Fresh version of XFCE, the oldest Linux desktop of them all in Xubuntu builds
theregister.com
theregister.com
I did a recent Ubuntu MATE install, and that was the best desktop installation experience I have ever had for explaining the desktop features, themes, etc. Every desktop should look at that and copy it.
But the fact you have distribution X desktop as the fundamental balkanization of linux desktop continuing just makes me despair. The desktops should be striving for a unified experience across the distros to as much a degree as possible.
(LXDE did; LXQt can't either. Sadly, it could before it reached v1.0 but it's now broken.)
Xfce does this with aplomb. In my testing (I wrote the article at the top of this thread) it is also substantially more stable; I regularly experience crashes in MATE.
Here's what it should look like: https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy
This is what it looks like when MATE tries: https://imgur.com/dBfjico
That's not a bit poor or sub-optimal: that is broken and unusable.
MATE is also orphaned; the team that created GNOME 2 have moved on, and it's a substantial codebase to maintain.
Xfce is smaller, faster, more stable, and does more.
For me, that is game over. YMMV.
Really? How are you diminished if I say "meh...I'll just use xfce or cde". Or if there a user base that wants to use Xubuntu because, I dunno, it works better on lower resource machines? If the goal is to have only one true anointed holy Linux desktop we might as well just use Windows with WSL or something equally reductionist.
I dont know that the problem is balkanization on the front end: the window look and feel, etc.
There used to be one problem. Look and feel was horrible. Kind of the uncanny valley, where people coming from Windows or Solaris had to deal with a UI that was almost right but also wrong in dozens of tiny ways. And those were the good old days where all you had to do to switch was replace the path to your window manager in your X startup file.
Now we have two problems: the l&f is still weak across the board, with no stable UI/human interface standards nor a framework for designing themes that cover every part of the UI (ie users can skin their desktops and window chrome, but its always clunky, standards are low and even the best themes dont extend everywhere in the UI...shades of Windows' infamous Control Panel/Settings inconsistency here)
And secondly, changing desktop environments is incredibly ugly for users to do. Ripping out gnome for kde is fastest by simply reinstalling the OS. The hooks are so deep, the graphical decision you make when you download your install image is effectively immutable. Isnt it a little bizarre that fedora and ubuntu have to provide separate images simply because the desktop environment is different?
If I had a magic investment wand here, I would spend money on pro designers to spiff up the look and feel of a couple of desktop environments, like popOS does, and make them selectable at install time not download time. Id make switching trivially easy. And Id throw a boat load of money at defining a stable DE framework that resolved the kde gnome schism once and for all.
Even with a boatload of money, how would you go about this?
Write a shim lowest-common-demoninator API that can target both (like wxwidgets)?
Theme them to look like each other (like Qtcurve)?
Extract more and more individual concepts that can be collaborated on and shared (like fd.o / xdg-shell)?
I think the key problem is the proliferation of incompatible object extensions to C (C++ vs GObject and also Objective C). Porting GObject to C++ (like Gtkmm) is the most developed direction, the alternative of porting Qt to C/GObject (make all GObjects implement QObject or vice versa?) has not even been tried AFAICT.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/18/ubuntu_remixes/
This is a repeat of an article of mine from about a decade ago:
https://www.theregister.com/2013/04/26/xbuntu_round_up/
This time I also added in some of the unofficial remixes:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/19/less_mainstream_xbunt...
Nowadays I mostly use Apple, Microsoft and Google OS offerings, with GNU/Linux left for the server room, POSIX doesn't say anything about the desktop anyway.
While we can debate between being plain window managers, or already proper desktops, depending on the configuration scripts, we have, twm, fvwm, fvwm95, enlightenment, afterstep, windowmaker.
If it requires a config script to make it user friendly it’s not a DE. That along with an app suite is what distinguishes DEs from standalone WM’s.
Some of the wm’s you listed can actually run as a core component to be wrapped around a DE.
"Initially, XFce was just the toolbar, without the window manager and all the goodies. In 1998, I released XFce 2.x with xfwm, the window manager. The rest of the goodies came from release to release ... "
https://web.archive.org/web/20070116201506/http://linuxgazet...
A WM doesn't have a file manager or a suite of integrated accessories. Most do not have an app-switcher, and many do not even have an app browsing and launching mechanism.
It is if you go all the way back to Smalltalk, but that is far outside the scope of this discussion.
The early Unix GUIs didn't really have desktops because the concept hadn't really been invented yet. It was largely built from the whole cloth by Apple in the Lisa and then refined and simplified into greater accessibility and usefulness by the Mac.
Windows didn't really have a "desktop" until Win95, but the Win3 UI was a complete one, just not very integrated. GEM and AmigaOS were clearly desktops by 1985 or so, but Linux & the free BSDs didn't exist yet back then.
TWM wasn't a desktop, but CDE was.
IXI x/Desktop was perhaps the first I read about on PC UNIX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.desktop
It's roughly contemporaneous with the IRIX Magic desktop on SGI kit.
SunView might count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunView
That was, what, 1985 or so?
I wrote, in the story that this comment thread results from, that Xfce is the oldest Linux desktop. I stand by that, but I welcome correction if someone has evidence: citations.
Compare:
"The VW Beetle is the best selling car of all time." "No, the Honda Cub sold twice as many!" "Maybe so, but irrelevant. The VW Beetle is a car. The Honda Cub is a motorcycle." "But the Cub sold 100 million! The Beetle only sold 50M!"
This may be true, but it is comparing different things. Yes, the Cub outsold the Beetle. But I am talking about cars. I'm not talking about motorcycles. I am sure you are right: the Cub sold more, but it's not a car, so it is irrelevant.
"You are being unfair! The VW came first!"
I am sure it did. But the VW Beetle is a car. I said, best selling car. Not motorcycle.
Xfce is not a window manager. These is an Xfce WM. It is part of the product. But it is not just a WM. It is a desktop.
Desktops came later than WMs. WMs are an older tech. But a desktop is not a WM, and a WM is not a desktop.
There absolutely are older desktops, but they are not Linux desktops. They originated on other OSes and were subsequently ported to Linux.
There absolutely were older desktops that were proprietary, the companies behind them are defunct, and they are gone now. That means they are not older, because they are dead.
I am older than Christopgher Marlowe. He was born long long before me, but he died at 29. I am 55. Yes I was born later but I'm alive, and he is dead.
There absolutely are older WMs, but WMs are not desktops.
I do not really understand why you and @jeroen79 want to argue about this.
I am not talking about all desktops on all OSes. I am not talking about WMs. If I were, these arguments would be valid.
Is there a currently-maintained Linux-native desktop environment older than Xfce?
Not a bare WM. Not something long dead. Not something from another OS.
If yes, I am happy to admit I was wrong.
If not, I stand by it.
Not to detract from XFCE at all, my first love
CDE as a Linux desktop dates to June 1997, with the release of the proprietary TriTeal CDE for RedHat.
It's an interesting distinction I suppose. CDE has served longer as a desktop, just not for Linux