What WM/DE will Pyra OS use?

[Kev2442]

How does KDE Plasma 5 run ? Looks really good and I think it will be on my first definitive Linux PC.

by the state of it on debian/sid for x86, I'm not  ready to test this on pyra

What's so bad about it ?

 

[slaeshjag]

familiarity for Pandora users perhaps?, what can openbox do that others can't?

lightweightness that something xfce lost along the lines

Maybe, but I still run idle on the devboard at ~100MBs, about 78MB on first boot with XFCE4 to me that's still fairly lightweight.

Openbox runs on twice less the RAM, and runs about twice faster as well.

One half the RAM. One 8th the features.

 

[Grench]

Openbox is the WM that comes stock in Debian LXDE.  It's functional, but XFCE is considerably better with only 25% more RAM usage.  LXDE ~ 82MB and XFCE ~ 106MB.  Interestingly KDE is only 131MB.
https://renewablepcs.wordpress.com/about-linux/kde-gnome-or-xfce/

Personally, I'm a fan of XFCE.  I haven't found anything missing from KDE - and the XFCE DE tends to stay 'out of the way'.

I haven't found anything 'missing' from XFCE other than whiz-bang animated windowing stuff that doesn't actually do anything functional.

 

[edgex004]

I'm sure things will be different for the pyra, but I find the functionality of fraemon's openbox settings to be well beyond the functionality of the default xfce setup on the pandora... Of course you can modify both however you like, but the intuitive shortcuts an simplicity of his openbox set up has been greatly appreciated.

 

[EvilDragon]

Personally, I'm a fan of XFCE.  I haven't found anything missing from KDE - and the XFCE DE tends to stay 'out of the way'.

I haven't found anything 'missing' from XFCE other than whiz-bang animated windowing stuff that doesn't actually do anything functional.

Well, I use KDE but have all that animated windowing stuff disabled )
KDE is a lot more user-friendly on initial setup, has a lot more settings, organizing your own taskbar is a lot more powerful, etc.
It also supports Pulseaudio properly, so I can easily move an audio stream from HDMI out to analog out and back, change volume of single programs, etc.
Powerful windows settings (it's easy to force a window to always stay at one monitor in one exact position in front), etc.

It's a lot more polished than most of the other DE in my opinion, but that also means it uses more CPU power.
On my PC, that's perfectly fine and I love it.

On the Pandora, XFCE4 is more than enough, especially with those optimized things like the small tool to enable / disable Wifi, USB, etc. we've got.
On the Pyra, XFCE4 should also be good enough.
 

 

[Ziz]

I haven't found anything 'missing' from XFCE other than whiz-bang animated windowing stuff that doesn't actually do anything functional.

I have xfce running with compiz here. My windows are so whiz-bang, you wouldn't believe it!

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Since Canonical took over the development of Compiz it keeps getting really annoying regressions when being used with other DEs than Unity, though... I have used XFCE+Compiz myself before, but at some point I just got fed up.

 

[eric]

I was interested in ratpoison due to it being focused on keyboard use.  I don't need something like that really, especially if the Pyra nubs and touchscreen work well. i3 seems popular. Can someone offer a few suggestions for tiling WMs they feel will be a good choice for the Pyra, and maybe a brief explanation of why they may be better than others?

I use ratpoison on my Pandora.  Not only is it completely keyboard based, having every window (by default) use the whole screen maximises the use of the small screen.  I've rebound the Pandora key to be the main control key for ratpoison.

(I should add that I run Debian, aka pandian, on my Pandora)

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Potentially relevant: Fedora 23: KDE vs. Xfce vs. GNOME vs. LXDE vs. MATE

 

[FIQ]

I'm sure things will be different for the pyra, but I find the functionality of fraemon's openbox settings to be well beyond the functionality of the default xfce setup on the pandora... Of course you can modify both however you like, but the intuitive shortcuts an simplicity of his openbox set up has been greatly appreciated.

This is what I've used on my pandora ever since I found it about a month after my Pandora purchase (feb 2014). It works great and I've found it more usable than the stock XFCE as well, and more lightweight as well.

