Easy way to try out a bunch of different DEs?

TCB13, 5 months ago

Maybe it will be best to give up right now and use GNOME. I hate it, but let’s be honest most of the time people are running KDE and others will end up with a bunch of GNOME/GTK/libadwaita components and creating a Frankenstein of a system because some specific App depends on said components.

There’s no point on running anything else if you’ll end up with parts of GNOME and inconsistencies all over the place.

drndramrndra, 5 months ago

Arco B was how I experimented with DEs and WMs. It’s got the widest support from the installer, but it’s mostly limited to having unified shortcuts.

I suggest using a VM or an install specifically for that purpose, just so you don’t have to clean everything up afterwards.

taladar, 5 months ago

You could use netboot.xyz to boot a bunch of Live systems from various distros relatively quickly (depending on your download speed).

g_damian, 5 months ago

Grab live cd and run it in qemu:

<span style="color:#323232;">qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -machine type=pc 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">-cpu host -smp 2 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">-m 4096 -device virtio-balloon 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">-vga virtio -display sdl,gl=on 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">-usb -device usb-tablet 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">-boot d -cdrom "$@"
</span>

1984, 5 months ago (edited 1 day ago)

You can install them all on any distro I believe. I use Arch and installing Plasma is just a single command, same with Gnome and the others. After install you can pick which desktop to use after the graphical login screen loads.

There are some annoyances, like for example if you have both Gnome and Plasma installed, and you type Files to open a file app, you get the Gnome file app even in Plasma since it’s named Files. To use the Plasma file app, you have to type Dolphin instead.

Same with settings app, I often open the Gnome settings app instead of the Plasma settings app by mistake since it’s called Settings.

But these are not bugs per se, it’s just because I’m used to typing something…

muhyb, 5 months ago

Gentoo used to have a live CD with almost every DE / WM in it. Not sure if it’s still around though.

Cyberflunk, 5 months ago

Maybe this will help github.com/89luca89/distrobox

g_damian, 5 months ago

github.com/…/run_latest_gnome_kde_on_distrobox.md

Aradia, 5 months ago

Well, if you are new to Linux, it is better if you just install new distros to try them, I would go to Arch Linux as it’s the cleanest distro, I could install multiple DE without issues, but then it’s a bit mess of packages, also it’s harder to install, you need to type archinstall and understand their options. I have a desktop and laptop and I always use the laptop for testing, if you copy the ~/.config folder, you can restore all your applications settings (just copy the app settings you are using), ~/.mozilla to restore your browser as you had it before the wipe and some more settings are under ~/.local. I also copy my ~/.zshrc because I have a custom prompt, configs, add-ons, alias…

Vilian, 5 months ago

NixOS or fedora ostree

BCsven, 5 months ago

VMs are a way, but Live USB sticks are better because you will see how it actually runs on your bare metal machine, and if there see any hardware quirks, without comitting to an install

nawordar, 5 months ago

Ventoy is a godsend in that case. If you have a big enough USB stick, you can just put all distros you wanna try on it

furzegulo, 5 months ago

yeah, i also wholeheartedly recommend ventoy

padook, 5 months ago

I take any chance I can to drop a Chris Barnett link:

Ventoy

atzanteol, 5 months ago (edited 2 days ago)

Not sure about others but in PopOS (and I assume Ubuntu) it’s pretty simple. Probably easy with most distros.

<span style="color:#323232;">apt install gnome-desktop
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt install kde-standard
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt install xubuntu-desktop
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies
</span><span style="color:#323232;">etc.
</span>

pastermil, 5 months ago

Usually when you have multiple DEs installed, the login manager would let you choose.

Just need to make sure the autologin don’t get in the way of your choice (e.g. select it thru autologin or disable it completely).