Replacing windows XP at home.

[Garrett Cooper]

jan gestre wrote:
> On 7/26/06, Joshua Lewis <joshua.lewis at 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