Trisquel-Mini Desktop Environment
Just out of curiosity, what DE was chosen for Trisquel-Mini 8? I did a search on this site and a web search, but couldn't find anything.
I intend to test Trisquel-Mini once I've tested the standard T8 release. If it's LXDE/QT, I think I'll stick with the Mate DE of standard. I've found LXDE a bit too restrictive, and I'm sceptical about whether I'd enjoy LXQT any better, unless it's substantially more evolved than the last LXDE I tested (Peppermint 3).
I'd still love to see a Trisquel-Mini based on a version of the Enlightenment DE, whether a recent version (E22 just came out recently), or an E17 fork like the Moksha DE developed for Bodhi.
https://www.enlightenment.org/
http://www.bodhilinux.com/
LXDE
But anyway you are of course free to install your favourite desktop using apt, simply you are not forced to be stuck at LXDE if uncomfortable. I would like to recommend LXQt.
gd_scania
>> But anyway you are of course free to install your favourite desktop using apt
<<
Sure, in theory, but sometimes this works better than others. Installing OpenBox has always worked on any distro I've done it on, but installing E17 on Trisquel left me with a semi-broken E17. It seems to me that the more different the new DE you install is from the default one on the distro, and the fewer components it shares under the hood, the more likely it is to create problems when installed on that distro.
LXDE is OpenBOX. Add obconf and obmenu.
sudo apt install obconf obmenu
sudo pacman -Su --noconfirm --needed openbox obconf-qt plasma ark dolphin-root --assume-installed discover # Parabola
sudo apt install -y openbox-kde-session obconf-qt ark dolphin # Trisquel
You can also install Openbox/KDE session. That's much less resources-hungry than standard Plasma.
BTW Trisquel-Mini was given a positive review in this list of lightweight GNU-Linux distros, published in Feb, 2018:
https://thishosting.rocks/best-lightweight-linux-distros/amp/
I presume they tested the Belenos version of Mini, and it will be interesting to see how the Flidas release compares.
Given that it's been discontinued, I'm guessing something will replace Midori as the default web browser in Flidas Mini? Midori was one of the main things that put me off LXDE. Installing standard ABrowser or IceCat not only looked weird, but added a lot of the weight back on that one uses Mini to avoid in the first place.
Finally got a live session of Mini up and running, and I have to say - with all due respect to the hard work of the Trisquel devs - that I'm very disappointed to see that Mini is not only still using LXDE as the DE (given it's being discontinued in favour of LXQT), but that it's still using Midori as the browser. I've tried using Midori many times, in many different distros running LXDE. It's never convinced me it is a mature project, which is an important criteria for a browser given the security issues of the web, and now on top of that it's also a dead project. I'm hoping to see radical rethink of Mini during T9 devevelopment.
Dnt worry which I'm making few Parabola mini graphical ISO for you including LXQt, Liri, Enlightenment, Xfce, wm-only ones and so on.
Most of most ISO are brought to you with QupZilla as the default browser, which I need to intro my Qt small world advocate here.
> https://www.enlightenment.org/
I used Enlightenment for a while. Its support for dynamic tiling eventually led me to i3, but unlike i3 Enlightenment isn't scary to beginners. The only problems I recall were that it seemed buggy and crashy in general (to be fair, I was using Arch at the time) and that systray did not work and I could find no other way to use nm-applet without something ugly like stalonetray. It seems that Enlightenment assumes you will use Connman instead of NetworkManager, and I could not get Connman many WiFi connections, including that at my university. Other than that I liked Enlightenment.
Bohdi is not libre, correct? Do you know if Moshka itself is libre, and if so have you tried it? If it is stable, shares Enlightenment's tiling functionality, and plays nice with NetworkManager I may try building it.
