graphical Tweakability: 3
Text-file Tweakability: 8
Theming: 6
Eye Candy: 5
Speed: 8
Applications: N/A
Number of Users: 6
Ease of Setup: 6
Stability: 9

--Openbox
Graphical Tweakability: 3
Text-file Tweakability: 8
Theming: 5
Eye Candy: 4
Speed: 9
Applications: N/A
Number of Users: 5
Ease of Setup: 6
Stability: 9

--IceWM
Graphical Tweakability: 6
Text-file Tweakability: 7
Theming: 5
Eye Candy: 4
Speed: 8
Applications: N/A
Number of Users: 5
Ease of Setup: 7
Stability: 8.5

--Enlightenment DR17
Graphical Tweakability: 8
Text-file Tweakability: 5
Theming: 7
Eye Candy: 10
Speed: 8-9, depending on settings
Applications: 6
Number of Users: 5
Ease of Setup: 3
Stability: 7

______________
DISCLAIMER:
I'm a rotten, biased individual. Don't beleive anything i say. If you've got an issue with what i've written, just tell me - i haven't worked with all of them for the same amount of time.

If you want another environment on the list, just give me your ratings of it, on the same scales above.

Have fun, and don't forget to experiment!

[fuscia]

9wm - when i first started using it, i felt like i was trying to get some scotch tape off my fingers. now that i'm used to it, i like it. it's fast. no frills.

ratpoison - looks cool. makes me appreciate my mouse.

flwm - fast. titlebar is on the side. option to maximize/minimize hor., vert. or both. no junk.

icewm - ugly *** themes. didn't stay.

kde - too much bling, not enough zing.

xfce, gnome - too sluggish on my machine.

openbox - probably the one i use the most. it seems the fastest and it was easy for me to create my own theme for it. it does what i need and it does it quickly.

[]Nbx*cmD[]

Ratpoison:

Graphical Tweakability: 2
Text-file Tweakability: 10
Theming: 0
Eye Candy: 0
Speed: 10
Ease of Setup: 3
Stability: 8

[kabus]

I like tiling wms :

ratpoison : Very simple (a good thing, IMO) keyboard-orieted wm, basically an X version of screen. Works best with maximized windows. Easy to configure and extensible through scripting. No window decorations, no eyecandy.
Interesting article here : http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/
http://ratpoison.nongnu.org

wmii-3 : One step up from ratpoison. Handles frames and the incremental resizing of terminals better. Has innovative features like window stacking and dynamic workspaces through tagging. Configurable/scriptable through a virtual filesystem, which takes getting used to. Currently under heavy development.
http://www.wmii.de

ion : tiling wm with tabbed windows. Haven't really looked into it because of daunting configuration through lua scripting. The "manifesto" on their website is worth a read.
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/

[mrgnash]

DR17 definitely scores a 10 in the eyecandy department :D It's not even finished yet so when it is, I think it's bounds to to be one hell of a desktop environment.

[Belibem]

I was wondering if it is possible to install both gnome and kde, and then choose which one to use at the greeting page?

[fuscia]

fluxbox-0.9.14

loads fast, is faster than openbox and maybe as fast as flwm, tweakable (i'm not much of a tweaker), very fast, the menu is great and can be edited, and it's really fast.

[Kvark]

I was wondering if it is possible to install both gnome and kde, and then choose which one to use at the greeting page?
Install kubuntu-desktop with apt/synaptic if you use Ubuntu or ubuntu-desktop if you use Kubuntu. After waiting for the big download you have both and can choose which one at the greeting page. The only disadvantage of having both is that you will have both Gnome apps and KDE apps and will probably end up mixing them which doesn't look as good as if you had apps from only one DE.

I can't give an opinion on which specific WM is best because I have tried only a few so the best one is most likely one of the many that I haven't tried. My take on WMs in general is that I personally don't like DEs because they are too complicated. You have a desktop to put shortcuts on that you can only reach by minimizing all windows, menues to navigate to find your programs, panels with all kinds of stuff on, windows to move around, resize, maximize, minimize and send to different workspaces. All I want to do is get past the jungle of features in the DE/WM with the least possible hassle to get to my programs and start working so I think the primitive/simple WMs are the most productive ones.

[arctic]

Agreed, Flux is imho the fastest out there.

I think that E17 is getting too high values in terms of themeability/eye-candy. And it is not faster than flux. Just my thoughts, of course.

[BWF89]

Could someone please review Window Maker?

[arctic]

Windowmaker
Graphical Tweakability: 4
Text-file Tweakability: 6
Theming: 4
Eye Candy: 3
Speed: 8
Applications: N/A
Number of Users: 5
Ease of Setup: 6
Stability: 9

[s_spiff]

well i've only used openbox, and since i'm not much of a tweaker i found it rather too dry...also ..i relaly get bugged by those gdesklets... by go through reviews, I think. E17 will come on top.. i coudn't install it from the cvs...its madness! even with the script which makes installation quite easy!
tried KDE too, but way too fancy! way way..to glossy.. so not my cup of tea.. but really would like someone to make a easy script like automatix which would give us an option to install either of these window-makers/environments.

[YuHoo]

You should also have a value for the documentation provided. I've found that with Xfce it has a nice interface, but the manual on the website leaves much to be desired.

[mostwanted]

Gnome with Compiz
Graphical Tweakability: 9
Text-file Tweakability: what the hell is this?
Theming: 2 (because the default theme is quite good, but there's not really anything else available)
Eye Candy: 9
Speed: 8-9
Applications: 9 (I <3 my Gnome)
Number of Users: 8
Ease of Setup: 6-7 (Compiz setup, Gnome is automatically set up)
Stability: 4

[hailtothethief]

Could someone please review Window Maker?

Looks ugly. Not easy to extend. Not even as fast as e16, let alone fluxbox or openbox. Don't use it.

[daverich]

I've gone over to puppylinux after quite a long time of oogling it.

It uses JWM, which isn't very customisable, but I really like it's speed.

I have an intel video card, and I have to say it's lovely to have good video performance back again..

Kind regards

Dave Rich

[tcoffeep]

What??? NO DWM???

[SomeGuyDude]

No one used Compiz solo? Interesting.

[keiichidono]

Quit necromancing.

[tcoffeep]

Never.

[Starlight]

--Enlightenment DR17
(...)
Applications: 6

But there are almost no applications for Enlightenment, unfortunately :( Unless there are some and I don't know about them?

[bapoumba]

This was a 2006 thread. Let's have it drown down the bottom of the forums again.