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I prefer xfce myself, it's not as full featured, but I like it that way. Sure KDE looks really pretty and all, but I've had some bad experiences with it; Mandrake 9.1? it ate all my CPU frequently and Slackware (can't remember version) the sound desynced very badly with popups (mind you that was probably my fault). Nothing major, just slight irritations, I moved away from those distributions because of broken compilers actually (corrupt install maybe). I can't remember why I avoid gnome though.

RE:["why don't you make a lighter, faster gnome"]

http://www.xfce.org/ = a lighter, faster gnome...

Just encouraged me to switch to XFCE...

And people say there should be a single desktop...

I know, don't feed the trolls, I'm sorry but someone might actually believe this idiot and it's not going to take much effort to prove them wrong.

Look at this image: http://news.opensuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/yast-list_thumb.png that is YaST giving the user the option to install whatever desktop environment they like, under the cursor is XFCE whos tagline is '...and everything goes faster'. It's very lightweight, ideal for older computers and does not include any of the things you're complaining about.

Welcome to the GNU/Linux world, where you get the choice of what software to run. That's rather the point with Vista, Microsoft will force people to upgrade to it even if they have to buy a new computer to do so. My apologies if that offends your sensibilities as an MS fanboy, but I'm afraid we don't support bullying in the form of forced upgrades 'round these parts.

XFCE looks a bit like CDE.
http://www.xfce.org/images/about/screenshots/4.2-3.jpg
http://www.xfce.org/about/screenshots

XFCE looks a bit like CDE.
http://www.xfce.org/images/about/screenshots/4.2-3.jpg
http://www.xfce.org/about/screenshots

Have you tried to run Xubuntu? It runs xfce as the window manager and is suppose to have lighter hardware requirements. I would wait a bit on trying to get that distro or even access their site as the entire Ubuntu world is getting slammed right now.

I wasn't to impressed by dolphine (form the screenshot) instead I must recommend the new file manager from the latest Xfce: thunar. It is everything that Nautilus is except that it doesn't open new annoying windowses for every directory and it starts much faster. It's simple, straight forward and looks very smooth (I generally prefere gtk-2/gnome-look over KDE). I don't run the rest of xfce (E17 and whatever apps I need) but I havn't run in to any problems so far.

Xfce with the iFox Graphite theme. Minimalist desktop with no clutter. Program launcher at the bottom and Window selector at the top. Now if only the Apps were designed so the menus stayed static at the top and the status line stayed static at the bottom, just like the mac, that would be really cool.

Personally, I'm a spatial Nautilus user, but Thunar is another file manager that works with Gnome and has tree views. You might check that out.

Check your links http://thunar.xfce.org/pwiki/documentation/faq#whe n_will_it_support_sambanetwork_browsing

Thunar... lacks SMB/NFS/Network support.

That's the only (IMHO) problem with Thunar. It would be easy to integrate it with SMBCLIENT (like xffm does, by the way) but apparently they are too lazy to do that.

They are enamored by the GPL license.

I don't think that's remotely true.

GNOME is LGPL, not GPL. In fact, they consider it an advantage to not use the GPL.

KDE libraries are LGPL, KDE applications are GPL.

XFCE uses a mixture of the GPL, LGPL and BSD licenses.

Enlightenment uses the BSD license.

GNUStep uses the LGPL.

As you can see, none of the major free operating environments use the GPL exclusively, in fact half of them don't use it at all. Hell, GNOME is part of the GNU project, the FSF recommends the GPL instead of the LGPL, and GNOME ignores them and use the LGPL anyway.

See also Xfce (www.xfce.org), which has several key developers who work using BSD and Solaris instead of linux.

One of the great strengths of OSS compared to proprietary software is the ability to make use of older hardware.

As for slow, I don't know where you get your data from, but comparing my gaming XP box to my SuSE Linux 10.0 box, XP actually boots faster, and the GUI is quite a bit more responsive than X with either KDE or Gnome too.

Perhaps it's worth trying upstart and Xfce.

There are a few. My favorites are:
http://www.enlightenment.org/
http://www.xfce.org/
More ways of making your desktop look different here:
http://xwinman.org/

As far as the nVidia drivers go, you should know about Max Kanat-Alexander's http://www.fedorafaq.org/ site. He's supplied a yum.conf file that will, among other things, hook you up with http://rpm.livna.org/, which supplies prebuilt nVidia and ATi kernel drivers. In most cases, livna will have the nVidia driver rpm out there within a day or so of the Fedora kernel update being available. They also supply other things like codecs that you mention. You can also look to http://www.fedoraforum.org/ as a place to look for help. Note that there are some other sites that also supply prebuilt video drivers and codecs for yum; while I'm not in a position to soundly recommend one over another (livna has "just worked" for me), I have seen warnings that you should only enable one such site, as conflicts can arise if both release the video driver simultaneously.

