I have read many conflicting things, like always. Just wondering if there’s a safe way to use several DE’s on one distro without messing up my damn computer lol I’ve tried it several times and it always messed things up. I’m currently brand new to fedora workstation 38 too btw. Thanks alot
In general it is safe to install as many DEs as you want. There is some overlap between (user) configuration files though which might be annoying.
It should be fine to experiment, but you might need to restore some settings afterwards. For daily use I would just stick to one DE. Personally I don’t think there is really a reason to use multiple DEs as a single user. It would throw me off and mess with my workflow.
Also keep in mind that many DE also provide a set of default tools which add clutter. So you probably want to keep it low for this reason alone.
thanks man, it’s the explorer in me. I nixed that triple boot idea lol so I figured i would choose one distro (fedora 38) and experiement with DE’s instead. it has not been working about great to say the least…
What things are being messed up? You should be able to just install as many DEs as you want without them interfering with each other - just select which you want on the login screen,
is it really that simple? I was trying ways to like separate them or block them from each other
Pretty much, yes but they will interfere in few ways:
- themes setup can get messy at times, but you should be able to easy override the settings
- file associations can be inappropriate
- you’ll have varoius of app suits installed and app menus will have them all
man yoiu would think there’s an easy way to keep the DE’s seperate from one another to avoid any conflictions. without freaking VM damnit lol
I think it was PureOS or some other distros that allowed to run DEs in containers, but I never tried this. It all boils down to the dotfiles in your home. I used to jump between DEs on the same install and it was perfectly viable, just required a little manual work.
Or I wonder about gnome boxes…
What do you mean separate them from each other?
keeping them all from sharing the same files and configs and interfering with each other
Your DM should be able to handle multiple DEs just install from command line and pick which DE you want from the DM.
Thanks, I tried that with deepin on fedora and it was a mess. Maybe it’s just that particular environment causing issues.
What dm are you using and what packages did you install?
As far as I know on my main account I’m running xorg but the separate account with deepin does not specify. I think default is Wayland
I tried installing several times per different guides. I’ll do my best to remember
Sudo dnf install “deepin desktop”
Sudo dnf install @deepin-desktop-environment
Sudo dnf group install “deepin desktop”
Probably one more I can’t remember
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If you want DEEPIN:
Update your system:
sudo dnf upgrade --refreshInstall it:
sudo dnf group install "Deepin Desktop"And then after for change reboot your system You can do it from the terminal like:
sudo rebootIf you want GNOME try:
sudo dnf group install “GNOME Desktop Environment”Although if:
sudo dnf group list hidden -v |grep -i gnomereturns nothing it won’t workIf your using gdm you can select DEs like:
It might be you don’t have the group for deepin so it wouldn’t be useless to try grepping for it.
Vim
Shouldn’t do much if you only have 1 other desktop. For example I used Pop!_OS for years which comes with Gnome, but I MUCH prefer KDE Plasma so I had that installed the whole time and just never touched Gnome (it was still there, removing it would have broken stuff).
and it doesn’t cause anything funny with conflicting packages and settings? I’ve read that it does
I have kind of messed some things up by installing KDE on my Fedora that already has Gnome. This was almost a year ago, now. I would not advise doing this. It is a bigger hassle than it was worth, and I’m just looking forward to a free moment when I can wipe and clean install.
Thanks, but how does one utilize or even explore other DEs within a distro without messing things up? is it just not possible or am I going about it wrong?
I’ve seen advice before that creating a new user account and using that to log into multiple DEs is an option.
Tried that but didn’t work. Maybethere’s specific tweaks I have to make first?
That’s a bit vague. What did you try, and what didn’t work?
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What’s wrong with being DE fluid? Some days I identify with cinnamon, some days with plasma. System76 has a page on tips to switch between different ones in Pop OS once you get bored of GNOME (immediately). Might be some advice that carries over to other distros.
@OP: https://support.system76.com/articles/desktop-environment/
I kinda want to move to sway/hyprland, am currently using Gnome frankensteined into a tiling WM
From what I hear you get a barely functional system to begin with though and I do like that everything in gnome just works as expected and doesn’t require me to set it up
I wish I had the time to learn more about modifying gnome. I like what nobara did with it but I miss desktop widgets too much. pop’s version lets you categorize your apps into their own folders which is such a breath of fresh air. but true it does just work. default gnome for me is really only good for for x11 compatability issues though
Fair enough. I like 90% of what gnome do by default, they just make it very difficult to do the remaining 10% yourself
wanting to is there something wrong with wanting to explore different DE’s?
Gnome developers had the genius idea that a session cannot be locked when GDM is not the login manager, so using GDM is basically a requirement for real-world scenarios outside VMs.
Often distributions have some sort of meta package that installs everything related to that desktop, including many applications. Better install the session package and the file manager package and go from there.
I don’t have this issue on Arch Linux with SDDM, Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce.
on Arch Linux
OP uses Fedora.
Aaah. Fedora recommends GDM anyhow I think, even for Plasma. I imagine they might be packaging things differently given how GNOME is the default (and the distro has a default) DM.
I haven’t had much issue installing multiple.
The biggest problem I’ve had is if you then want to uninstall one. Usually have to start over.
Something like nixos might be able to handle that much better.
Man I tried to install the DDE over the fedora workstation and it just did not look right at all. I couldn’t even view any apps as the app menu was completely blurrred. Nothing look like it should have looked with deepin
Can confirm have switched around DEs quite a bit on my NixOS machine
Only concern is config files get left over, switching from pantheon to gnome caused some settings to get messed up (pantheon is based on gnome and also uses gsettings)
Though that’s not a concern if you embrace it fully and do all your gnome config declaratively
I’m an ultra-noob, so those who know more please correct me.
I’m playing with Linux VMs and recently I installed Debian to check it out. When it asked what DE I wanted, I chose all of them :).
The only hard conflict (AFAIK) is the [compontent / feature responsible for loging in] (I don’t know the technical term). Because each DE comes with a different one, you need to choose one.
What I found very confusing in practice is that I could see some DE apps and configuration settings from other DEs. So, unless you know what belongs to what, it’s a bit of a mess (in my VERY limited experience).
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Move to silverblue/kinoite and when the urge to use another DE just rebase the OStree to the other branch - Silverblue for Gnome, Kinoite for KDE, Sericea for sway, Vauxite for xfce and there are some other not yet official branches for other DEs on Quay
