There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for most
of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and gray
fonts.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-product-philosophy.html
There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for
most of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and
gray fonts.
None of which has to do with Linux. Linux is an OS. Issues like ?flat
design and gray fonts? are to do with the GUI layer, not the OS.
Unlike its proprietary competitors, in Linux the GUI is a separate, replaceable, modular layer, which is not inextricably bound into the
OS.
There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for most
of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and gray
fonts.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-product-philosophy.html
I does bother me that there isn't more push to make it THE desktop OS.
Maybe I'm ostrich and have my head in the sand. <grin>
On 2/28/26 6:33 AM, yossarian wrote:
There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for mostI don't really see his rant.ÿ Of course I'm in a big way a user not a
of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and gray
fonts.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-product-philosophy.html
geek.
If the machine runs, it's good.ÿÿ Oh I can get in the background and fix/adjust a few things but I couldn't tell you if I had Wayland or
X11 (actually I could in LM).
I also have a KDE OS and I don't know, easily, if it's KDE 5 or 6,
Wayland or X11, systemd or other.ÿ To me, it works.ÿ I'd have to run
inxi or neofetch to get a hint.
I can't do anything about these issues so what's it to me?ÿÿ I use an
OS and rate it by how it works, not what's behind the screen.
I does bother me that there isn't more push to make it THE desktop OS.
Maybe I'm ostrich and have my head in the sand. <grin>
So much for MY rant. LOL
Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
None of which has to do with Linux. Linux is an OS. Issues like
?flat design and gray fonts? are to do with the GUI layer, not the
OS.
Unlike its proprietary competitors, in Linux the GUI is a separate,
replaceable, modular layer, which is not inextricably bound into
the OS.
Yabbut; from a 'conventional' user's perspective, the GUI is the
*face of* the OS, so the 'face' matters, just like a lot of people
feel/act about the face of a person.
When a particular user around here whines about linux
'fragmentation', I would remind him that if he wants to get 'behind'
one specific distro dev in which there is some kind of over-arching
'master', whether that be RedHat and its 'partiality' to its Gnome
(now somewhat more divided to include KDE) or some other like LM and
its fondness for Ub/Deb and mostly Cinnamon, he wouldn't have to
worry so much about all of the 'fragmentation' going on across the
entire linux landscape.
On 2/28/26 6:33 AM, yossarian wrote:
There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for mostI don't really see his rant. Of course I'm in a big way a user not a
of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and gray
fonts.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-product-philosophy.html
geek.
If the machine runs, it's good. Oh I can get in the background and fix/adjust a few things but I couldn't tell you if I had Wayland or X11 (actually I could in LM).
I also have a KDE OS and I don't know, easily, if it's KDE 5 or 6,
Wayland or X11, systemd or other. To me, it works. I'd have to run
inxi or neofetch to get a hint.
On Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:34:50 -0500, Alan K. wrote:
On 2/28/26 6:33 AM, yossarian wrote:
There is for me a very good rant about Linux. I agree with him for mostI don't really see his rant. Of course I'm in a big way a user not a
of things. He didn't even mention my favorite flat design and gray
fonts.
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-product-philosophy.html
geek.
If the machine runs, it's good. Oh I can get in the background and
fix/adjust a few things but I couldn't tell you if I had Wayland or X11
(actually I could in LM).
I also have a KDE OS and I don't know, easily, if it's KDE 5 or 6,
Wayland or X11, systemd or other. To me, it works. I'd have to run
inxi or neofetch to get a hint.
Neither inxi nor neofetch tell you. I don't even know what Wayland or X11 are, or how they relate to XFCE or XFWM4 or any of the other alphabet
soups. I expect I could learn, but I don't know what good it would do me.
I read the Wayland entry in Wikipedia and I couldn't make head or tail of
it.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
The developers appear to be
more interested in grand long-term projects to replace things that already
do work.
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly
and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
The developers appear to be more interested in grand long-term projectsthe only thing that annoys me is the super small window controls-
to replace things that already do work.
minimize, expand, close. I can't think of any good reason for making
them that small.
Mike Easter wrote:
Unlike its proprietary competitors, in Linux the GUI is a separate,
replaceable, modular layer, which is not inextricably bound into
the OS.
Yabbut; from a 'conventional' user's perspective, the GUI is the
*face of* the OS, so the 'face' matters, just like a lot of people
feel/act about the face of a person.
That is one of the habits of thinking that those new to Linux have to
unlearn when coming from the proprietary competition.
They have to realize that the distro they are installing has *no*
distinctive face: they can make it look how they like.
Remember, the Linux world invented ?distro-hopping?, which is
something you can only practise in a non-fragmented world.
On Sat, 28 Feb 2026 10:23:34 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:
Time will tell how Wayland problems will eventually work out; it is NOT
like the Hindenburg disaster, not is systemd.
Perhaps I'm lucky but I'm running Wayland on the Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch boxes. Even the Raspberry Pi with the Debian Trixie derived Os is Wayland. Zero problems.
The only x11 is the Mint laptop and that's because Cinnamon doesn't play nice with Wayland. I logged into the experimental Cinnamon/Wayland session and it didn't stay up long.
Of the whole here, I don't have a SysV box; all are systemd. Again, no problems.
Alan K. wrote:
If the machine runs, it's good. Oh I can get in the background and
fix/adjust a few things but I couldn't tell you if I had Wayland or X11
(actually I could in LM).
I also have a KDE OS and I don't know, easily, if it's KDE 5 or 6,
Wayland or X11, systemd or other. To me, it works. I'd have to run
inxi or neofetch to get a hint.
Neither inxi nor neofetch tell you.
