[PLUG] where can I get a sane KDE?

Auke Kok sofar at foo-projects.org
Mon Feb 12 19:22:17 UTC 2007


M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Michael Rasmussen wrote:
>> Wil Cooley wrote:
>>   
>>> Quoting Eric Wilhelm:
>> For those of you who have weighed in on this topic what about a meeting presentation?
>>
>>   !KDE*  !Gnome* - Alternate desktop how and why for your computing pleasure
>>
>>   * Or so heavily modified you won't recognize it.
>>
>> I sanguinely run a nearly stock KDE[1] but would be interested in why others do
>> different.
>>
>> [1] Though I used to run IceWM on a T21 Laptop for better performance.
>>
>>   
> Yeah ... excellent idea for discussion. I've already posted twice on my 
> blog about it, but hey, I'd love to hear other folks' opinions. For 
> example,
> 
> * Is XFCE 4.4 too bloated? :)

I often hear this (I'm the xfce.org operator and general mish-mash xfce guy) 
from people who use xfce and yearn for the twm days.

people tend to forget that xfwm4 can run great by itself and do all the things 
that twm etc. does great (render windows) and that that kind of modularity makes 
it so good. Just chop out xfdesktop and the other fluff out of xfce4 and it will 
run fine.

it's silly to blame Xfce4 (or any other desktop) for being bloated on the basis 
of (memory footprint, disk space, resources used) when you run it in its full 
configuration (all fluff enabled, all sub-apps started etc).

That's like driving a honda civic with 200lbs of speakers and amplifiers *and* 3 
spoilers. Of course it's bloated. Duh!

KDE itself has only very limited options of being shrunk down by the user. Gnome 
is arguably a lot better.

but the way Xfce is setup certainly beats all of it. You can run xfwm4 as the 
gnome window manager for instance. Or skip using the panels alltogether in 
xfce4, remove the desktop icons...


bottom line: xfwm4 + aterm's are great, light footprint and can handle a 
gazillion of them gracefully, even on low-memory systems. Sure twm is good, but 
doesn't have multiple desktop support. Do you really want to handle 100+ 
terminals with it? I wouldn't

Cheers,

Auke



More information about the PLUG mailing list