GUI Suggested?

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:29:38 -0500, Jorge Biquez <jbiquez at intranet.com.mx> wrote:
> I was wondering if you can tell suggest me based on yoru experience 
> on what path to follow? KDE? any other?

For many years now, I am happily using WindowMaker as my main
desktop. It can be configured easily and does STAY OUT OF YOUR
WAY, means it SUPPORTS you with the actions you intendedly want
to take, so you can do whatever you want instead of messing
with the window manager. It's also very lightweight.

I've also tried tiling window managers, but their magic sadly
didn't open up to me.

Another lightweight, allthough "obsolete" (but still powerful)
GUI is XFCE. When I write XFCE, I mean XFCE version 3. If I
would mean Xfce 4, I would write Xfce. :-)

A highly customizable and "still" quite professional environment
is fvwm2. You can add as much stuff as you like, but you can also
switch off all annoying things.




> I would like to test what you suggest is the best for you and if 
> possible that it is not TOO complicated to setup. The idea is to use 
> it as my desktop plattfor (documents, browser, email, etc)

I still have a 300 MHz P2 with XFCE 3 that does *ALL* you just
mentioned, and it does it fine.

Keep in mind that your choice of window manager (or even full
desktop environment) may depend on which applications you're using.
For example, if you find KDE's applications best, you will
probably want to use them with KDE, allthough you could also use
them with Gnome, or even with WindowMaker (as I sometimes do for
the two KDE programs I occassionally have to use). On the other
hand, if the Gnome set of applications fits your needs better,
go with Gnome.

Internationalisation and language support can also be a thing to
consider. In the past, I was often disappointed with KDE's sloppy
and missing translations; as a German, I tried the german variant,
but found that it is not very well supported - that was in KDE 3,
maybe KDE 4 is better. Gnome in fact *had* a much better german
language support. Finally, I switched all back to english (except
OpenOffice) because the NATIVE language of the system and the
applications is better than anything else.



Finally, choosing a GUI may really be a "trial & error" path.
And if your need change, your choice may change, too.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...