Mason, the problems you describe with using E17 on Arch sounds very similar to the issues I struck running it on Belenos (both main and Mini). You're correct that Bodhi is not a libre distro, and this is not a priority for Jeff (I asked on the Bodhi forums). However, AFAIK Moksha itself is entirely libre. Code is available here:
https://github.com/JeffHoogland/moksha
Moksha's purpose is essentially to do the same thing for E17 that Cinammon/ Mate did for GNOME 2, so I presume the tiling functionality and NetworkManager will be similar to what you saw in E17, but with more active maintenance and a focus on improve UX. See:
https://mokshadesktop.github.io/
The best is to just install Enlightenment wm in your Parabola, Devuan, or Trisquel systems. yes Bodhi is nonfree.
Yes I would like to make few desktop ISO including Enlightenment as an option, installing your favourite desktop using Calamares brought to you by Parabola.
"The best is to just install Enlightenment wm in your Parabola, Devuan, or Trisquel systems."
As both Mason and I have said in previous comments, installing E17 in Trisquel results in a broken user experience. I can't speak for Parabola or Devuan, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same is true. Moksha, the DE used in Bodhi, which was created to fix the UX fails in E17 and maintain a usable DE going forward, is not available from the Trisquel Belenos repos AFAICT.
> I can't speak for
> Parabola
I expect the experience with Enlightenment in Parabola to be the same as that in Arch, which was not very good. At the time Arch/Parabola had E21, so maybe E22 is better, but I found it to be much more buggy and crashy than E17 in Trisquel.
See the Moksha homepage link I shared a few comments back. Jeff's stance is that the Enlightenment devs are far more concerned with scratching their own itches than producing software that works for end users. Admittedly they are genius scratchers, whose scratching has produced some amazing components. But Jeff decided there needed to be a DE that did for Enlightenment what Ubuntu did for desktop Debian, or what BackDrop did for Drupal 8; make it work smoothly for people who want to use their computers to get work done, not endlessly tinker with their software. That's why he forked E17 to create Moksha, and I'm guessing he introduces elements into Moksha from the more recent versions of Enlightenment software as it becomes stable enough to work reliably.
If you enjoy wm instead of general DE like Plasma, GNOME, MATE then you are free to match your favourite wm with LXQt, that General DE force you to run their built-in wm. Thus LXQt is the future for the later DE that you're free to match your own wm and the shell itself (LXQt for here) is enough small. :)
Unlike us, most people are not interested in endlessly tinkering with their OS. That's why distros exist, so people can install a standard set of software, and just get on with the work they want to use their computer for. It's also the reason most people don't even know how (re-)install an OS at all. Trisquel-Mini 9 needs to work out-of-the-box, with a set of maintained software that uses significantly less resources than Mate. The question is not "can people achieve that by swapping out this or that component from vanilla Mini 9", the question is what software can we choose to make vanilla Mini 9 fit for purpose again (unlike Mini 8)?
So both for Parabola/OpenRC, Devuan, Trisquel, there are 5 choices of live installers,
LXQt: many wm available; Falkon (browser); Trojita (Qt mail); Telegram desktop (if any); Quassel (Qt IRC)
MATE mini: Epiphany (GNOME web); Balsa (GNOME mails); Telegram desktop (if any); Polari (GNOME IRC)
Xfce: Epiphany; Trojita; Telegram desktop (if any); Quassel
Openbox/KDE: ObConf-Qt; Falkon; Trojita; Telegram desktop (enforced); Quassel; LibreOffice
MATE extra: Epiphany; Balsa; Telegram desktop (enforced); Polari; LibreOffice
Afaik there's only two choices of live installers for Trisquel. Mini (LXDE) and regular (MATE).
What am I missing?
Yes Enlightenment in Parabola is now already E22.
I tried LXQt (Fedora spin). It has Qupzilla, which is Falkon now in the latest update (not yet in Fedora 26).
Fedora LXDE 26 is the same as Trisquel Mini. Midori and the same age old interface. It looks awfully outdated when compared to LXQt.
I'm not sure what to think. LXQt is a KDE lookalike. It has Plasma desktop and Falkon (ex-Qupzilla, the browser) is a KDE project. I think it must be a lot more resource-hungry.