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly
and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The developers appear to be more interested in grand long-term projectsthe only thing that annoys me is the super small window controls-
to replace things that already do work.
minimize, expand, close. I can't think of any good reason for making
them that small.
A presumably related one is that none of the window themes provide thick enough borders that you can easily grab to resize the window.
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The developers appear to be more interested in grand long-termthe only thing that annoys me is the super small window controls-
projects to replace things that already do work.
minimize, expand, close. I can't think of any good reason for making
them that small.
A presumably related one is that none of the window themes provide
thick enough borders that you can easily grab to resize the window.
At Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack
<jack@handsome.com> wrote:
I had that trouble before, but switched to one of the HiDPI themes.
A presumably related one is that none of the window themes provide
thick enough borders that you can easily grab to resize the window.
On Sun, 3/1/2026 10:01 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:[snip]
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly
and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
When things like this happen, the very first question I ask, is what generation of RAM does the machine have ?
Is it DDR2 for example, running faster than DDR2-533 ?
DDR2 can be very stable... if you run it slow enough.
DDR3/4/5 can be a bit better.
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly
and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Developers tend to need all the help they can get.
Mike Easter wrote:
Neofetch is all about its 'appearance' so its help just tells you
more ways to display it. Well, a little more than that, but not
like inxi.
The neofetch github was archived 2 years ago and it hadn't been
touched for several years prior to that. Fastfetch is the
replacement and on my Cinnamon laptop shows 'Muffin (X11)' for the
WM.
fastfetch --gen-config-full will create a JSON file in .config/
fastfetch if you want to tweak it. There is a .config/neofetch
configuration file but it doesn't have many options.
Fastfetch and inxi are both command-line utilities used for
displaying system information on Linux, but they serve different
primary purposes:
Fastfetch is a modern, ultra-fast alternative to Neofetch designed
for visual, stylized output (often used in desktop screenshots),
while inxi is a comprehensive, deep-dive diagnostic tool designed
for system troubleshooting and hardware analysis.
Well, I have no experience w/ fastfetch, but I LUV inxi. So I asked
gglAIov: 'compare fastfetch and inxi'
Fastfetch and inxi are both command-line utilities used for
displaying system information on Linux, but they serve different
primary purposes:
Fastfetch is a modern, ultra-fast alternative to Neofetch designed
for visual, stylized output (often used in desktop screenshots),
while inxi is a comprehensive, deep-dive diagnostic tool designed
for system troubleshooting and hardware analysis.
I'm not interested in neo- or fast-'s 'visual stylized output'. I want inxi's comprehensive deep-dive or a choice of an 'overview' or a verbose/detailed of only one section of its many parameters.
Here is the documentation. It is generated from the JSON schema, but you might not find it very user-friendly.
Here is the documentation. It is generated from the JSON schema, but
you might not find it very user-friendly.
OTOH, there's a very large man, 588 pp which tells me fast- has more
power than I realized, in terms of isolating modules.
Horse for courses.
$ inxi -w
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
Developers tend to need all the help they can get.
Thousands of people much better informed than I am must have
reported this bug.
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 18:09:19 -0500, Paul wrote:
On Sun, 3/1/2026 10:01 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:[snip]
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly >>>>> and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
When things like this happen, the very first question I ask, is what
generation of RAM does the machine have ?
Is it DDR2 for example, running faster than DDR2-533 ?
DDR2 can be very stable... if you run it slow enough.
DDR3/4/5 can be a bit better.
I have no idea. Is it really a good idea to supply a file manager - one of the most vital tools of any OS - that crashes if you're using a specific type of RAM? None of my other applications do that.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
Unlike its proprietary competitors, in Linux the GUI is a
separate, replaceable, modular layer, which is not inextricably
bound into the OS.
Yabbut; from a 'conventional' user's perspective, the GUI is the
*face of* the OS, so the 'face' matters, just like a lot of people
feel/act about the face of a person.
That is one of the habits of thinking that those new to Linux have
to unlearn when coming from the proprietary competition.
They have to realize that the distro they are installing has *no*
distinctive face: they can make it look how they like.
I'm not one who thinks that a linux should 'look like' Win to a past
(or current) Win user who is evaluating a distro.
But I do feel that the 'feel' of using the interface should not be 'completely foreign'.
People can adapt to change if you don't expect /too much/ from them
all at one time.
You have the choice of how it looks. Linux is all about choice.
"Every Linux Desktop Environment Explained in 1 minute"
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that somewhat things?
minor things - matters of practical importance - do not work properly >>>>> and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
Developers tend to need all the help they can get.Thousands of people much better informed than I am must have reported this bug.
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some >>>>>> minor things - matters of practical importance - do not workwhat things?
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
why not use some other file manager?
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the
default manager
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some >>>>>> minor things - matters of practical importance - do not workwhat things?
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
why not use some other file manager? I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the default manager
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:I could, but that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar - the file manager supplied with the OS - regularly crashes.
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:why not use some other file manager?
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some >>>>>>> minor things - matters of practical importance - do not workwhat things?
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not theWhat is?
default manager
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you pick
up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it *copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable for me.
And this Thunar thing is only one of many small but
annoying problems that don't look as they will ever get fixed. I can live with most of them - and Lord knows LM is still far preferable to Windows - but they are still problems.
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the default managerWhat is?
Nemo
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
Not on my PC, except if I drag the file to the home folder icon.
Mike Easter wrote:
I'm not one who thinks that a linux should 'look like' Win to a past
(or current) Win user who is evaluating a distro.
But we weren?t talking about you, were we? We were talking about some,
in your terms, ?conventional? user -- whatever that might be.
But I do feel that the 'feel' of using the interface should not be
'completely foreign'.
You have that choice. It can look however you like.
People can adapt to change if you don't expect /too much/ from them
all at one time.
