best flavor

[jape258]

I have been switching between the different flavors trying to find the best one for me.
I have a duo screen setup. So I would like one the works well with it.
I would like to be resource friendly.(here are my specs)
I have 12 GB of ram
An Intel i5-2500 CPU @ 3.3GHz x4
and a graphics card of geforce gt 710
And it needs to have a modern look that is customizable.

[Skaperen]

each flavor is best for you ... or not. do you want us to pick one for you? look in the upper right corner of each posting you read. under Distro: many of us have picked one.

go be on it !!

[CatKiller]

I would like to be resource friendly. And it needs to have a modern look that is customizable.

Gnome has some performance problems (which are in the process of being fixed) and the devs go out of their way to limit the amount of customisation that's available. Any other desktop environment will fit the bill. Or no desktop environment: some people just have a window manager and their own choice of applications. And some people even like Gnome.

We all have our own favourites. We can't pick yours for you. If you've already tried a bunch then you'll already know which ones you like and which ones you don't.

The answer is KDE, though. Definitely.

[jape258]

Gnome has some performance problems (which are in the process of being fixed) and the devs go out of their way to limit the amount of customisation that's available. Any other desktop environment will fit the bill. Or no desktop environment: some people just have a window manager and their own choice of applications. And some people even like Gnome.

We all have our own favourites. We can't pick yours for you. If you've already tried a bunch then you'll already know which ones you like and which ones you don't.

The answer is KDE, though. Definitely.

I tried KDE but would you think 12 GB of ram is enough for a normal use computer? Also, does budgie have different drivers then the other flavors. Because it's the only one that has worked with my network card out of the box.

[jape258]

each flavor is best for you ... or not. do you want us to pick one for you? look in the upper right corner of each posting you read. under Distro: many of us have picked one.

go be on it !!

I have messed around for a min on xubuntu.
Can you change the windows open/running to have just an icon? Also, have a preview of what the window will look like before you open it?

[uRock]

Xubuntu has been the best for me. I booted it from a USB drive and fell in love with how some of the apps work, such as the setting for background. Just move the window from screen to screen in a multiscreen setup and you can change each background to something different.

Put them all on a thumb drive, boot them up, then take notes on things you like/dislike. Try changing settings. Which DE has the most intuitive settings configuration apps? That's what I went through recently. Nothing made me anywhere near as happy as Xubuntu.

[CatKiller]

I tried KDE but would you think 12 GB of ram is enough for a normal use computer?

Of course. My laptop with KDE has 8 GB and flies.

Where machines struggle with low memory for performance, it's web content much more than what desktop environment they're using. The days of it making any difference at all whether your desktop environment takes up 150 MB of RAM or 350 are long behind us.

[CatKiller]

Also, does budgie have different drivers then the other flavors. Because it's the only one that has worked with my network card out of the box.

It shouldn't do: the drivers are part of the kernel, which is the same for all the flavours.

It's possible that the Budgie configuration defaults to a different device if you have more than one, or it's possible that you were using a newer release of Budgie than the others, which would have a newer kernel, and using the same release of the other flavours would give you the same hardware support.

Or you found an answer to which flavour works best for you.

[Skaperen]

i remember trying KDE back when 4GB was a big system... that's 4GB hard drive and 512MB RAM. KDE worked but i could see it was a bit sluggish on some things. i blamed it on GUI in general and went back my setup with 60 text consoles on Slackware.

[yetimon_64]

...
I would like to be resource friendly.(here are my specs)
I have 12 GB of ram
An Intel i5-2500 CPU @ 3.3GHz x4
and a graphics card of geforce gt 710
And it needs to have a modern look that is customizable.

Those specs seem pretty good and you shouldn't have any problems with any of the ubuntu flavours there. For resource friendlyness and customizability see the next quote box ... Xubuntu is my favourite as well after having tried out ubuntu mate, lubuntu and xubuntu (I took a dislike to KDE many years ago, so have not included it in my recent testing).

I have a distaste for the direction Gnome has taken, specifically the need for third party extensions to get a basic set up done to my liking.

As for "modern looks" xfce is that customizable you can make it look very advanced particularly with xfce4-panel's degree of flexibility; "out of the box" it looks a bit plain though.
I have found the desktop context menu to be the best of any of the flavours for my needs, I absolutely love that style of context sensitive menu available from the desktop, it gives full access to all installed menu items as well as system settings directly from the desktop itself along with the usual functions availabe on the other flavours like new folder/files, open a terminal etc.

Xubuntu has been the best for me ... and fell in love with how some of the apps work, such as the setting for background. Just move the window from screen to screen in a multiscreen setup and you can change each background to something different....

+1, xfce's handling of background images, including with separate images for each workspace, is particularly impressive in my opinion. Just moving the background settings window between monitors with dual monitors set up and having it switch automatically to the new monitor was a nice touch.

Some of the supplied apps, particularly thunar, on xfce don't suit my taste so I'll often add apps like caja, mate-terminal, gedit, gthumb etc from other flavours into xfce, and I have had no problems whatsoever with any of them so far. Though if you add such foreign programs from the other flavours it pays to install dconf-editor to manage them, xfce4 won't be able to adjust settings for those particular apps easily/if at all. As well as being customizable by itself xfce handles the additon of individual packages from other flavours extremely well. I have found it to be a very good base for making a hybridised DE installation here.

Regards, yeti.