*UPDATE
razor-qt merged with LXDE who were in the process of migrating from GTK to QT. The merged project is available from http://lxqt.org/
LXQT is also installable in Debian now. install lxqt desktop on jessie
*ORIGINAL
On low power machines people will often mention that Gnome/KDE are sometimes too bloated to use. I don’t really agree that it’s bloat, but sometimes you get the feeling that everything could be a lot quicker.
gnome-shell and Gnome 3 has been my best desktop experience on Linux since I started using it. So why am I looking elsewhere?
The short version is that I’m always looking for something to play with on my computers and Gnome 3.2 has evaporated the need to use jhbuild or build from source to complete my desktop so now I’m compile hungry.
I’ve been looking for a minimal desktop to use on a netbook and the closest thing I’ve found to a winner has been Razor-qt. http://razor-qt.org/
Razor-qt isn’t quite there yet but what is there is pretty amazing. A pure QT desktop that’s getting better and better each week. While it’s not up there with similar DE’s like LXDE/XFCE I’ve had more fun with Razor-qt than with any other non-gnome desktop I’ve ever used.
So now I’ve given my little plug to Razor-qt is there anything out there that can actually be used as a DE that doesn’t look like it’s from 1994? I have tried:
E17 awesome lxde xfce razor-qtBut nothing has really caught my attention as usable long-term.
When Razor-qt is feature complete I think it will give the other small/fast Desktops a real run for their money and the focus on pure QT is a lot better in my opinion than relying on KDE libs.
Is there anything else out there???
On low power machines I using Openbox – it takes a bit of configuring to get it looking like it isn’t “from 1994” but with a little time and effort you can create a very useable (and completely customised) desktop environment….
I was playing with openbox yesterday and it looked good.
The only problem was that while i was trying to find a decent panel/dock/window list type program i accidentally installed gnome while i wasn’t paying attention….
do you have any must have’s for openbox?
pypanel is a great dock 🙂 I like conky (for active TCP/UDP Sessions, CPU, Disk Space, RAM, etc), feh to manage wallpaper (or nitrogen), XMMS for music, xchat for IRC, chrome as browser, transset for window transparency, thunar as a file manager and use keybinding quite heavily….oh, and I love geany for notetaking and any coding… 🙂
See here for an Openbox config with autoupdating menus:
http://antix.freeforums.org/post23648.html#p23648
It’s a mixture of the config from #! with an XDG Menu script from Fedora.
I use Fluxbox day to day (for the tabbed windows) but also play with razor-qt + compiz.
See here for an Openbox config with autoupdating menus:
http://antix.freeforums.org/post23648.html#p23648
It’s a mixture of the config from #! with an XDG Menu script from Fedora.
I use Fluxbox day to day (for the tabbed windows) but also play with razor-qt + compiz. Openbox is my backup desktop.