Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sun, Apr 06, 2014 at 09:12:05AM +0100, Joe wrote: On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 20:22:55 -0400 Stephen Allen marathon.duran...@gmail.com wrote: I see this mentioned a lot that Gnome-Shell won't run on hardware more than a few years old. This is patently false. I've run it on a laptop more than 7 years old with no issue what-so-ever. Gnome-Shell just disables stuff if it isn't supported hardware wise - some of the more interesting video effects that is. The issue isn't so much the hardware but the amount of ram one has on the applicable hardware. Even 7 year old hardware often has 1Gb of ram or even more. OK, I did investigate it somewhat, and I'm being simplistic here. But this investigation was begun when I upgraded to Gnome3 and on login I was presented with a new, empty Gnome 'legacy' desktop after being told somewhat curtly that my video hardware wasn't good enough for the wonderful new desktop experience, and that the Gnome developers weren't interested in 'legacy' hardware. My previous Gnome desktop configurations had disappeared. I call that 'not running well'. I would too. Yes, I recovered it all, and even got Gnome3 working, but after a few days I decided I didn't like all the extra keystrokes and steps to do my usual jobs, and the distinct loss of speed, so I switched to LXDE. And it is indeed the shell, and not Gnome itself which was the issue, but that took a few days to get explained properly. I have no idea if the 'legacy' shell is still being maintained, because at the time it was made clear that it was only a temporary measure, presumably while we all bought new video cards. I am still using some of Gnome3 itself now, just not the desktop shell. To be blunt - a couple of days doesn't give it a fair shot. I too didn't like it at first but stuck with it for a month, I came to like it a lot and appreciate all the thought given to it by the Gnome Developers. It's also bloody fast. Never saw a warning on login ever and I was running it on a 9 year old IBM laptop with 1 Gb of ram. It if can run on a laptop well surely it will run on any legacy desktop of the same era. Personally I don't think most give it a fair shot - just because of the change. But then some people didn't like it when a mouse was introduced to computing -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140409104626.GA10859@Jessie
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sunday 06 April 2014 04:43:51 ray wrote: At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one used' entry. Joe Great, thank you. I can now switch. I was hoping to see a change. For example, I understand the Gnome has the date and menu at the top and KDE at the bottom of the screen. After switching to KDE and rebooting, I see a new log in window, but when I get to the desk top, nothing is different from Gnome. The menus are also the same. I must be missing something. Did you ever get this sorted out? Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201404091353.22218.lisi.re...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 20:22:55 -0400 Stephen Allen marathon.duran...@gmail.com wrote: ray r...@aarden.us wrote: Gnome is referred to as a desktop environment, as it is much more than just a manager of windows, menus etc. KDE is the other heavyweight DE, there are two medium-weight DEs, LXDE and Xfce4. There is also at least one fork of an older version of Gnome, as the current Gnome is a bit heavy on resources and won't run well on hardware more than a few years old. I see this mentioned a lot that Gnome-Shell won't run on hardware more than a few years old. This is patently false. I've run it on a laptop more than 7 years old with no issue what-so-ever. Gnome-Shell just disables stuff if it isn't supported hardware wise - some of the more interesting video effects that is. The issue isn't so much the hardware but the amount of ram one has on the applicable hardware. Even 7 year old hardware often has 1Gb of ram or even more. OK, I did investigate it somewhat, and I'm being simplistic here. But this investigation was begun when I upgraded to Gnome3 and on login I was presented with a new, empty Gnome 'legacy' desktop after being told somewhat curtly that my video hardware wasn't good enough for the wonderful new desktop experience, and that the Gnome developers weren't interested in 'legacy' hardware. My previous Gnome desktop configurations had disappeared. I call that 'not running well'. Yes, I recovered it all, and even got Gnome3 working, but after a few days I decided I didn't like all the extra keystrokes and steps to do my usual jobs, and the distinct loss of speed, so I switched to LXDE. And it is indeed the shell, and not Gnome itself which was the issue, but that took a few days to get explained properly. I have no idea if the 'legacy' shell is still being maintained, because at the time it was made clear that it was only a temporary measure, presumably while we all bought new video cards. I am still using some of Gnome3 itself now, just not the desktop shell. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140406091205.58316...@jretrading.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 20:43:51 -0700 (PDT) ray r...