You have the choice of how it looks. Linux is all about choice.
Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is
that some minor things - matters of practical importance
- do not work properly and there seems no prospect that
they will get fixed.
what things?
Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a
report?
No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar
regularly crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of
affairs.
why not use some other file manager?
I could, but that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar - the file
manager supplied with the OS - regularly crashes.
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the default manager
What is?
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
In Thunar, dragging and dropping files between folders on the same
partition moves them by default. If dragging across different
partitions, it copies them.
[SOLVED] Nemo - Mouse drag to Move files instead of Copy
This issue might be considered more 'complex' in this LM forum discussion:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980
[SOLVED] Nemo - Mouse drag to Move files instead of Copy
Personally I don't drag and drop,
Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
You have the choice of how it looks. Linux is all about choice.
Ha. I'm reminded of the bug/feature saying;
"That's not a bug, that's a feature."
On the one hand, I agree that the linux freedom is wonderful and
powerful.
On the other hand, when traveling thru' the woods, people look for a
'path' - a recognizable trail that they can follow.
If freedom of choice is a bug, how do you fix it?
Limiting of choice is like Communism, isn?t it: it only works if you
can force everybody in the world to agree to it.
My understanding is that Munich is finally *again* using an opensource Office in the form of LibreOffice, which is a good route to get back to
some linux OS; I recommend that they go w/ an existing well admin/ed existing distro instead of trying to create their own.
And this Thunar thing is only one of many small but annoying
problems that don't look as they will ever get fixed.
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some >>>>>>> minor things - matters of practical importance - do not workwhat things?
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
why not use some other file manager?
I could, but that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar - the file manager supplied with the OS - regularly crashes.
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the
default manager
What is?
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you pick
up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it *copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable for me.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 23:10:21 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:Hmm. What version? Mine is 6.0.2.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:Nemo
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the default managerWhat is?
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when youNot on my PC, except if I drag the file to the home folder icon.
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
Of course it could be something to do with the interaction between Nemo
and XFCE rather than Nemo itself.
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 23:10:21 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:Hmm. What version? Mine is 6.0.2.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:Nemo
I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the default managerWhat is?
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when youNot on my PC, except if I drag the file to the home folder icon.
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
nemo --version
nemo 6.6.3
Of course it could be something to do with the interaction between Nemo
and XFCE rather than Nemo itself.
that could be. I have Cinnamon. I tried XFCE on a PC, and had problems
with it
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 17:58:07 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 21:22:49 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 1 Mar 2026 15:01:00 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:No, but if I did that wouldn't change the fact that Thunar regularly
On Mon, 2 Mar 2026 00:20:44 +1100, Axel wrote:Have you tried getting more info on the bug and sending in a report?
Handsome Jack wrote:Just as one example, that Thunar regularly crashes.
The main limitation of Linux (specifically LM) for me is that some >>>>>>> minor things - matters of practical importance - do not workwhat things?
properly and there seems no prospect that they will get fixed.
crashes, and that that is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
why not use some other file manager? I use LM22.3 and Thunar is not the
default manager
I should have added: And this Thunar thing is only one of many small but annoying problems that don't look as they will ever get fixed. I can live with most of them - and Lord knows LM is still far preferable to Windows - but they are still problems.
My understanding is that Munich is finally *again* using an opensource Office in the form of LibreOffice, which is a good route to get back toTil the next elections. Leaving Linux was a pure political decision,
some linux OS
At this point, we don't know much about your Thunar problem.
"Regularly crashes" are the best kind of crashes, because you are
claiming the crashes are reproducible on demand. You can then learn how
to collect traces, and provide as much useful info as possible about the problem.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 07:57:10 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
Nemo has been around for a long time. You really don?t think they don?t
have options for controlling that?
Did you try modifier keys along with mouse operation ?
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
Usually on computers, there is an implicit option (what the mouse does
in a situation without help), but also the modifier keys can cause a
balloon near the mouse pointer to indicate an alternative operation the
user might like instead.
As an example:
alt is question mark (leads to move/copy/link sub-menu),
ctrl is + which is (copy),
default action is hand (move)
shift key (does not modify)
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 22:39:59 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 07:57:10 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when
you pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another
folder, it *copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to
make it unusable for me.
Nemo has been around for a long time. You really don?t think they
don?t have options for controlling that?
What "they" have isn't very relevant to me unless I have it too.
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking about
with keys.
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 21:30:05 -0500, Paul wrote:
"Regularly crashes" are the best kind of crashes, because you are
claiming the crashes are reproducible on demand. You can then learn
how to collect traces, and provide as much useful info as possible
about the problem.
In demotic English, "regularly" also means "often" and that's the
meaning I had in mind.
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:48:41 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 22:39:59 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 07:57:10 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you
pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable
for me.
Nemo has been around for a long time. You really don?t think they
don?t have options for controlling that?
What "they" have isn't very relevant to me unless I have it too.
As others have pointed out, it was there, you just couldn?t be bothered looking for it.
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking about
with keys.
It already does that
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:42:31 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:48:41 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 22:39:59 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 07:57:10 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you >>>>> pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it
*copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable >>>>> for me.
Nemo has been around for a long time. You really don?t think they
don?t have options for controlling that?
What "they" have isn't very relevant to me unless I have it too.
As others have pointed out, it was there, you just couldn?t be bothered
looking for it.
Where?
On Wed, 3/4/2026 4:08 PM, Handsome Jack wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:42:31 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:Using computers requires memorizing "patterns" and applying/testing
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:48:41 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:Where?
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 22:39:59 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:As others have pointed out, it was there, you just couldn?t be bothered
On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 07:57:10 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:What "they" have isn't very relevant to me unless I have it too.
