The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences
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The essential experiences have to be based around someone coming from windows or mac to Linux.
While the desktop experience it's self is certainly a part of that, the system overall must be intuitive.
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So @scottalanmiller take away your experience with Linux, and play as if you're a complete newb when it comes to Linux.
Find several distro's that are super intuitive looking, and test with those.
Using your experience here is actually a hindrance for a fair evaluation.
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I think you have the primary DE's covered. I wouldn't consider Budgie a major player yet but I can understand why you're testing it. I agree that both LXDE, XFCE, and Mate are a bit too complex for the generic entry level user.
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I'm looking forward to the conclusions here. It'll give me some direction when I make the dive with my home computer.
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@EddieJennings said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
I'm looking forward to the conclusions here. It'll give me some direction when I make the dive with my home computer.
@scottalanmiller I think I was just talking about this
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While we may have the test samples covered there, how are we going to test the samples? What are newb users going to be starting off with to get comfortable with the new environments? I think that needs to be the basis of these experiences.
Some examples that I can think of:
- Working in a document, such as LibreOffice Writer
- Working in a spreadsheet, such as LibreOffice Calc
- Playing music in something like VLC
- Surfing the web in Firefox (however, this shouldn't be a difficult thing for a new user to deal with)
- Checking email in the client of choice (whether it is Thunderbird, Evolution, etc.)
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@dafyre said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@scottalanmiller said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@travisdh1 said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@scottalanmiller said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
avoiding lightweight and low resource desktops no matter how cool they are
While I love my LXDE and XFCE, there are reasons I don't recommend them to most people.
Same here. Or Mate.
Just curious as to why not Mate?
Gnome 2 based, no mainstream use case, same overlap as other low resource desktops.
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@travisdh1 said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@dafyre said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@scottalanmiller said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@travisdh1 said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@scottalanmiller said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
avoiding lightweight and low resource desktops no matter how cool they are
While I love my LXDE and XFCE, there are reasons I don't recommend them to most people.
Same here. Or Mate.
Just curious as to why not Mate?
I haven't used Mate myself, but I'd imagine it's along the lines of LXDE and XFCE. They're just very basic, most of your system management is still done via a terminal emulator. They're for those times when UNIX admins want a web browser.
Exactly. Its like a slightly more overhead version of those.
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good list for comparison. Esp for Windows users moving over who are new. Those distros listed are the most complete package generally.
One thing to look at is blu ray playback. I know most people are using network storage options for viewing movies, but going to Redbox and getting a bluray is convenient for new releases.
I havent had much luck getting those to work in Linux. -
Why Fedora over Korora for a user desktop experience?
Korora with Cinnamon is a really nice experience.
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@JaredBusch said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
Why Fedora over Korora for a user desktop experience?
I totally thought about that and here is my logic...
- Korora's focus is Cinnamon, that's covered by Mint (who makes Cinnamon.)
- Korora's Gnome 3 is heavily modified.
- Korora is not the "reference implementation" of Gnome 3
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@scottalanmiller said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
@JaredBusch said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
Why Fedora over Korora for a user desktop experience?
I totally thought about that and here is my logic...
- Korora's focus is Cinnamon, that's covered by Mint (who makes Cinnamon.)
- Korora's Gnome 3 is heavily modified.
- Korora is not the "reference implementation" of Gnome 3
Works. Just wondering..
I don't like Mint because it seems to be a slow update cycle. Has that changed?
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@JaredBusch said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
I don't like Mint because it seems to be a slow update cycle. Has that changed?
No, and I agree, that's a big reason why I don't prefer it, too. But I'm trying to not make it a showcase of "things Scott likes" but more a base survey of the Linux desktop ecosystems that makes for a solid launching pad into other things that people might want to explore.
I will of course mention Korora and Ubuntu, both super important, especially Ubuntu. And others, there are loads of experimental desktops that are interesting, but I can't show everything.
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I've played with Solus and must say that it is very slick.
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still young but this is the reference kde now.
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@matteo-nunziati said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
still young but this is the reference kde now.
Not really. It's a secondary KDE bolt on to Ubuntu bypassing the mainline Kubuntu. openSuse remains the only major distro building with KDE in mind.
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What about Antergos? Based on Arch Linux but user friendly.
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@black3dynamite said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
What about Antergos? Based on Arch Linux but user friendly.
I've never seen it, looking now.
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@black3dynamite said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
What about Antergos? Based on Arch Linux but user friendly.
@black3dynamite said in The Quintessential Linux Desktop Experiences:
What about Antergos? Based on Arch Linux but user friendly.
Looks like a neat idea, but does it provide something important that is missing from the others? It doesn't have a focused desktop experience, it's primarily focused on Cinnamon which is covered from Mint where Cinnamon is developed.
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Seems to me Elementary OS is only one focused on one Desktop.
if Elementary OS comes preinstalled with gdebi and configured as the default package installer like Linux Mint that would help alot.