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/share-your-desktop-6#comment-130564
Wow! LXQT actually looks really nice, much more modern than the last LXDE I looked at a couple of years ago.
loldier:
> "LXQt is a KDE lookalike. It has Plasma desktop and Falkon (ex-Qupzilla, the browser) is a KDE project. I think it must be a lot more resource-hungry."
Ae, I think rather than just migrating Trisquel-Mini 9.0 to LXQT because it the successor to LXDE, and potentially ending up with a Mini that actually uses more resources than the Mate version, we need to figure out a way to do some benchmarking of the various desktops. If we come up with a way to rank them according to resource use while idling (looking at use of RAM, CPU etc), we can pick one that is significantly lighter than Mate, while still being usable for basic purposes, including web browsing.
It's probably also a good time to take stock of the default application set in Mini, just as we did for the Flidas release of the main distro.
Being an KDE project for Falkon just doesn't ensure it to be too bloat, and honestly Falkon just need a few Plasma deps. An OSM (OpenStreetMap) editor named Marble, also has 2 channels, one is Plasma-independent and another one is Plasma-integrated. I'm happy editing my OSM buses instructions using Marble-Qt (Plasma-independent channel), https://parabola.nu/packages/marble-qt.
Running Plasma with Openbox is also recommended to you, and you would also like to run smaller Qt-written apps instead of own ones from KDE. Just like,
QTerminal instead of K0ns01e,
Trojita instead of KMai1,
JuffEd instead of Kate or Kwrite,
PCManFM-Qt instead of Dolphin,
finally Falkon instead of old-school KDE browsers,
and Marble-Qt instead of Plasma-integrated orginal Marble. :)
I am a translator!
>benchmarking
Well, take a very old laptop and then install all the DEs you want to bench in whatever order and just use them briefly. Then the last one you install is LXDE, you stop and you exclaim, quite shocked: geee, this LXDE runs like hell!
LXDE FTW, no doubt. But try it on very old hardware, seriously.
Ancient hardware just like whose processors are ia64, mips64, ppc64, sparc64, or i386, i486, i586 etc???
(DUPLICATE REPLY TO BE IGNORED)
LXDE is a dead project (as is Midori). So the question is, what is the best DE to replace it for Trisquel-Mini 9? Mini needs to strike a balance between being user-friendly for noobs, which is what we want Trisquel to be know for, and running smoothly on older hardware (given a specific set of minimum recommended specs).
SuperTramp83:
> "Well, take a very old laptop and then install all the DEs you want to bench in whatever order and just use them briefly."
This is a review, not a benchmark. Benchmarking requires some objectivity, and being able to consistently measure the resource usage of each candidate, using the same set of measuring tools.
Is the resource consumption of the desktop environment that significant? In 2013, https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/a-memory-comparison-of-light-linux-desktops/ found that MATE takes 42 MB of main memory right after entering the session. How many opened websites does it translate to, nowadays? Half maybe?
That's the best to make LXQt, MATE, Xfce to be the desktops for upcoming Trisquel mini, with Falkon browser, i.e. there are Trisquel LXQt mini, Trisquel MATE mini, Trisquel Xfce mini available.
For the Trisquel full, Openbox/KDE is also nice, also with Falkon as browser, Trojita as mail, LibreOffice as office suite. :)
Here, I also need to get help here for cooking ISO installers, which I'm interested in cooking them to promote our free software movement. :)
RAM usage is only one criteria. There's also what the DE requires of the CPU while idling, the graphics chips etc. It's precisely because the apps people use these days have such high resource demands (including those delivered via browser), that it's important for the DE to deliver what the user requires of it, with the smallest resource footprint possible. This is especially true if we want to be able to back up the claim that GNU-Linux runs well on older hardware.
I am a translator!
>LXDE is a dead project
It's everything but dead on my supersmooth laptop. My laptop flies, just like superman, but better.