On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:00,  <tclug-list-request at mn-linux.org> wrote:
> Send tclug-list mailing list submissions to
>        tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> Today's Topics:
>
>   2. Migrating from Windows, barrier 1: DEs (Andrew Berg)


Okay so you would rather be forced to have NO DE choice and no way to
change it and something that breaks rather consistently?  Thought
not..

Linux is about choice.... so if you don't particularly like ALL of
Gnome, which I think is quite jamming and worked from day 1 of it's
release versus KDE4 total mismanagement and Alpha ware. And you don't
like all of KDE4, and you don't like all of LXDE. Choose the parts you
want! KDE apps run on Gnome, Gnome apps run on KDE, all of it
ultimately is just a pretty face for /usr/bin/blah when it comes down
to it making it look pretty for you. NO desktop except the tilers and
plain TTY is 'light'; ya I'm gonna get $hit on that but unused RAM is
wasted RAM and drive space is cheap so I hate the whining I always
hear from people about it.

Though that "recycling" old computers is great! It still is
contributing to running machines that are full of toxic waste -- think
ROHS, think Mercury free, we should be getting out of our homes; it is
full of excessive energy use that raises energy bills more so cooling
costs in the summer; and does not run at ideal operating efficiency.
People aren't going to buy junk. It's great if you want to get stuff
to someone that has none; but the above will still be applying. The
newer mother boards, LED monitors and lighting of all sorts, scanners,
PSU's, sensors and OS's along with their apps are designed to run as a
unit the help perpetuate the above.

I have tried at least 30, yes 30! DE/WM's  So the only barriers are
honestly imaginary.  The apps you might not get working will be those
you place in VM appliances or WINE. YMMV. Some DE/WM you really just
won't want to mess around with because of at least in my eyes when you
install a DE it should have its mouse, keyboard, printer, drive
mountings and nic card at a minimum working.

I encourage you run in terminal as much as you can sometimes pkill
firefox is the only way to stop run away javascript/flash etc versus
having to hard shutdown a machine because ctrl-alt-del or
ctrl-alt-prntscr r-e-i-s-u-b won't work; and lose data. If that is a
critical work environment it's just not acceptable.

gk