I... I shouldn't have tried it. The thing is horrible.... their design decisions, I question them all... I like having a full desktop experience, which is why I tend to prefer KDE. I did use GNOME 2 because I thought it was just a great experience back then. But now? it's just in the gutters. People recommend XFCE but I feel like it's also a step back. I've been mixing openbox with KDE and seeing other windows manager such as i3 but I still can't see myself jumping ship yet. I haven't found a reason to do so, besides memory, which I have plenty to satisfy the system's needs plus it hasn't gotten in the way in terms of being responsive... so that's that. I've seen people all over windows managers. To be honest it feels like a very tight-knit group. I like it when someone promotes different window managers. To me they all do the same thing in the end, the only difference is the workflow of it I guess and different shortcuts. It's not that I want my desktop to be flashy, none of that. I can turn off the effects and be done with it. If KDE went to hell, like GNOME 3 did. I guess between XFCE and openbox/i3/bspwm, I would choose one from the latter.
I really don't have a problem with most of them. My favorites are Cinnamon, Mate and Openbox. Gnome and Unity aren't all that bad but I have scenarios where they are a complete waste of resources. My Fedora 16 server (Supermicro) doesn't have the video processing for Gnome so the windows are really slow. Even opening a terminal or folder is slow. Kinda sucks, but at least I don't use my server very often. I set it back to classic Fedora windows manager, but its still Gnome, just an older version and still slow. Code: sudo yum install gnome-session-fallback My Chromebook has ChrUbuntu 12.04 on it and Unity runs ok. I don't hate it, but takes some getting used to. But it sure runs better than Gnome on my server. The only time I use Openbox is to gain a few Frames Per Second on a game that is struggling in Cinnamon.
I really like Xfce. A few years ago I used Gnome 2 a lot and I loved it. I want to set up openbox and i3, but I want to do it myself. That is all the DE that I really like now. I think that most DE among the most well known ones (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon), I think that many of these have too many dependecies. specially KDE. And Cinnamon requires pulseaudio on Manjaro. I used to like Cinnamon, but I thought why bother when I can make Xfce look just as good, and hog less resources. My PC is pretty powerful, but I still prefer less resource use. Not a fan of Gnome or Unity at all. It's alien technology.
They have been trying to make KDE less dependent on other components as far as I remember. I don't really mind since even a vanilla installation takes just takes 500mb memory when it runs. Now with all the startup programs I have it elevated to 800-1GB. I think anyone trying that wants a full ecosystem should be ready to accept the many dependencies the Desktop Environment provides. Not just KDE, but GNOME and Enlightment
One thing I instantly noticed about Mint KDE vs Mint Cinnamon, is KDE will run on older computers. I had many problems trying to run Cinnamon on old hardware and video chips. I test most games in Cinnamon because I think most new Linux gamers end up using it. I should probably install KDE as well, just to compare, but the way I see it, if a game runs well in Cinnamon, then it probably runs even better in KDE. Most of these Desktop Environments don't bother me very much. Its not a "deal breaker" if I don't like it. It always comes down to gaming for me. But I did notice that in Gnome2 I can't figure out how to make a shortcut to a custom Dosbox config like I could in Cinnamon. Normally I would customize the Menu in Mint to launch my game, but in Ubuntu 12.04 I have no idea how to do it. The "menu" is really hard to use and customize. Probably have to use the Terminal
