Coincidentally, if you're considering trying something new, I really recommend KDE. I've found it to be a very well-thought-out system that's both easy to use and easy to customize. The defaults are good, so there is no real need to customize, but if there's something you don't like chances are you can change it fairly easily.
I also really like certain KDE applications, especially Amarok (the music player). Okular is also pretty good--at the very least, I like it more than Evince.
I've been using KDE on Fedora for a while now, and I've been entirely happy with it. I'm switching over to a much more minimal XMonad setup now, but that's a different story and a much larger shift.
I find KDE has the most polish of all the desktops, but it's also a fairly heavy in terms of computer requirements. Gnome 2.x ran very well on my old Atom netbook, Fedora 16 with Gnome 3.x runs acceptably (minus the small screen), and XFCE actually feels fast. I tried KDE several years ago on the same machine and it was unresponsive.
I'm switching over to a much more minimal XMonad setup now,
but that's a different story and a much larger shift.
I switched from using Gnome on Debian (work) to XMonad approximately one year ago (I am running Arch with XMonad on my MacBookPro at home and been very happy with this setup), and I didn't find the shift that large: the basic configuration pretty much works out of the box without the need for customization - at least at the beginning. And if you are eager to customize, there is a lot of information on how to set up xmobar, trayer and some Haskell XMonad stuff out there.
I use fbpanel to make nm-applet work in my xmonad setup; it's very simple and config-file driven rather than hiding config in crazy XML gconf files like gnome-panel did.
Thanks! I am about to make the switch to XMonad without a DE and so I was making a list of things that I would be doing without a DE and wondering how the experience would be.
So are you using XMonad without a DE? How is the experience?
Yes, exactly. It's very lightweight and fast without all the clutter of a DE. I don't really miss anything.
BTW, how do you manage wireless networks and stuff?
I manage wireless/wired networks with netcfg in the background (without an applet for the trayer, haven't had any need for that yet; but that's up to individual preferences).
Pretty much every distro does this. Like most things, the way to get the most out of Linux is to learn and explore it. I've been happily ignoring the "GUI Wars" because I'm using i3, a tiling window manager that AFAIK nothing comes with out the box, but you just install it and configure it and bam, you're away. No worrying about Gnome 3 or KDE bloat or whatever. You set it up so you have a nice enough GTK theme that is then emulated by Qt (so things look consistent) - I use Zukitwo - and then you just pick which apps you like and use them. There's no deciding one way or other, you just use the programs you like.
The article's point is that you have to download it from the web via the repos to do this. Which seems like an incredibly silly and inconsequential thing to write an entire article about.
Being a fork and being based on something are two different things.
"Version 2.0 "Barbara" was based on Ubuntu 6.10, using its package repositories and using it as a codebase. From there, Linux Mint followed its own codebase, building each release from its previous one but it continued to use the package repositories from the latest Ubuntu release. As such the distribution never really forked. This resulted in making the base between the two systems almost identical and it guaranteed full compatibility between the two operating systems"
That sounds exactly like a fork to me. There are forks of chromium that add some feature and when new chromium releases come out they patch it back in; just because a project continues to track the original projects patches doesn't mean its not a fork. Just because the vast majority of the code base is identical doesn't make it not a fork.
Besides, the default meaning of "it's not a fork" would be "it's unrelated" not "it's even more closely related than a fork". Simply stating "Mint isn't a fork of Ubuntu" is a totally misleading statement.
In case you didn't notice,I quoted text from the Linux Mint wikipedia page which you said it indicated it's a fork.Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks it's not.
Forking Ubuntu and rebasing code every single release on a new Ubuntu release are two different things.
Linux Mint is not a Ubuntu fork neither are other distributions that are based on Ubuntu.Same thing goes for Debian or Chromium.They are just spin-offs (excluding the Ubuntu-Debain relationship of course)
Also the default meaning of "it's not a fork" is "it's not a fork".
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] threadI also really like certain KDE applications, especially Amarok (the music player). Okular is also pretty good--at the very least, I like it more than Evince.
I've been using KDE on Fedora for a while now, and I've been entirely happy with it. I'm switching over to a much more minimal XMonad setup now, but that's a different story and a much larger shift.
BTW, how do you manage wireless networks and stuff?
"Version 2.0 "Barbara" was based on Ubuntu 6.10, using its package repositories and using it as a codebase. From there, Linux Mint followed its own codebase, building each release from its previous one but it continued to use the package repositories from the latest Ubuntu release. As such the distribution never really forked. This resulted in making the base between the two systems almost identical and it guaranteed full compatibility between the two operating systems"
Besides, the default meaning of "it's not a fork" would be "it's unrelated" not "it's even more closely related than a fork". Simply stating "Mint isn't a fork of Ubuntu" is a totally misleading statement.
Forking Ubuntu and rebasing code every single release on a new Ubuntu release are two different things.
Examples of forks: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI1N... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTgxM... http://www.osnews.com/story/24957/Plan_9_Forked_Continues_as...
Linux Mint is not a Ubuntu fork neither are other distributions that are based on Ubuntu.Same thing goes for Debian or Chromium.They are just spin-offs (excluding the Ubuntu-Debain relationship of course)
Also the default meaning of "it's not a fork" is "it's not a fork".