Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!goblin1!goblin3!goblin.stu.neva.ru!newsfeed2.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!news.utu.fi!news.cc.tut.fi!not-for-mail From: Anssi Saari Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Gnome 3, three years after the Gnomesplosion (MATE, Cinnamon, Classic, Unity, etc.) Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 16:40:27 +0300 Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: <20140618095826.4702cf23.rsw@therandymon.com> <20140619101510.93bb5a15.rsw@therandymon.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: coffee.modeemi.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news.cc.tut.fi 1403444434 8096 2001:708:310:3430:213:21ff:fe1b:b396 (22 Jun 2014 13:40:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@tut.fi NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 13:40:34 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:zgeyjviA0gWKQFnSs8F5pqozTjg= Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:3791 Jerry Peters writes: > My question exactly. What does a "desktop environment" buy me? Personally, I like having something integrated and easily configured on my laptop. I don't mind editing a lua script on my desktop machine to config the window manager (Awesome WM in my case). But my laptop is more of a "just use it" type of thing so I appreciate having a convenient interface to configuring a few things, like all the integrated hardware the laptop has and my desktop doesn't: - The window manager, meaning focus and titlebar actions. - Keyboard layout including the special keys laptops have for volume, brightness and whatever. - Mousepad and mouse settings. - Power options for when on AC and when on battery. - Network management for three radios and ethernet. I also like that these things are installed and working with at least somewhat reasonable defaults from the get go so I don't have to start from scratch with vi and a bunch of empty config files. Back when I got a modernish personal laptop in 2008 (meaning that it had a lot of things my earlier laptops didn't have like radios), I found Gnome 2 worked (mostly). I tried KDE and XFCE back then too but they didn't work and Gnome 2 did. After the Gnome 3 annoyance of losing all my tweaks I've been using KDE. Which works (mostly) and isn't too heavy on my current five year old laptop (meaning Core i5 processor, two cores @2.4 GHz and an SSD).