I would also suggest trying XFCE (yum install xfce, IIRC; it's available in extras, and after it's installed you can choose it from the "Session" dropdown on the Fedora login page), and then go to their site at http://www.xfce.org/ and following instructions to build Thunar, their new file manager. Much lighter and more responsive than Nautilus, and it does have decent context-menu support.

Be glad that, as of FC5, yum cleans up its old kernels after new installs, leaving you with current and previous. I had a run of 7 or 8 of the things sitting around when I was on FC4.

Good luck to you!

Why do you think you need the latest/greatest KDE/GNOME to replace Win98? The machine is still Win98-era, so that's about the best you should be able to expect from it and get decent performance. Choose a lesser desktop...you can probably find one that still has feature-parity to Win98 by looking through Windowmaker, XFCE, Equinox, Blackbox, IceWM, etc. - and you'll get decent performance.

I use archlinux (no, not ark linux), which implies udev, and thunar. My own usb pen works good, and this weekend a friend came to visit, with a usb harddrive in two partitions. Both partitions showed up in thunar about a second after i pressed the on-button, and the FAT worked flawlessly (the NTFS less so, of course. I didn't mount it, but it showed up).

Thunar automagically mounted for me when I clicked on the device icon. When I was done, i left-clicked and selected "unmount". The only non-intuitive thing I can think of here, is the fact that the word "unmount" was used. perhaps "disconnect" or something would be better. and don't say "safely remove hardware". When I hear that, i alwasy think of electrictricity and grounding :)

The only "dirty work" i've done to enable this, is to add my user to the "storage" group, and a "simple-to-use" distro could just use a different udev rule to avoid that requirement.

Personally, I use XFCE. Faster than any windows installation I've ever seen. :-P

if you like nautilus, but you'd like something faster, smaller etc, take a look at thunar. It's the file manager for the xfce project. works well in gnome as a nautilus replacement, and where nautilus has extensions(scripts), thunar has plugins. have a look.

http://www.xfce.org/

/me pipes in with: "No it's XFCE you want..."

This is a very good point. If the apps are using Qt, then the GUI should be Qt also, when low-end hardware is a consideration.

Since Edubuntu seems to be just a set of packages and themes installed on Ubuntu, I was going to suggest installing a more lightweight desktop, also. Xfce or EDE will use fewer resources than either KDE or Gnome will. (I know there is a "xubuntu-desktop" package for Xfce, but I don't know about EDE support in Ubuntu.) But if those edutainment apps are the ones that will primarily be used, it may still make sense from the resource usage standpoint to go with KDE.

XFFM certainly takes some getting used to, but IMHO there is very little file management that isn't done faster and easier from a terminal anyway. I've been running XFCE for ages, but I hardly ever use XFFM for anything. Still, the file manager is probably the most criticised part of XFCE, which is why it's going to be replaced by Thunar from XFCE4.4 onwards. I'm not sure I'm going to like the change, as Thunar seems to be using the GtkFileChooser UI, which I personally find utter crap.

It would have been nice if they tried Xubuntu too. Ubuntu based, XFCE as a light, yet feature rich (to some extent) desktop. Clean, good looking, very responsive. Some screenies here.

You can have a desktop linux NOW. Fetch a modern commercial distro (http://www.ubuntu.com/>Ubuntu, Mandrake, etc) or any of the free ones and you'll have an excellent desktop with little issues, if any.

    The people that bitch about the "linux desktop" haven't normally ever tried Linux and want something that feels like their WinXP desktop. If you're looking for that, yes, there's nothing like it now and probably won't be for a while. If you want an useable Unix desktop, there's a lot of excellent ones arround.
    You have a wide choice of desktops and window and managers, and there's a lot of excellent software for them. A linux desktop is useable today, and by anyone - i had Ubuntu on a desktop for a while and my mother, who's 'computer-imparied' had zero issues using it. Besides being unable to find the blue E icon ;)

XFCE is also a good option. I use it (as provided by Debian) on an old P1-233/32MB laptop which previously ran Win95.

Also the inclusion of Evolution and Ephiphany are just annoying. It would be much better if Evolution was replaced by Thunderbird and Ephiphany by Firefox. Installing GNOME you get Epiphany and also Mozilla (since Epiphany depends on it). I use Firefox and sometimes Lynx. So now I have 4 browsers. And I also use Thunderbird for mail, but then I got this monster called Evolution installed which I have no use for. I believe the GNU/Linux distro Ubuntu did the right thing, replaced Epiphany with Firefox and didn't include any mail appliactions in the standard install. And yes, I know there are various gnome2-lite meta-packages out there for various distros and operatingsystems.

KDE has never ever even been an option for me mainly due to my dislike of Qt. I just can't stand the way it's designed. It looks like 10 years old C++ code and design. C++ has since been standardized but the Qt developers don't seem to be able to keep up.

XFCE is small and fast and has everything you need. Not sure I like the file-browser, but I usually just open a terminal emulator and do whatever I need there anyway. I'm not 100% happy with XFCE but I've yet to find anything better. I used to run Fluxbox from time to time, but I came to the conclution it just didn't do it for me.

"Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for various *NIX systems. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources." - Olivier Fourdan, creator of Xfce

http://www.xfce.org/

1. A dozen of new web-based RSS feed readers will be announced, all featuring tags and various intricate social features. Eventually one or two will be considered the "norm" (as Blogger, Livejournal, etc are considered the norm for blogging, despite all the imitators). My bookmarks folder rejoices.

2. AMD motherboards with DDR2 will finally show up. I finally upgrade from an obsolete 32-bit system. My applications rejoice.

3. Sony PlayStation 3 will be released. It will be sold out. Then more will be released. Then more will be sold out. Then more will be released. Then the price will drop a little. Then I'll buy one. Then it will be hacked by various groups for various purposes. Sony pouts. I rejoice.

4. A new flavour of Cola: Chocolate! (Eww) Oops, not technological, sorry.

5. Opera finally releases a stable, good, browser for PocketPCs. I rejoice.

6. Enlightenment 17 is finally released. I try it, don't like it, go back to XFCE.

7. XFCE 4.4 is finally released. I upgrade. I rejoice.

8. Microsoft releases Vista. Only thing new from XP: Aero and 9 versions of the same thing with 9 different price tags. (The cheaper version users are stuck with an inferior plastic paperclip.)

9. Apple releases their new line of Intel PowerBook laptops. No one notices -- attention diverted by the release of 4 and 8 gig iPod Nanos with FM radio. I consider buying one until I realize, again, that it's a waste of money. iPod lovers' collection of iPods grows to 9 units per person. Apple rejoices.

10. I go to sleep. You rejoice.

- shazow

Both KDE and Gnome are bloated. The only difference is KDE is a suckier piece of trash.
If you haven't tried a leaner, meaner environment, I suggest xfce

You forgot Poland! ...er...GNUStep.
Sure it may not have all the apps, but, for developers, it's the closest thing to writing for a mac with out acutally writing for a mac.

http://www.gnustep.org

Also you forgot, CDE, XFCE, and Enlightenment.

There are a number of different title-bar styles that come default in XFCE, including some darker colored ones. Of course, you could always make your own :-D Also, by default XFCE uses GTK2 (I believe) for everything else so there are a plethora of application styles available. Gtk-chtheme is fun for playing with that.

Anyway, I'm not sure XFCE is really better than *box, but it is a bit easier to maintain and setup. Also, I really like GTK2, and XFCE is nice and speedy too...

I've always felt that the fact that there are two major free *nix desktops is a real detriment to normal people adopting free OSes.

and that's not to mention XFCE which is written in c++ but uses GTK libraries through it's own wrappers or something like that....

and that's not to mention XFCE which is written in c++ but uses GTK libraries through it's own wrappers or something like that....

and that's not to mention XFCE which is written in c++ but uses GTK libraries through it's own wrappers or something like that....

xfce just got donated a new server from 2x.com For less than 1600 dollars. 3000? gimme a break!

It's a bunch of primadonna developers developing things the way developers want to. And developers tend to throw every reason at you for why you don't want what you're positive you want (of course, that's usually just bullshit; they just dont' want to put in the extra effort to do what people really want and would rather talk you into wanting what they want you to want).

The solution is tellign developers to start developing for the average end-user that they claim to so desperately want to reach.

No. The same UI functionality as XP/Explorer would be XFCE and a web browser app.

http://www.xfce.org/index.php?page=overview&lang=e n

HTH

Drop KDE/GNOME. They have both become too bloated for everyday use. There's a lot of excellent "lightweight" desktop enviroments and window managers: i reccomend XFCE (4.2.2). It's like Gnome after 6 months of workout and strict diet.

Xfce might also be a good choice.

and FCDE (I think that's what it's called... people say it's made a lot of progress lately but I don't really know much about it) as window managers installed by default; I installed WindowMaker myself because I like WindowMaker. I also like fluxbox for a quick window manager.

Have you seen KDE? Not to be flaming, but i think you should do some more research on linux desktops. Some good sites for this...

http://www.kde.org/ The K Desktop Enviroment (what i use)
http://www.gnome.org/ GNOME, another Desktop Enviroment thingy. The competitor to KDE
http://www.xfce.org/ XFCE, a lightweight desktop for less-powerful comps.

And that's all i can think of...

xfce Already switched to svn weeks ago. Lightwight, slick, fast, and now hosted on SVN.

Studies show that KDE has a comparable learning curve to windows for computer n00bs, GNOME following closely.

disclaimer: I solely use Xfce4. That kicks ass and doesn't scare my grandma.

I agree, the screenshots add nothing. If you want a more artsy desktop you can go here or here. If you want a faster, cleaner desktop, I'd suggest you take a look over here.

Quit using gnome, try xfce.

here

• "
• And not a single one of those apps do you use ctrl-L inside a dialog entitled "open", or any dialog for that matter"

• "
• When it comes to the widgets, GNOME and GTK+ are the same people"