Re: [PLUG] I have had time to consider and may now comfortably hate Unity.

[Matt Murphy <mattyhead@gmail.com>]

I used to do Gentoo a bit, before my linux os was a part of my job. ÂWell, it isnt anymore. ÂMaybe its time to be a little more adventurous again. ÂTry some new things out. ÂAgain.

Anyone else have a fave distro/desktop combo?
M

On Thursday, December 15, 2011, Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:32 PM, Matt Murphy <mattyhead@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What are users of Gentoo and other distros seeing in their desktops these days?
>
> Gentoo is desktop environment agnostic. ÂGenerally speaking all of
> them stay pretty close to upstream.
>
> Right now I'm running KDE, and with USE=-semantic-desktop it no longer
> gobbles CPU/disk trying to index everything I do in a way that would
> make DHS proud. ÂOf course, I can't use kmail that way - maybe one of
> these days I'll try that out again but try to reign in nepomuk via the
> KDE control panel. ÂOverall I'm relatively happy with KDE, but I don't
> really use much of it and I used to like it in the past until KDE4
> first came out.
>
> Gnome on Gentoo is currently on 2.32.1 for stable users, and is at
> 3.2.1 for testing users. ÂI'm going from memory but I do recall talk
> of stabilizing it. ÂSo, if you don't like Gnome 3 on Ubuntu I doubt
> you'll like it a whole lot better on Gentoo, unless Ubuntu did
> something to make it extra tablety or something. ÂAgain, Gentoo tends
> to stay close to upstream.
>
> Xfce on Gentoo is at 4.8, and I've found that it works fine. ÂBeing
> minimalistic it basically is what it is. ÂIf you have a command that
> you need to run to fix your trackpad just stick it someplace that runs
> after login. ÂI'm tempted to say /etc/X11/Xsession.d but I've never
> tried that - ~/.xsession does work I know (if you use xdm/etc).
>
> From what I see lxde is at 0.5.5, but I've never tried it. ÂOpenbox is
> at 3.5.0, and again I've never tried it..
>
> Normally I would have been hesitant to recommend Gentoo for a laptop,
> but if I ever bought one that belonged to me I'd be sure to give it a
> try. ÂI tried experimenting with a laptop-ish VM running Gentoo and I
> found it didn't take much work to have it working with KDE and suspend
> to disk. ÂI suspect it won't be quite as "just works" as Ubuntu -
> there will be more user configuration required. ÂHowever, just
> following the howto got it working with fairly little fuss.
>
> Bottom line, however, is that on Gentoo you tend to get an experience
> very close to upstream, and usually one that is relatively fresh for
> most packages. ÂIt is also desktop environment neutral, so it is
> always a valid bug to point out that your favorite app doesn't install
> a menu item on your favorite obscure desktop environment (though at
> this point everybody should be following the freedesktop guidelines).
> Out of the box Gentoo doesn't even install X - the system set is VERY
> minimal and we're always trying to reduce it further. ÂHowever,
> setting your profile to the desktop/kde profile and doing an emerge
> kde-meta probably will get you there (maybe you need xorg-server too -
> though perhaps it will get pulled in - or xorg-x11 if you want the
> full x11 distribution). ÂOnly kde and gnome have their own profiles,
> but really they're the only ones that need profiles (a profile is a
> large collection of default settings like packages to install, USE
> flags to set, and so on).
>
> If nothing else try installing it in a VM to see what it would be
> like. ÂThat doesn't really cost you much.
>
> Rich
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