 

[___]

I am all for having a tiling wm on pyra, but not as a default. I love openbox for the same reasons I use i3 (the freedom of customization), but something like xfce is just more accessible for non-linux nerds. Also, I cannot see i3 or awesome run on the pyra in an efficient way, there is just not enough screen estate for that. So I guess ratpoison is the best choice in this regard, or i3 in stacking mode.


This is something that I am actually really excited about on the pyra: a debian release as default OS which (hopefully) honors standards! It was such a hassle to try to get any DE/WM or even login manager integrated on the pandora due to all the hacks, I actually gave up on compiling i3 for SZ, which is a trivial build on other linux distros. then again I am no porting magician like certain people on the boards ^^.


I for one would love xfce/openbox as a default with ratpoison as a choice (it's so tiny, it can easily be installed as an alternative on the NAND).

 

[Askarus]

I will use XFCE.


For me it's the WM which needs the least effort for me to look as I want it to and has the shortcuts I want.


I use it even on my high end Laptop.

 

[TrashyMG]

but something like xfce is just more accessible for non-linux nerds.

I've been using Linux mainly for close to 20 18 years and I find XFCE is a better choice than openbox, or most other ancient WMs that I used to suffer with. I understand the need for light memory usage, but you seem to be implying that using a DE that is marginally more usable makes you a linux noob or something. Maybe I'm not cool enough to be a Linux hipster.

 

[___]

oh come on, really? [sarcasm] yeah I meant that explicitly: "TrashyMG is a noob because he is running xfce"...[/sarcasm] are you seriously offended?


I am merely saying that xfce will be the better choice as a default over something like openbox or a tiling wm. I am not calling anybody a noob. But I am sure you as an experienced linux user will agree, that the sheer multitude of choices is very confusing for newcomers, and configuring a tiling WM is even more confusing for people who are used to DE . that's all that was. how could you take that as a personal insult??? I am a bit baffled. and yes, if you seriously thought I was implying something like that, then please be offended because I will indeed think that you are not cool. Hope you were joking.

 

[levi]

Seems to me that given we run XFCE by default on Pandora, then trying to argue for something slightly more limited using much more resources on a more powerful machine is unlikely to be accepted by the mainstream.  A more heavyweight DE would be more acceptable, if anyone could tell me something useful you can do with them that you can't do with XFCE.

 

[___]

Seems to me that given we run XFCE by default on Pandora, then trying to argue for something slightly more limited using much more resources on a more powerful machine is unlikely to be accepted by the mainstream.  A more heavyweight DE would be more acceptable, if anyone could tell me something useful you can do with them that you can't do with XFCE.

yes. and as I said, everyone will easily be able to chose their own preferred environment by installing from the repositories anyway if they don't wish to stick with xfce.

 

[TrashyMG]

oh come on, really? [sarcasm] yeah I meant that explicitly: "TrashyMG is a noob because he is running xfce"...[/sarcasm] are you seriously offended?


I am merely saying that xfce will be the better choice as a default over something like openbox or a tiling wm. I am not calling anybody a noob. But I am sure you as an experienced linux user will agree, that the sheer multitude of choices is very confusing for newcomers, and configuring a tiling WM is even more confusing for people who are used to DE . that's all that was. how could you take that as a personal insult??? I am a bit baffled. and yes, if you seriously thought I was implying something like that, then please be offended because I will indeed think that you are not cool. Hope you were joking.

No I didn't see that as a personal insult... I felt your statement was a tad blanketed to all experienced Linux users. Which is why I gave my example of someone that used Linux for close to two decades and still prefers XFCE over some of the lighter weight, but more difficult to deal with solutions. Maybe I should of left out the hipster bit... I was trying to be funny during that part.

 

[___]

oh ok. sorry. still I can't see where my post lead you to believe that I was implicating something like that.

 

[FIQ]

Meh, as long as I can switch over to the openbox setup that the pandora has in the repo fairly easily, I'm happy with whatever default.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

How about this?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLWM It looks nice to me.