@aarden.us wrote: At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one used' entry. Joe Great, thank you. I can now switch. I was hoping to see a change. For example, I understand the Gnome has the date and menu at the top and KDE at the bottom of the screen. After switching to KDE and rebooting, I see a new log in window, but when I get to the desk top, nothing is different from Gnome. The menus are also the same. Yes, the menus should remain constant, though some DEs seem to be able to display the Debian menu and some don't. But the main menu system finds most things these days, it tends to be older applications which exist only in the Debian menu tree. I must be missing something. I don't know, I haven't run Gnome3 for a long time, and have never run the latest KDE. I use Knoppix occasionally, but that dropped KDE in favour of LXDE years ago. Gnome and KDE used to be quite different, with KDE looking slicker and more like Windows, which helped people migrating, and Gnome being more free in software terms. But KDE is now as free, and Gnome has evolved towards Windows, so I suppose there may not be many superficial differences. They both run the same applications, of course. I think the main differences are in the bells and whistles attached to the desktop. Gnome and KDE use different sets of 'widgets', the controls and other building blocks of screen furniture, and I think that Gnome-specific plugins won't run in KDE task bars, and vice versa. These days, most of the useful plugins have variants for most desktop environments. But I had a weather plugin running on Gnome2 which doesn't work in LXDE, for example, and I haven't yet found the right incantation to see the (Gnome) Network Manager applet in the Xfce4 panel, though I believe that should be possible. It claims to be there, I just can't see anything. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140406100352.0b13a...@jretrading.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Saturday 05 April 2014 22:12:15 ray wrote: Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop manager? Yes. If you are running GNOME you have probably, though no necessarily, got gdm - gnome desktop manager. It is the application that you use to login. If you describe what you have to do to log in, someone will probably recognise it and can tell you what to do next to change the desktop you use for that session. I am about to go out again. When I get back, I'll check how far you have already got and try to work out how to help you more, if you still need it. There are others here. ;-) Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201404061226.33441.lisi.re...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On 06/04/14 12:26, Lisi Reisz wrote: On Saturday 05 April 2014 22:12:15 ray wrote: Which desktop manager are you using? I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. Yes. If you are running GNOME you have probably, though no necessarily, got gdm - gnome desktop manager. Lisi Lisi, As Tom has already mentioned, you quite likely mean *display* rather than *desktop* manager. And in the case of gdm, apt-cache show gdm3 tells us among other things: Description-en: Next generation GNOME Display Manager GDM provides the equivalent of a login: prompt for X displays: it asks for a login and starts X sessions. --- Ray, I think I am using Gnome; I am using the default, it has the menus at the top like Gnome where KDE has them at the bottom and I have not found any way to determine which GUI I actually have. ray If you are in Gnome, a GUI way of finding out is to take one of the many ways (right-click on background, or press Win key and type settings, or from the user menu, or... ) to go to Settings -- Details and it'll say in big bold letters Gnome X.x.x and other stuff. Sorry, can't help with KDE, never seen it myself. Or you open a terminal, and look at /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager and see where it points to, which in my case yields $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Jan 16 22:09 /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager - /usr/bin/gnome-session It also still looks like you haven't found how where to switch between different desktop environments, eg. Gnome -- KDE. No need to reboot, just log out, and once you are back at the login screen, select your user name and enter the password, but before clicking login there is another (dropdown?) menu from which you can select the session. Can you see your newly installed KDE in the list? -- Klaus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/53415929.2090...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sunday 06 April 2014 04:43:51 ray wrote: At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one used' entry. Joe Great, thank you. I can now switch. I was hoping to see a change. As has been suggested, you appear to have changed Display Manager (thanks, guys. The original Mrs. Malaprop, me.) and not desktop environment. You were probably using gdm3. If you still are, there does appear to be a problem indeed and it is not just you. This might help: https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/8018/fedora-16-gdm-howto-change-desktop-to-log-in/ If you have managed to switch to kdm, then click where it says session and you will get the chance to chose your desktop environment. I am not a fan of either GNOME3 or KDE4, so I am not an expert on them, - but they are certainly different. Here's a picture of the kdm login screen. You will see the word session down at the bottom left of the screen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Display_Manager Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201404061737.06311.lisi.re...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Saturday 05 April 2014 17:05:36 ray wrote: I did find an article to edit the default desktop manager Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/201404051740.06062.lisi.re...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 09:05:36 -0700 (PDT) ray r...@aarden.us wrote: I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4. I want to try KDE so I installed it. I can see new apps under Applications so it looks like it may have worked. But I don't know who to actual switch from one to the other. Is there a GUI app that I can click to switch between them? Or some shell process? Searching, I have found many articles on how to install the package but none on how to actually switch between them. I did find an article to edit the default desktop manager but it was in the etc/x11 folder which I don't have. The display manager at login is the place. There are several, I'm using kdm even though I don't have a full KDE installation, it suits me. Look in /etc/X11/default-display-manager to see which is used, it will probably be the DM of the last environment you installed. Probably the cleanest way to change this is 'dpkg-reconfigure kdm, gdm3 or other'. You should get a choice from the DMs installed. xdm should always be there, but it's a bit primitive for my taste, lightdm is another. Generally whenever you install a DM you are given this choice. At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one used' entry. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140405211603.6c5c2...@jretrading.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop manager? Thanks, Ray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/8b5f82cb-8b76-401f-9ca2-540316277...@googlegroups.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 14:12:15 -0700 (PDT) ray r...@aarden.us wrote: Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop manager? Gnome is referred to as a desktop environment, as it is much more than just a manager of windows, menus etc. KDE is the other heavyweight DE, there are two medium-weight DEs, LXDE and Xfce4. There is also at least one fork of an older version of Gnome, as the current Gnome is a bit heavy on resources and won't run well on hardware more than a few years old. Then it gets complicated... There are window managers which can be used by themselves, without a desktop environment, though all DEs must use a window manager. The simplest just provide a menu from which to launch applications. Because they are so simple, they are very fast in their own operations, and don't take much processing time away from applications. The price is that you do everything yourself, there are no system trays with notifications, clocks etc. All of these things need to be added manually. The good news is that you can play with all of them. You can install all four major desktop environments, and all the window managers you can find, and try them all out from the display manager, which is basically a graphical login shell used to start a window manager or DE. Eventually you will probably settle on one environment, whether a window manager or full desktop environment. Even then, there are applications which 'belong' to one environment but can be used in any of them. I have an occasional use for Konqueror, which is a KDE application, but runs fine in LXDE, which is my preferred DE. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140405231927.6ea92...@jretrading.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On 05/04/14 22:12, ray wrote: Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop manager? Thanks, Ray Yes, confusing terminology. Here are a couple of wiki pages about the Display Manager, and about the Desktop Environment: https://wiki.debian.org/DisplayManager https://wiki.debian.org/DesktopEnvironment -- Klaus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/5340815c.3010...@gmail.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, Apr 05, 2014 at 02:12:15PM -0700, ray wrote: Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will be able to tell you how to switch. I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop manager? I may be wrong, but I think that Lisi meant to ask what *display manager* you are using. There are several of these available in Debian, but given that you are new to Linux and using Gnome (probably a default install) I would expect the display manager you are using is gdm3. Some other display managers that are available are xdm, kdm, lightdm for example. Cheers, Tom -- An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
ray r...@aarden.us wrote: Gnome is referred to as a desktop environment, as it is much more than just a manager of windows, menus etc. KDE is the other heavyweight DE, there are two medium-weight DEs, LXDE and Xfce4. There is also at least one fork of an older version of Gnome, as the current Gnome is a bit heavy on resources and won't run well on hardware more than a few years old. I see this mentioned a lot that Gnome-Shell won't run on hardware more than a few years old. This is patently false. I've run it on a laptop more than 7 years old with no issue what-so-ever. Gnome-Shell just disables stuff if it isn't supported hardware wise - some of the more interesting video effects that is. The issue isn't so much the hardware but the amount of ram one has on the applicable hardware. Even 7 year old hardware often has 1Gb of ram or even more. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140406002255.GA12265@Jessie
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
At logon, you can choose between any desktop environments and window managers you have installed, and usually there is also a 'last one used' entry. Joe Great, thank you. I can now switch. I was hoping to see a change. For example, I understand the Gnome has the date and menu at the top and KDE at the bottom of the screen. After switching to KDE and rebooting, I see a new log in window, but when I get to the desk top, nothing is different from Gnome. The menus are also the same. I must be missing something. Ray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/5a3f30d7-0406-4008-8946-2437d9083...@googlegroups.com
Re: How to Switch Between Gnome and KDE
On Sat, Apr 05, 2014 at 08:43:51PM -0700, ray wrote: Great, thank you. I can now switch. I was hoping to see a change. For example, I understand the Gnome has the date and menu at the top and KDE at the bottom of the screen. After switching to KDE and rebooting, I see a new log in window, but when I get to the desk top, nothing is different from Gnome. The menus are also the same. That sounds like you have switched your display manager but not your desktop environment. What did you do to change to KDE? When you select an alternative environment to log in to the change should be apparent as soon as you log in, you shouldn't need to reboot. Cheers, Tom -- Debian Hint #34: If you want to track Debian sid and have a small download quota or a really slow connection, check out the debdelta package. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
