Arch Linux

Murray_B

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-07-29

Posts: 134

Thoughts about choosing the "right" software

Hi altogether!

I am thinking a lot about deciding which software to use for a desktop and want to share my thoughts with you.

First, let me explain why I am thinking about it and some background. I use Linux for a long time now, more than 10 years definitely. I was using KDE for a long time (version 1-3), but KDE 4 changed in a way I didn't like so I started to replace more and more KDE-programs and finally switched to xfce. I didn't want to install lots of KDE-dependencys so I looked for alternatives to the KDE-apps.

There were several problems with it and I don't need very much! An easy example. I used kwrite as a texteditor and wanted to replace it. I don't need so much more than a simple thing like the Windows(tm)-notepad. Im am not using a text-editor very often, I am no programmer or something like that, so I wanted an easy one, nothing like emacs or vim, where you really need to learn how to use it. I sometimes need to work with different line-endings and different encodings and I wanted some syntax highlighting for some common things like bash or html, but for lilypond, too. There are thousand text-editors for linux, shouldn't be a real problem. Wrong... There are just a few texteditors and many of them do really miss common features or don't have syntax-highlighting for lots of languages. And another big problem is that many editors are no longer developed.

I found those problems in many projects, not only texteditors: Lack of features, only a few programs to choose between and many projects are no longer actively developed. There are just a few programs of any kind you can use, if you are just a "normal" desktop-user and don't want to be some kind of hardcore guy, who uses speacial crytic software which is really 1334... In fact there is normally one good application in KDE, one good application in gnome and one or two more or less good which doesn't depend on one of those fat desktop environments.

Examples:
1) Windowmanager/desktopenvironments: Gnome, KDE, XFCE, openbox (LXDE is not much more than openbox) - formerly great WMs like windowmaker or fvwm are just dead
2) CD/DVD-burning: K3B, Brasero (is it the gnome standard? I am not sure...) - I found no desktop-independent good program, xcdroast is dead, too :-(
3) Loginmanager: kdm, gdm, xdm (hm, I think it is not used by many people...) - there doesn't seem to be any developement at slim any more :-(
4) Filemanger: doplphin, nautilus, thunar, pcmanfm - are there any others which are able to mount and unmount removables graphically? Sorry guys, but this is a must have nowadays! I read about the udev-rules in the wiki, that is only a bad joke for a modern desktop!

All other projects of this kind are nearly dead or only used and programmed by a minority. By the way, I am not talking about how good those other programs are, but lots of them are just "geek-software", e.g. tiling windowmanager are not for the masses. And you can make lots of those examples, think of office-suites, mail-programs, multi-messenger or graphic-software.

Conclusion:
There is no real choice for desktop-software. You can take KDE or Gnome or you can puzzle a bit and take one of those few apps which are desktop-independet. But here's no real choice, too. (Look at all those openbox, tint2, conky-users in the screenshot-thread...) If you don't go mainstream, you will have to puzzle again, because those little projects die and stop working somewhen. Why do they die? Well, let's face it, many application are developed by young students but they get older and loose the time/interest you need for developing software. And if there is no (more or less) big community for this application, the development stops. Even "big" projects like xfce lack of developers: There is no user-documentation, the xfce-icon-set had to go because nobody cared, many xfce-goodies are unmaintained, e.g. xfburn still uses hal instead of udev and still has no button to just copy a CD!?
If you don't want to puzzle and want a good working desktop it seems that there is only the choice between Gnome and KDE, even if you got many features with them you don't want.

I don't know which apps I will use in the near future. I think I'll try KDE again when kdepim uses akonadi. And i will try Gnome 3. But maybe I will work with openbox, emelfm2 and hard fstab-entries for my devices, cdrecord/cdrdao for burning and without any panel, I really don't know. If everything walks wrong, I'll be using Windows(tm) *joking*

Okay, that's it. Any comments? What do you think about this situation?

P.S.: Have a look at "Favorite dead open source project?": https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=102453

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,358

Re: Thoughts about choosing the "right" software

Get a blog, this isn't suitable for this forum at all.

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