Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:39:31 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Replacing windows XP at home. Message-ID: <44C7C4F3.8080400@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <a25afc300607261222l22295ea1vbd3418c08cf3c073@mail.gmail.com> References: <20060726082333.e72c8bd2fa3c8298c4bf39a8c4c61b77.dba6f17e66.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <a25afc300607261222l22295ea1vbd3418c08cf3c073@mail.gmail.com>
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jan gestre wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Joshua Lewis <joshua.lewis@familyfunzone.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I have a hard question to ask and I realize that there are a thousand
>> answers to this question.
>>
>>
>>
>> I am replacing my XP system with a FreeBSD 6.1 system. I finished
>> installing it last night and cvsuped. Now I need to choose a window
>> manager.
>>
>>
>>
>> There are what seems like hundreds of different WM in the ports
>> collection and there is no way I will be able to find the time to
>> read
>> them all and get any kind of good idea on what each one does.
>>
>>
>>
>> I am hoping a few people form the list could e-mail me what they like
>> and for what reason.
>>
>>
>>
>> I want something lean and fast but I want to have my cake and eat it
>> to because I do want something that is not strait up ugly and is
>> functional.
>>
>>
>>
>> KDE seems like it is bloated so I was considering Gnome. I have also
>> been reading about enlightenment and it sounds interesting. I have
>> looked into Fluxbox and it also seems like it would do the trick.
>>
>>
>>
>> Would I be better off just going with Gnome or KDE? I realize once I
>> start installing apps that I will probably wind up installing
>> something that uses Gnome or KDE libraries so I am going to wind up
>> bloating my system any ways right?
>>
>>
>>
>> gnome and kde are both bloated, why not xfce or fluxbox, they are both
>> lean and fast.
Performance is all relative though, based on what your machine's
speed is, how much RAM it has, disk space, etc. I personally abandoned
Gnome and KDE approximately 1-2 years ago because I found compiling the
packages to be too much of a pain and take too much time to accomplish.
I use XFCE4.2, and if I feel like it, I use fluxbox from time to time.
However, functionality-wise I find XFCE4.2 to be the best thing out
there right now, mostly because of the additional daemons and minor
programs that run in the background for both KDE (Konqueror, kstart,
etc) and Gnome (Nautilus, gnome*daemon, etc).
I will say this though: if you want everything, including all the
trimmings in a desktop, go for KDE. If you want hardware to just work
and like a more "polished" (ie less cubic) and maybe a bit cartoony
look, go for Gnome.
-Garrett
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