MX Linux Forum

Jerry3904 wrote:Have you looked at the result of using Package Installer to install KDE? I understand that is pretty nice, and would be interested in hearing what you think.

I have not done that yet, but I will do so in a VM and see if the experience is good. Right now I'm under deadline and don't have time for that adventure, however trivial it might be.
Thanks,
Chris

cgriffin wrote: Hi Greywolf,

totally respect your perspective here. I will amend what I said and just state that "it's silly for ME to be running manjaro when rolling is not important to me." I guess I could run SolydK, but I like the Mepis community. Not here to make waves, I appreciate all of the work that those who have been dedicated to this community and distro have done. I really do like KDE.

Best,
Chris

Hi Chris,

I totally understand, back in the old Mepis days I was a total KDE fanatic! Still cannot stand Gnome but Xfce is a different Gtk story for me now.

Please please don't think I was wanting you to leave? I have 'heaps' of back pain at present and I appear like a grouch to everyone?! I was just making a couple of suggestions you may care to look at. I am sure you could achieve a satisfactory Plasma outcome from downloads here.

My real point (and concern) that I was trying to make was more about developer involvement in producing yet another version of the distro. It's not necessarily a simple task and these folks are superhuman I know but, I just don't like more and more pressure to produce user wants. Hope that makes sense. I used to do a bit of this work and I know it can quickly become a real burden. I currently support a couple of hundred Linux users who use different distros and desktops but I only support 'default' desktops for each distro.

Regarding the desktop, from memory, one of the main hassles with mixing them was the mess the menus ended up in! But hey, I haven't actually tinkered much with this sort of thing since I settled here, it may be a lot better than it used to be. I would suggest you create a new (temporary) user and fiddle around with your experiments in there until you are happy. If you don't like it, blow them away and have another go!

Good luck,
greywolf.

I did install KDE from the package manager and it looks and feels very reasonable. Is it my imageination, or are the KDE fonts not rendered as nicely as in XFCE?

Thanks for your pointers.
Chris

cgriffin wrote:I did install KDE from the package manager and it looks and feels very reasonable. Is it my imageination, or are the KDE fonts not rendered as nicely as in XFCE?

Thanks for your pointers.
Chris

I think you can improve them by going into the KDE system settings and fooling around with the font settings. Noto Sans is a good choice all around.

After messing around with KDE, I realized that you guys are all correct in your assessment that XFCE is just better. Once I turned on compositing I realized I'm perfectly happy with it.

Done

There are two things I like with KDE.

One is panel previews of running apps. I tried to get previews working in XFCE with DockbarX. I tried both with Kwin and Compiz. According to DockbarX (Github page) you need Kwin or Kwin (KDE) compatibility in Compiz. There's no KDE compatibility plugin in Compiz 0.8.

The other thing I like about KDE is Kwin. It feels a little bit more polished than Compiz.

That being said I think Xfce is by far the best DE. I don't like KDE except Kwin and panel previews. Xfce is very usable. I'm just trying to add a little bling. I guess I'm trying to recreate Windows on Linux which may not be the best idea.

I am getting app panel previews with compiz, but cannot find the setting that enables that.

Yes, I have them in Compiz, but it's not KDE or Windows quality. You find the settings in CompizConfig Settings Manager > Window Previews.

Maybe it's possible to get KDE quality previews in Xfce with DockbarX, but I don't know for sure. DockbarX didn't give me any previews at all, not even with Kwin.

On MX 16 I had kwin installed, in XFCE, not full KDE, just the window manager. It did a nice job of desktop effects.

To clarify what I mean with KDE or Windows quality I mean previews that can show both maximized and minimized apps (in Compiz no previews for minimized apps). In KDE there's a setting to show thumbnails/previews for minimized apps also.

There's also the Aero peak (?) functionality which lets you hover the preview and the window will maximize until you remove the cursor from the preview. I think KDE has this too.