I have tried it on several distros before and it always causes problems because you get a million more packages intermingled with your already installed packages and sometimes you get conflicts or whatever. But it usually messes up my system. is there a safe way to have several desktops installed? or do you pretty much install a new one then remove the old one? thanks

  • michaelmrose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I always find suggestions that this will cause trouble curious I’ve been hearing this since 2003 when it might have been at least sort of true but didn’t have trouble with it then or now. I use i3wm but I like to play with and test different environments. I presently have gnome cinnamon mate plasma sway compiz, and wayfire installed. What do you imagine this is going to somehow screw up.

    • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      11 months ago

      the issue I’ve found is that the software that comes with each DE just all gets lumped together with every other installed DE, so there’s obviously probably conflicting software/programs. Idk how to keep each DE separate from one another, almost containerized, so when you log into Gnome, you don’t have KDE, Mate, Xfce, etc. aspects all intermingling with your Gnome environment. Idk that’s how I’ve been seeing it

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Nemo is the file manager for cinnamon. Dolphin is the file manager for plasma. Although they perform the same task their executables are on different paths as are their files. You could install 10,000 packages and never find a conflicting file save literal forks of the same project which your package manager will tell you about if you install both A an B. An example would be i3 a window manager, and i3-gaps a now depreciated fork of i3 which provides, you guessed it, gaps between windows.

        There is no reason to believe installing 17 different environments would conflict let alone 2. There is no need whatsoever to keep anything separate from one another nor is there any reason to believe one would interfere with another.

        • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          11 months ago

          Thanks for the info. I always sorta assumed all the environments programs are compatible no matter which environment you’re using within your distro. i guess my gripe is the clutter. when i wanna use say Mate, i want a pure mate experience with only Mate traits, settings, apps, programs instead of all the other environment aspects being lumped in there too. just my preference I guess

          • michaelmrose@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            There really isn’t any such thing as a “pure mate experience” for instance normal install likely contains VLC/Smplayer for multimedia, libre office for office docs, and firefox or chromium for web browsing. Not only are none of these mate apps most users probably spend most of their time using apps like these than their file manager.

            Then if you look at the other mate apps. Mate Terminal is hardly the best terminal nor is Atril the best pdf viewer. Kitty is a better terminal and zathura and Okular are both better PDF readers. Pluma is a mediocre text editor.

            The useful parts of an env are its settings menu, window manager, bar, and file manager. Pick one you like and then pick useful apps to go with it.