cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42263587

Of the desktop environments i’ve tried, i prefer Cinnamon overall. But i find that i’d rather use the KDE or Mate versions of some programs. I don’t need Nemo when i’d rather use Thunar, or Gnome Characters when i prefer mate-character-map or kcharselect.

Is there any reason i can’t start with nothing that’s specific to any one DE, then install whatever i need to have Cinnamon applets with the Mate and KDE programs i want? I don’t expect this to be easier than picking one DE and sticking with that, but is it so much harder that it’s not worth the trouble to have my computer so customized? How common is it to use a custom blend like this?

This was sparked when, while cleaning up my system that still has similar programs from several DEs, i accidentally broke Cinnamon and had to reinstall it, complete with everything i’d removed in favor of some other DE’s version of a program.

[hr]

What window managers are recommended for situations like this? I’ve always used whatever comes with my DE, without really being aware of the window manager. How does that affect what display manager i need?

  • mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    Yes it is very much doable and you can get a functional system. But there can be 2 main problems for your case:

    1. you would literally install Debian and choose nothing (no DE just a bare minimum). On Arch, this is easy because it came with some packages or you can install during live to get wifi working. On Debian , last I heard you need to do some dhcp wizardry.

    2. cross apps compatibility. This is very serious. Even “lightweight” DE like xfce has a lot of hidden stuff that helps to run your notifications , powers and brightness/volume. And that does not count it you want stuff from Gnome or KDE: they even have more special libraries. In your case, the worst scenario would be to have multiple libraries/configs from different DE and they try to do the same thing. This is very hard to debug and maintain.

    Point 1) is not as bad, if you use an Ethernet or somehow connects to the internet. It is only for the 1st phase where you install stuff though. After that you can just use the DE’s network manager.

    Point 2) should not be a problem IF you are running a window manager. The reason is that in these setups you can choose exactly what you want without messing up…On DE you can too, but you migght break things. For eg, choose dunst for notitication or xfce4-notifyd. On a mixed DE setup? Bad idea imo.