I've tried Nemo, and it is good, but it has one fatal flaw: when you >>>>>> pick up a file from the desktop and drop it into another folder, it >>>>>> *copies* it instead of moving it. That is enough to make it unusable >>>>>> for me.Nemo has been around for a long time. You really don?t think they
don?t have options for controlling that?
looking for it.
patterns as you move from place to place.
The pattern I see, is that File Managers handle the Copy/Move choice situation, by using modifier keys. Candidates are shift, ctrl, alt,
depress the key (without moving towards the destination) and see
if the mouse cursor changes shape. The animal-paw-print is supposed
to be a "hand" and that is the Move mouse-cursor. The Plus Sign
is the Copy mouse-cursor. The Question Mark mouse-cursor implies
a drop down menu is available (requires some mouse button for
the menu to then appear).
While you are parked in space testing these things, if you want
to do none of these, try the <esc> Escape key as that will cause
the Source file icon to float back to its normal location and
this indicates the attempt is nullified.
FileManager#1 FileManager#2 FileManager#3
shift \
ctrl \__ Response matrix, varies
alt / from one FM to another but
esc / at least one key should work
for Move/Copy differentiation.
Paul
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:46:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:I read that page months ago and it doesn't do what you say. If anything,
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking aboutIt already does that
with keys.
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
it confirms the correctness of my gripe, on XFCE anyway. It may be that
Nemo works correctly on Cinnamon, but that doesn't help me.
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:46:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:I read that page months ago and it doesn't do what you say. If
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking aboutIt already does that
with keys.
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
anything,
it confirms the correctness of my gripe, on XFCE anyway. It may be that
Nemo works correctly on Cinnamon, but that doesn't help me.
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 16:11:18 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:It came with the LM distro and seems generally OK. Do you reckon Cinnamon
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:46:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:I read that page months ago and it doesn't do what you say. If
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking aboutIt already does that
with keys.
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
anything,
it confirms the correctness of my gripe, on XFCE anyway. It may be that
Nemo works correctly on Cinnamon, but that doesn't help me.
is better? I've never installed it.
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
The pattern I see, is that File Managers handle the Copy/Move choice situation, by using modifier keys. Candidates are shift, ctrl, alt,
depress the key (without moving towards the destination) and see if the
mouse cursor changes shape. The animal-paw-print is supposed to be a
"hand" and that is the Move mouse-cursor. The Plus Sign is the Copy mouse-cursor. The Question Mark mouse-cursor implies a drop down menu is available (requires some mouse button for the menu to then appear).
why couldn't they make it an option in the preferences
list?
Handsome Jack wrote:
why couldn't they make it an option in the preferences list?
I agree w/ that concept.
As a feature, drag-and-drop support is not found in all software,
though it is sometimes a fast and easy-to-learn technique. However,
it is not always clear to users that an item can be dragged and
dropped, or what command is performed by the drag and drop, which
can decrease usability.
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 08:06:15 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
My Linux Mint netbook was installed from the Cinnamon iso but I added i3
and spend most of my time in an i3 session. For that matter I have sway on the two boxes that use Wayland.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old
KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
I have Q4OS/Trinity on an old eeePC. It works on a very minimal netbook.
It isn't a daily driver but it is viable. The original Xandros is long
gone. It worked well but didn't support WPA2.
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 16:11:18 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:46:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:I read that page months ago and it doesn't do what you say. If
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking aboutIt already does that
with keys.
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
anything,
it confirms the correctness of my gripe, on XFCE anyway. It may be that
Nemo works correctly on Cinnamon, but that doesn't help me.
It came with the LM distro and seems generally OK. Do you reckon Cinnamon
is better? I've never installed it.
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 11:15:28 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 16:11:18 +1100, Axel wrote:
Handsome Jack wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 20:46:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 15:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Handsome Jack wrote:I read that page months ago and it doesn't do what you say. If
Yes I know all that, but I want to move stuff without mucking about >>>>>> with keys.It already does that
<https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=390980>.
anything,
it confirms the correctness of my gripe, on XFCE anyway. It may be
that Nemo works correctly on Cinnamon, but that doesn't help me.
It came with the LM distro and seems generally OK. Do you reckon
Cinnamon is better? I've never installed it.
Cinnamon is a little more polished in a Windows-like way. There is little advantage if you're used to Xfce. DEs are mostly about aesthetics.
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE
and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old
KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
On Thu, 3/5/2026 11:06 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
And we only emphasize this notion of "light weight" as
a response to the capabilities of the computer.
With Grahams 4400+ for example, a dual core Athlon64 at 2.2GHz or so,
if the graphics acceleration worked, we might not have
to pamper the thing.
Where we get in trouble, is if the graphics driver reverts
to little better than a frame buffer (XY array of pixels,
no acceleration). The processor is then tasked with doing
all the graphics operations itself. This leaves little horsepower
for running Firefox internals.
Whereas, when your processor has a lot of cores, then it is OK
for some cores to do the graphics. My daily driver has 8 cores,
so it's not all that powerful, but if the worst behavior
I've seen is 4 cores railed while doing graphics, I have 4 cores
left for running Firefox :-) That's where the extra cores come
in handy. Relatively speaking, it does not matter whether
I run XFCE or I run Cinnamon then.
My laptop with the one core, where the one core is equal
to half of Grahams processor, the situation for it is
going to require a more economical distro (Puppy maybe
or the TinyCore I tested).
Paul
On 2026-03-05, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 3/5/2026 11:06 AM, Mike Easter wrote:I've got Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1 running on a Dell Latitude 3180, which was basically a "schoolroom laptop." It has a dual core Intel Celeron N3350 CPU, 8 GBs of RAM, Intel 500 GPU (HD Graphics, it says) and 128 GBs. I installed
Axel wrote:And we only emphasize this notion of "light weight" as
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
a response to the capabilities of the computer.
With Grahams 4400+ for example, a dual core Athlon64 at 2.2GHz or so,
if the graphics acceleration worked, we might not have
to pamper the thing.
Where we get in trouble, is if the graphics driver reverts
to little better than a frame buffer (XY array of pixels,
no acceleration). The processor is then tasked with doing
all the graphics operations itself. This leaves little horsepower
for running Firefox internals.
Whereas, when your processor has a lot of cores, then it is OK
for some cores to do the graphics. My daily driver has 8 cores,
so it's not all that powerful, but if the worst behavior
I've seen is 4 cores railed while doing graphics, I have 4 cores
left for running Firefox :-) That's where the extra cores come
in handy. Relatively speaking, it does not matter whether
I run XFCE or I run Cinnamon then.
My laptop with the one core, where the one core is equal
to half of Grahams processor, the situation for it is
going to require a more economical distro (Puppy maybe
or the TinyCore I tested).
Paul
a new battery and get a maximum of about 14 hours of battery life. It works well on the Internet, can stream moves and YouTube and its rugged and cheap enough that you don't mind carrying it around with you. I'm impressed with it. And no fan. It hardly ever runs over 38øC. I like low heat and low power without a fan.
At any rate, I think Xfce vs Cinnamon (because is lighter) isn't necessarily that strong of an argument. Cinnamon seems light enough (maybe it works better if you have 8 GBs of RAM).
On 2026-03-05, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 3/5/2026 11:06 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
And we only emphasize this notion of "light weight" as
a response to the capabilities of the computer.
With Grahams 4400+ for example, a dual core Athlon64 at 2.2GHz or so,
if the graphics acceleration worked, we might not have
to pamper the thing.
Where we get in trouble, is if the graphics driver reverts
to little better than a frame buffer (XY array of pixels,
no acceleration). The processor is then tasked with doing
all the graphics operations itself. This leaves little horsepower
for running Firefox internals.
Whereas, when your processor has a lot of cores, then it is OK
for some cores to do the graphics. My daily driver has 8 cores,
so it's not all that powerful, but if the worst behavior
I've seen is 4 cores railed while doing graphics, I have 4 cores
left for running Firefox :-) That's where the extra cores come
in handy. Relatively speaking, it does not matter whether
I run XFCE or I run Cinnamon then.
My laptop with the one core, where the one core is equal
to half of Grahams processor, the situation for it is
going to require a more economical distro (Puppy maybe
or the TinyCore I tested).
Paul
I've got Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1 running on a Dell Latitude 3180, which was basically a "schoolroom laptop." It has a dual core Intel Celeron N3350 CPU, 8 GBs of RAM, Intel 500 GPU (HD Graphics, it says) and 128 GBs. I installed a new battery and get a maximum of about 14 hours of battery life. It works well on the Internet, can stream moves and YouTube and its rugged and cheap enough that you don't mind carrying it around with you. I'm impressed with it. And no fan. It hardly ever runs over 38øC. I like low heat and low power without a fan.
At any rate, I think Xfce vs Cinnamon (because is lighter) isn't necessarily that strong of an argument. Cinnamon seems light enough (maybe it works better if you have 8 GBs of RAM).
On 5 Mar 2026 20:01:40 GMT
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2026 08:06:15 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling'
distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
My Linux Mint netbook was installed from the Cinnamon iso but I added i3
and spend most of my time in an i3 session. For that matter I have sway on >> the two boxes that use Wayland.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old
KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
I have Q4OS/Trinity on an old eeePC. It works on a very minimal netbook.
It isn't a daily driver but it is viable. The original Xandros is long
gone. It worked well but didn't support WPA2.
Must be a later eeePC than mine:
requirement from q4os website:
Trinity desktop - 500MHz CPU / 512MB RAM / 6GB disk
OK on the 1st 2, but IIRC my eeepc only has a 2G (maybe 4?) SSD
"harddrive"
so tinycore it is.
Must be a later eeePC than mine:
requirement from q4os website:
Trinity desktop - 500MHz CPU / 512MB RAM / 6GB disk
OK on the 1st 2, but IIRC my eeepc only has a 2G (maybe 4?) SSD
"harddrive"
so tinycore it is.
You could run q4os as a live w/ persistence via Ventoy.
I haven't done that w/ q4os, but it sounds like an interesting
experiment for today.
¯ Q4OS Support
¯ q4os 5 Aquarius persistent
It is indeed possible to have persistence. And Ventoy will provide that and a lot more!
There is a bit of a learning curve involved at first. But it's straight forward enough.
Just take it a step at a time and be patient as you work through the process.
https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=28912#p28912
You can install Ventoy to USB drive, Removable HD, SD Card, SATA HDD, SSD, NVMe ...
On Fri, 3/6/2026 6:07 AM, RonB wrote:
On 2026-03-05, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 3/5/2026 11:06 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling' distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight. Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
And we only emphasize this notion of "light weight" as
a response to the capabilities of the computer.
With Grahams 4400+ for example, a dual core Athlon64 at 2.2GHz or so,
if the graphics acceleration worked, we might not have
to pamper the thing.
Where we get in trouble, is if the graphics driver reverts
to little better than a frame buffer (XY array of pixels,
no acceleration). The processor is then tasked with doing
all the graphics operations itself. This leaves little horsepower
for running Firefox internals.
Whereas, when your processor has a lot of cores, then it is OK
for some cores to do the graphics. My daily driver has 8 cores,
so it's not all that powerful, but if the worst behavior
I've seen is 4 cores railed while doing graphics, I have 4 cores
left for running Firefox :-) That's where the extra cores come
in handy. Relatively speaking, it does not matter whether
I run XFCE or I run Cinnamon then.
My laptop with the one core, where the one core is equal
to half of Grahams processor, the situation for it is
going to require a more economical distro (Puppy maybe
or the TinyCore I tested).
Paul
I've got Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1 running on a Dell Latitude 3180, which was
basically a "schoolroom laptop." It has a dual core Intel Celeron N3350 CPU,
8 GBs of RAM, Intel 500 GPU (HD Graphics, it says) and 128 GBs. I installed >> a new battery and get a maximum of about 14 hours of battery life. It works >> well on the Internet, can stream moves and YouTube and its rugged and cheap >> enough that you don't mind carrying it around with you. I'm impressed with >> it. And no fan. It hardly ever runs over 38øC. I like low heat and low power
without a fan.
At any rate, I think Xfce vs Cinnamon (because is lighter) isn't necessarily
that strong of an argument. Cinnamon seems light enough (maybe it works
better if you have 8 GBs of RAM).
The ingredient in your soup is the Intel 500 GPU.
It is when old computers don't have a driver for the
GPU and the graphics are done with the CPU cores, that
the machine is sensitive to the details of graphics
operation types. That's when XFCE versus Cinnamon matters.
At one time, the Intel integrated GPUs did not have
any operation types that were worth using for acceleration.
There was an iGPU "certified for Vista" that really
wasn't Vista quality goods. But Intel eventually learned
how to do graphics with textures and shader acceleration.
I even have an ATI discrete video card, that is so weak, it
rates as "neutral" on acceleration. Whether you use that
video card or not, does not seem to matter. It has so much
CPU overhead, any acceleration it has is practically useless.
I replaced that with another "weak" card, a GT1030,
and you can "feel" a bit of acceleration from that, and
that would be as worthwhile as your Intel 500.
But if you go back far enough on Intel, there is only
IDCT, and OSes "stopped using that" long ago. Even though
when you don't have any features, using that is worthwhile.
Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform. That, and a scaler,
were at one time features. The provision of a scaler for
scaling pixmaps, that saved "a third of a Pentium 4" worth
of compute, and that used to help for playing videos. At
one time, before the video SIP was put in video cards,
playing a video would rail some core types. And then code
quality really mattered, and videos could range from
10% of the CPU (scaler present) to over 100% (dropped frames).
Paul
Mike Easter wrote:
https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=28912#p28912
Ventoy was 'designed' for USB and much of the docs and this forum
example /say/ USB; but everything USB also applies to SSD for Ventoy.
You can install Ventoy to USB drive, Removable HD, SD Card, SATA HDD, SSD, NVMe ...
The ventoy part is tiny.
Mike Easter
Ventoy was 'designed' for USB and much of the docs and this forum
example /say/ USB; but everything USB also applies to SSD for Ventoy.
You can install Ventoy to USB drive, Removable HD, SD Card, SATA HDD, SSD, NVMe ...
The ventoy part is tiny.
What's wrong with grub?
What's wrong with grub?
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:52:57 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
On 2026-03-05, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:
Axel wrote:
Why do you use XFCE in preference to Cinnamon?
I use Cinnamon as my everyday driver, but I also like for my 'dabbling'
distro/s to be lighter weight, all the way down to WMs instead of DEs.
XFCE is on the lighter side; such as Gnome is certainly a heavyweight.
Historically KDE has been 'all over the map' sometimes as low as XFCE
and sometimes as high as they come.
I'm happy that T Pearson has continued to keep Trinity DE fork of old
KDE alive along w/ his fork of old Qt for a nice lightweight DE.
And Mate is somewhere between Xfce and Cinnamon. Basically Gnome 2-like.
While GNOME2 is better than GNOME3 I never liked it that much. I did
install the MATE iso but later went with Cinnamon. I didn't see much difference in RAM usage.
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to
install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One
command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug log).
I tried the Wayland version once. It didn't last long. I never tried the software rendering version.
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to
install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One
command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug
log).
I don't mind trying different DEs but I can't
afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more than
necessary anyway.
On 6 Mar 2026 20:01:52 GMT, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to
install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One
command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug
log).
On one of the discussion group web pages I read apropos this topic,
somebody posted something like "having multiple alternative desktop environments on one machine is a recipe for crashes that are very
difficult to diagnose ... only half-witted newbies do it."
Is there any truth in that or is just the sort of thing that snotty Linux nerds sneer to each other? I don't mind trying different DEs but I can't afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more than
necessary anyway.
As a searcher, I am familiar with the boundless terrain, even if I
cannot guide you through it.
GNOME isn't my favorite but I've learned
to live with Ubuntu's version.
Gnome is the DE I most love to hate.
On Sat, 7 Mar 2026 11:52:03 -0500, Paul wrote:
As a searcher, I am familiar with the boundless terrain, even if I
cannot guide you through it.
That sure sounds like (problematic) fragmentation to me.
I realize that by not being 'into' such UI tweaking, I'm missing
some strong linux features over that of other OSes. One of these
days I may do more of that.
On Sat, 3/7/2026 5:37 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:
On one of the discussion group web pages I read apropos this topic,Switch on your pattern-matcher and see what you think <snicker> :-) And
somebody posted something like "having multiple alternative desktop
environments on one machine is a recipe for crashes that are very
difficult to diagnose ... only half-witted newbies do it."
Is there any truth in that or is just the sort of thing that snotty
Linux nerds sneer to each other? I don't mind trying different DEs but
I can't afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more
than necessary anyway.
I'm not saying this because I know the answer. As a searcher,
I am familiar with the boundless terrain, even if I cannot guide you
through it.
https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm
Nerds sneer, because they're sick of having to memorize shit like this,
and regurgitate on demand.
This is the land of the full matrix, the sparse matrix,
the partitioned matrix. In theory, if every piece of software you
touched, followed "standards", it would be a full matrix and we would
laugh at how silly your question was. Well,
we're not laughing particularly.
On 6 Mar 2026 20:01:52 GMT, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to
install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One
command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug
log).
On one of the discussion group web pages I read apropos this topic,
somebody posted something like "having multiple alternative desktop environments on one machine is a recipe for crashes that are very
difficult to diagnose ... only half-witted newbies do it."
Is there any truth in that or is just the sort of thing that snotty Linux nerds sneer to each other? I don't mind trying different DEs but I can't afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more than
necessary anyway.
On Sat, 7 Mar 2026 12:51:50 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:
On Sat, 7 Mar 2026 11:52:03 -0500, Paul wrote:
As a searcher, I am familiar with the boundless terrain, even if I
cannot guide you through it.
That sure sounds like (problematic) fragmentation to me.
?Fragmentation? implies a bunch of broken shards with some kind of
lack of unity among them.
That would describe the proprietary market, fragmented between
Microsoft and Apple. It would describe the BSD world, fragmented
between roughly similar but subtly incompatible variants that cannot
even share filesystems, let alone kernels.
It does not describe the Linux world. Remember, the Linux world
invented ?distro-hopping?, which is something you can only practise in
a non-fragmented world.
Why do none of the Linux DEs provide an option for "When closing an application window, remember its position and reopen it in the same
position next time?" Surely there must be millions of people like me who would prefer that to any other option?
On 2026-03-07, Handsome Jack <jack@handsome.com> wrote:
On 6 Mar 2026 20:01:52 GMT, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to >>>> install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One
command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug
log).
On one of the discussion group web pages I read apropos this topic,
somebody posted something like "having multiple alternative desktop
environments on one machine is a recipe for crashes that are very
difficult to diagnose ... only half-witted newbies do it."
Is there any truth in that or is just the sort of thing that snotty Linux >> nerds sneer to each other? I don't mind trying different DEs but I can't
afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more than
necessary anyway.
I've had all three standard Linux Mint desktops on this machine since Linux Mint 19. I've done two major upgrades since then and it retained working versions of all three desktops without any lock up issues. So, at least on Linux Mint (on on three computers ? the SSD has been moved to three different computers), it doesn't seem to be an issue. I'll run Mintupgrade again when I (eventually) move to Linux Mint 22 on this machine (that's another thing they tell "not to do").
The SSD is currently in a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Tiny (7"x7"x1.5")desktop with an i7-7700T CPU and 16 GBs of RAM. Previously it was in a Dell Optiplex 3020 Mini, then an Optiplex 9020 Mini, (both with 16 GBs of RAM and i5-4590T CPUs) and, for about four months when I was in Arkansas, in my Latitude E7450 laptop with an i5-5300U Dual Core CPU (no issues on the laptop either).
Linux Mint does a good job of keeping their three desktops as similar as possible. So maybe the fact I use Linux Mint is why it works to have more than one desktop installed.
Mike Easter wrote:
I realize that by not being 'into' such UI tweaking, I'm missing
some strong linux features over that of other OSes. One of these
days I may do more of that.
Sounds like you are pursuing a breadth-first search over the Linux DE landscape, rather than depth-first.
Liunx "fragmentation" (in my view) is a good thing. No one entity can monopolize Linux. Choice is good.
The limit on DEs, is also a practical matter, of how many you have
staff to maintain the stuff.
This thread started w/ remarks about a Dedo/Igor review. He is
frequently unhappy w/ what he finds when he wants to tweak some UI to
his liking and doesn't like how the tweaking goes.
Mike Easter wrote:
This thread started w/ remarks about a Dedo/Igor review. He is
frequently unhappy w/ what he finds when he wants to tweak some UI
to his liking and doesn't like how the tweaking goes.
I think this is an unfair criticism of Dedo/Igor. Most complaints
are not UI in his critics. I don't recall any "when he wants to
tweak some UI to his liking and doesn't like how the tweaking
goes.". Specially in this rant.
I did spend some time tweaking things, because I know MX Linux willhttps://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx-25-xfce.html
save the stuff for me. In this regard, Xfce feels archaic. And it's
not about the look. It's the fact you need to go through probably
5-10 different tools and utilities to tweak everything. The system
tray icons don't scale up identically. There's always some mismatch, regardless of the height. The clock is too tiny, the logout button
too big. You have a dock, but it seems as if you can't rearrange the
icons yonder, and you can pin icons to the panel as you normally
would, but they will all be jammed in the right corner, so there's
quite a bit of click-n-move to get things sorted. And then, you will
have duplicates, because the panel icons and the dock icons aren't
the same.
His Dec review of MX was more typical of his tweakiness:
On Sun, 3/8/2026 6:24 AM, RonB wrote:
On 2026-03-07, Handsome Jack <jack@handsome.com> wrote:
On 6 Mar 2026 20:01:52 GMT, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 10:48:20 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I've got Xfce, Mate and Cinnamon installed on this computer. But I
almost always use Cinnamon (unless I'm testing something). It's easy to >>>>> install Cinnamon and then choose which you want to use at login. One >>>>> command...
sudo apt install mint-meta-cinnamon
sudo apt install i3
I get 5 choices at login. Cinnamon (Default), Cinnamon (Software
Rendering), Cinnamon on Wayland (Experimental), i3, and i3 ( with debug >>>> log).
On one of the discussion group web pages I read apropos this topic,
somebody posted something like "having multiple alternative desktop
environments on one machine is a recipe for crashes that are very
difficult to diagnose ... only half-witted newbies do it."
Is there any truth in that or is just the sort of thing that snotty Linux >>> nerds sneer to each other? I don't mind trying different DEs but I can't >>> afford to have serious bugs on my work computer, not any more than
necessary anyway.
I've had all three standard Linux Mint desktops on this machine since Linux >> Mint 19. I've done two major upgrades since then and it retained working
versions of all three desktops without any lock up issues. So, at least on >> Linux Mint (on on three computers ? the SSD has been moved to three
different computers), it doesn't seem to be an issue. I'll run Mintupgrade >> again when I (eventually) move to Linux Mint 22 on this machine (that's
another thing they tell "not to do").
The SSD is currently in a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Tiny (7"x7"x1.5")desktop >> with an i7-7700T CPU and 16 GBs of RAM. Previously it was in a Dell Optiplex
3020 Mini, then an Optiplex 9020 Mini, (both with 16 GBs of RAM and i5-4590T
CPUs) and, for about four months when I was in Arkansas, in my Latitude
E7450 laptop with an i5-5300U Dual Core CPU (no issues on the laptop
either).
Linux Mint does a good job of keeping their three desktops as similar as
possible. So maybe the fact I use Linux Mint is why it works to have more >> than one desktop installed.
The idea is, generally, to curate what you put in the tree, so it
can all be installed at the same time.
The limit on DEs, is also a practical matter, of how many you have
staff to maintain the stuff. (For a downstream DE, you still have
to test stuff, and if you've been patching and changing things
that counts as effort too.)
DE which have different subsystem requirements, may be a lot harder
to fit. (You have to load a different set of things, perhaps
including even the login screen thing. Maybe it requires
a dpkg-reconfigure.)
This is taxing the skills of your tree-herder.
That, and making a Driver Manager work (the package count involved!).
Paul
Paul wrote:
The limit on DEs, is also a practical matter, of how many you have
staff to maintain the stuff.
The LM decisions on how to handle the DE 'problem' has served the distro well.
They decided that they were going to have to bail on the KDE end.
They decided that they were going to have to jettison where/how Gnome
was going, by forking that.
And then they decided how they were going to carve their own path by 'harmonizing' how 3 different GTK DEs were going to live in the same house.
AND, they went their own way in defiance of Ub's SnapD insistence.
Bravo to all that.
On Sun, 8 Mar 2026 10:21:18 -0700, Mike Easter wrote:
Paul wrote:
The limit on DEs, is also a practical matter, of how many you have
staff to maintain the stuff.
The LM decisions on how to handle the DE 'problem' has served the distro
well.
They decided that they were going to have to bail on the KDE end.
They decided that they were going to have to jettison where/how Gnome
was going, by forking that.
Was there any reason they dropped KDE? To clarify, as they started the Cinnamon fork I can see where they ultimately had to, but rather than
trying to fix GNOME3, why not dump GNOME completely and stick with KDE and Xfce? I suppose then the question would be why not Kubuntu and Xbunutu?
Nothing wrong with Cinnamon but it seems like a lot of work.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
I realize that by not being 'into' such UI tweaking, I'm missing
some strong linux features over that of other OSes. One of these
days I may do more of that.
Sounds like you are pursuing a breadth-first search over the Linux DE
landscape, rather than depth-first.
This thread started w/ remarks about a Dedo/Igor review. He is
frequently unhappy w/ what he finds when he wants to tweak some UI to
his liking and doesn't like how the tweaking goes.
I'm more interested in how that dev decided to set up 'his' distro.
There are many different angles a distro dev may choose to approach a 'purpose' for his or their project, which may be a MUCH different
purpose than just how the default appearance is setup, but somewhere
along the way, he/they have to 'decide' on what the initial appearance
is going to be.
Since I'm not generally an appearance tweaker, my views of some
alternative ways of the desktop appearing comes from the 'hopping' if
you would call it that.
Mike Easter wrote:
They decided that they were going to have to bail on the KDE end.
They decided that they were going to have to jettison where/how
Gnome was going, by forking that.
Was there any reason they dropped KDE? To clarify, as they started
the Cinnamon fork I can see where they ultimately had to, but rather
than trying to fix GNOME3, why not dump GNOME completely and stick
with KDE and Xfce? I suppose then the question would be why not
Kubuntu and Xbunutu?
Nothing wrong with Cinnamon but it seems like a lot of work.
Between 2006 and 2010 the main desktop environment for Linux Mint
was GNOME 2. It was very stable and very popular.
In 2011, Linux Mint 12 was unable to ship with GNOME 2. The upstream
GNOME team had released a brand new desktop (GNOME 3 aka ?Gnome
Shell?) which was using new technologies (Clutter, GTK3), which had
a completely different design and implemented a radically different
paradigm than its predecessor but which used the same namespaces and
thus it couldn?t be installed alongside GNOME 2. Following the
decision from Debian to upgrade GNOME to version 3, GNOME 2 was no
longer available in Linux Mint.
On Mon, 9 Mar 2026 06:39:47 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
I think because of the different development libraries required for KDE,
where Xfce, Mate and Gnome all use GTK (I think), KDE uses QT(?).
That makes sense. KDE is Qt. I was getting confused. LXDE (not LMDE) uses GTK 2 and I thought MATE did also but it's GTK 3 although it's a fork of GNOME 2, not like Cinnamon that forked GNOME 3.
For more confusion the original developer of LXDE was so pissed by the breaking changes in GTK 3 he broke off to develop LXQt.
Supposedly GTK 4 won't be 'move fast and break things' but other projects have moved to Qt because of it. I tend to use gVim since it spawns a separate window but its gtk. It doesn't work on the RPi's Debian based OS since something in the WM is still GTK 2.
It must be a joy to be a distro developer herding cats.
The original Linux Mint release used KDE (I believe).
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