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Arch user trying out lightweight desktop environments (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey hey people. Relatively new Arch user here, but not new to Linux in general. I've been using Arch with KDE Plasma on this HP laptop from 2013, and I've been enjoying it a lot after spending a long time on Mint/Cinnamon.

But, I've noted that KDE is a bit slow on this machine, and is probably a bit too much. Earlier today, I decided to try out something lighter, and installed LXQt on it as a second DE. The experience was okay, with much improved responsiveness, a nice customizable retro look, and overall simpleness that still did the job mostly. But I also ran into a few issues that probably had to do with having two different DEs on the same machine and user. One thing in particular ended up annoying me so much I went back to KDE: The Discover app would just refuse to play nice with setting a dark theme on the rest of the environment, even when I tried setting it up with qt6ct.

So now I'm considering going to XFCE instead, as I probably should have done from the beginning. I just wish it had Wayland support already (I know it's being worked on). Do you have any suggestions or tips for me in regards to this? I'm sure a lot of people will recommend their favorite tiling WM which I'm not sure I want to get into.

Also, other than that, upon returning to KDE, I found that my Discover would crash when trying to update Flatpaks (the only thing I install through it) and started thinking this experiment somehow broke it.... but it's Flatpak itself that seems to have an issue today. Might have to do with the latest curl update? Dunno if I should make a separate thread for that. https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-discover-broken-with-latest-curl-update/21475

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Tiling WM that you are not sure you want to get into: Sway. It's a great alternative to i3 IMO.

What I use when I care to put in the effort of setting something up in great detail: Enlightenment. Some may argue that it's not "lightweight", but you can readily include only the bits you want, and avoid things like network config guis and system tray apps or whatever it is that you don't want. Even when you're using "all the things" which is not technically "lightweight" what it IS is performant. Oh, it's also very pretty.