What is your preferred Desktop or Window Manager?

[Wally Balljacker]

I know many of us use more than one desktop, but I'm sure we all have a favorite that we keep coming back to. I'll try to include as many as possible.

[CptnObvious999]

I use the latest KDE at home and work. Everyonce in a while I will checkout GNOME to see the progress but I just love KDE too much.

[Tsuroerusu]

Of course I use KDE. I'm from Europe! And very close to Germany (Where KDE originated) and Norway (Where Qt originated) at that!!

Plus KDE doesn't look/act like Mac OS X (*cough* GNOME *cough*), the OS I just can't stand for a lot of reasons.

By the way, watch out for mentioning ratpoison or you might insult his royal cheesyness!

[shopRatt]

By the way, watch out for mentioning ratpoison or you might insult his royal cheesyness!

Naaa, Jagermeister is the only true shoprat poison. I am a KDE user too.

[Ruhar]

KDE mostly. Fluxbox when I feel like geeking out.

[Patrick]

I prefer KDE but do sometimes use Gnome, XFCE and Fluxbox.

[KStorm]

KDE is my desktop of choice, but I also appreciate Fluxbox, too.

[adam]

openbox and sometimes wmii(kinda like ratpoison).
DE's always have a tendency to piss me off so i like just having the simple wm+panel combos.

[yeti]

I prefer gnome

[Gomer_X]

My preferred desktop is BASH.

Since I'm limited to X based desktops I voted for Gnome. It has the best usability, doesn't look like Windows XP (*cough* KDE *cough*), and it's light enough for nearly any machine I have.

[jamathis]

Gnome user here. I like icewm and xfce also, but primarily use Gnome.

[mowestusa]

Right now, I'm a Gnome user, only because I made the switch from Kanotix and Simply Mepis to Ubuntu. I loved KDE when I was running those other distros. I just thought I would give the stock Ubuntu a try, and I have it on my home machine and work machine. Gnome is just fine for me. I don't really prefer one over the other.

I've been thinking about switching to KDE again which I could do easily in Ubuntu, but what I would really like to learn is something like Ratpoison or Ion3 and get away from using the mouse. I've been trying to learn more command line apps lately so that I can be more productive on really old hardware with low memory. By getting ride of the X11 overhead, you can make all sorts of old old computers useful again. Also I have some old computers like an Alpha that doesn't have the drivers available for its graphics card.

So many cool things to learn in Linux, it is hard to know what to take on next. PHP and MySQL is on my list too, along with getting better at using vim, CLI sound apps, backup scripts for my small network of computers. All this in my spare time after work (which doesn't involve computers), family (which doesn't like me on the computer), and paying the bills, cleaning, and keeping the house standing.

[Vogateer]

Mowestusa raises a good point, though I'd argue that X11 itself doesn't add a great deal of weight. I'm thinking about buying an old laptop and using something like Ratpoison as well. It takes a long time to learn, but I imagine it would be like learning vim, and really increase your productivity. It might be hard to grow accustomed to a light browser like Dillo, though. I suppose Puppy Linux does good work with Seamonkey, though, and Puppy's anything but a RAM hog. I'm not sure whether Ratpoison or Ion3 would be what I prefer.

Doesn't one of the window managers work a little like screen? I love screen, and I think one window manager just uses something like C-T instead of C-A or something like that.

[mowestusa]

Mowestusa raises a good point, though I'd argue that X11 itself doesn't add a great deal of weight. I'm thinking about buying an old laptop and using something like Ratpoison as well. It takes a long time to learn, but I imagine it would be like learning vim, and really increase your productivity. It might be hard to grow accustomed to a light browser like Dillo, though. I suppose Puppy Linux does good work with Seamonkey, though, and Puppy's anything but a RAM hog. I'm not sure whether Ratpoison or Ion3 would be what I prefer.

Doesn't one of the window managers work a little like screen? I love screen, and I think one window manager just uses something like C-T instead of C-A or something like that.

Yes, you're right, X11 isn't as much the hog as the WM or DE. Although even most WM like to have more than 32megs of ram, but that might be related to the xserver that you use, I believe DSL uses a stripped down one instead of xorg which brings its requirements even lower.

Dillo or Seamonkey, I was looking at lynx or elinks

I believe Ratpoison is the one with the screen key combinations.

[Vogateer]

Puppy ships with Xorg as well, giving you a choice of using it, which I typically do. Given that Xorg is modular, I would think it as good a choice for lightness as any other X11 implementation, though I could be wrong about the modularity allowing one to strip it down more easily. I installed Puppy with Xorg on a system with less than 64 megs of RAM and it ran surprisingly well.

Dillo is pretty light, though I tend to like links2 -g for super light-weight browsing. It works surprisingly well, and even supports pictures if you compile it with the correct flags.