[gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Duncan]

Martin Herrman <martin@×××××××.nl> posted
40bb8d3b0906170618g152b5f8fxc79889f0d6213bf6@××××××××××.com, excerpted
below, on  Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:18:24 +0200:

> "The Xfce 4 Appfinder is part of the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment and
> features application search on the whole system. It searches for
> .desktop files based on the freedesktop spec and makes an index of the
> found apps."
>
> Source: xfce website:
> http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfce4-appfinder
>
> Does Gentoo use these .desktop files?

In general, yes, as it's a freedesktop.org standard now and both KDE and 
GNOME use them too.  However, whether individual (non-main-DE) apps 
packages include them would depend on either upstream (if it ships, so 
will Gentoo in most cases) or the the initiative of the individual Gentoo 
package maintainer, if upstream doesn't ship one.

On the title question, I've never used it, but based on what others have 
said and the originally requested features (including an auto-managed 
menu), I too would recommend XFCE.  It seems to be /the/ middle ground 
between a "full feature" DE and a bare-bones WM, and gets very high 
reviews in general.  If I ever decide KDE's not for me any more, or 
perhaps for my netbook when I get around to putting Gentoo on it, if I 
don't like KDE's performance, I've always thought I'd try XFCE first.  

But on my main machine, at least kde3 has been great.  I can't say the 
same for kde4 (yet?), for a couple reasons.  First, one of the big kde4 
features is 3D eye candy... that my aging Radeon 9200 can't handle at the 
1920x2400 desktop size I run (it maxes at 2048 each, X and Y), and 
without that, there really isn't enough better (and a lot changed enough 
I'm not comfortable with it) to upgrade from kde3.  Second, I've so 
deeply customized kde3 to my own needs and style, and kde4 is so much 
changed, that it's simply different enough that even with full 3D 
features, it'd take me awhile to get kde4 setup similarly effectively/
comfortably.

So, I have both kde3/4 merged, and occasionally run 4 and mess around 
some, but for actually doing anything productive, it's kde3 (or the text 
console).  Sometime later this year I plan to upgrade to, probably, one 
of the later r500 based Radeons (which run thru the x1950 models), and 
meanwhile, kde-4.3.0 and likely 4.3.1 will be out, and we'll see how kde4 
does then.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman