One of the biggest advantages of moving to mate would be being able to use (and possibly adapt) the software center. Also it could help us dodge the issues with menus. (hopefully? maybe?) It also seems that we have people here who are also active on that side of the project which is good! :) I remember it not being very flexible, but it could be a compromise for polish, and as it is a relatively new project hopefully flexibility will come as the project matures.
As for KDE as someone who is using KDE packages on top of UbuntuStudio I can give some opinions on it. I would love to see KDE as a possible desktop for ubuntustudio. It is aesthethically nice. Widgets are very useful. It has quite a few tools I use as an artist including the gwenview, and its file manager that is able to view raws and krita files etc, as well as giving a GUI interface to symlinking. It comes with a mobile phone synching tool. That being said. I have had more crashes on it than I had on XFCE. I am also running into some odd cursor scaling issues with high-res screen, but honestly HI-DPI can still have issues on many of the desktop environments. In short, as someone who has used KDE on top of UbuntuStudio for at least a year, I am a bit cautious about recommending a switch to KDE as default DE. (on my backup laptop I have XFCE with some KDE tools like gwenview installed, that seems to be a slightly more stable solution to maintain at least some of the advantages) KDE has come a long way through so I am very curious to see where the project goes. As for XFCE4 the human readable configuration is nice from a power user level. I personally like that (and to this date, it is the only desktop environment I created theme elements for, for this reason :) ) but at the same time is that accessible to our current userbase? Is this accessible to the userbase we aim to reach out at for this to be a consideration? Or is a more beginner friendly approach to this (with less choice as compromise, the way some of the other desktop environments go with) the better suited to our audience? What about the audience we try to reach out to? How much does the ability of configure using commandline and human readable files bring as benefit to the people it is accessible to? I don't think the answer to these questions are straightforward in our case. I do agree with the issue of switching desktop environment as this will break workflow for people, so this is definitely a very strong argument on favor of staying with XFCE. I am not saying we shouldn't consider doing it at all, but it isn't something we should not do lightly or often. I would even put out a post about the intent to do that as with requesting input before finalizing the decision if we decide to go that route. Also as a historical context, one of the discussions we had in past was to make ubuntustudio packages desktop environment agnostic, and allowing to chose on install. Ubuntustudio is the only ubuntu flavor that is not structured around a desktop environment. This puts us into an interesting position. Installing a new desktop environment on top of existing ubuntustudio not hard but cleaning the old one is nearly impossible. Could we somehow make this process easier? On one hand it would be really nice to have the ability to give the option to people (with one default) but on other hand this can easily turn into a support headache. Still something to think about. :) Best Eylul On 04/03/2018 07:32 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Mon, 2 Apr 2018 16:09:24 -0700, Erich Eickmeyer wrote: >> My proposal would be to move from Xfce to MATE > Ubuntu Mate is pretty good these days. It's the distro and desktop > environment I would recommend to users who want something working OOTB > for mailing, browsing and office work and who don't want to go further > into Linux. Actually I'm using Ubuntu Mate 17.10 from a DVD to > backup my Ubuntu and Arch Linux installs and all my data. When making > backups I test different live media from time to time and Ubuntu Mate is > one of the better, if not the best OOTB working Linux. > > As far as I'm concerned, I'm using openbox only for my installs. > > I'm aware that for Xfce4 changed a lot within the last years. I once > used it myself and for good reasons stopped using it. However, there is > one good reason to stay with Xfce4, as long as it shouldn't become > buggy, bloated or should suffer seriously from anything else. > > Users who decided to install Ubuntu Studio are used to Xfce4, migrating > to another desktop environment does break their workflow and it would > be tricky to run do-release-upgrade. > > Users who want Ubuntu Studio with another desktop environment or just a > window manager such as openbox, could install another Ubuntu flavour, > even use the server image and install the desired meta-packages, see > https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=ubuntustudio&searchon=names&suite=artful§ion=all > . > > Secondarily one benefit of Xfce4 perhaps still is, that it hopefully > still could be configured from command line by human readable > configurations, by just using an editor, set or echo. From command line > Mate requires usage of gsettings or dconf, so for those users who want > to learn more about Linux, Xfce4 seems to be the better starting point. > IMO people who want to stay with Linux as their operating system, > should learn how the infrastructure works. There's no need to become a > coder, but soon or later it's wise to become a power user through fun, > not by a hard learning curve. > -- ubuntu-studio-devel mailing list ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
