What does everyone think about these "new" desktop environments for Linux? I personally haven't tried GNOME 3, but I found Unity to be pretty good, but nowhere near as good as good ol' GNOME 2.

Thoughts?

Unity isn't at all a desktop environment. It's just a shell for GNOME. 2nd, GNOME 3 isn't designed only for Linux. It's also available for *BSD.

I guess I could have worded that better lol... I was just wondering what people thought about it.

I personally enjoy Unity, especially with the upgrades present in the 11.10 install I'm currently running. It feels much more intuitive to me than GNOME ever did. It just makes sense and it stays out of my way. I didn't like GNOME 3, though. I don't know exactly how to put it, but something about its setup just rubbed me the wrong way.

Yeah, I didn't mind Unity when I tested the LiveCD of 11.04, but, from what I saw of GNOME 3 in LinuxFormat, it didn't look too good...

GNOME 3 is just....hard to use. I know people complain about Unity being a touch-optimized interface, but GNOME 3 is like trying to use an iPad on my desktop. It just doesn't work for me. Also, you should check out the new Unity version in 11.10. The look has changed slightly, and its function is much more polished.

One of the biggest problems with Unity (3D) is the fact that it requires such new hardware, specifically graphics with 3D acceleration. Gnome 3 to me is just garbage.

The glory of Linux is its universal ability to be used on any hardware that still runs. I run it on several old Compaq ProLiant servers (Pentium II) and it makes them fly. But the last thing I want is to have to use a different DE with every computer. At least with Gnome 2 (and KDE - which I hate) you get a consistent DE across all flavors of Linux, regardless of whether I run a debian-based, redhat-based or any of the others.

Unity 2D on my netbook works,but that is a specific function computer, not one that would be used for work, or even all day play.

I really like Unity 3d, but in 11.04 an unstable version of Compiz is used that uses a lot of memory over a short time. Hopefully this gets fixed in 11.10, so Unity will be more usable.

In 11.10 Unity is much more resource-efficient. I've been using it for over a month.

unity in general is seems quite buggy still, i dont really mind gnome 3 much, but gnome 2 remains my favorite

I agree, GNOME 2 is my favorite, but XFCE is a close second, mainly because you can jam cram it with eye candy and it will still run pretty fast.

GNOME 2 is the best. I don't like GNOME 3

Like on this site http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTAwMjY

Gnome 3 just needs a little tweaking, I like it fine. You have to install the gnome-tweak-tool after that you can turn on and off different things.
I also install avant-window-navigator awn-extras-applets and you wind up with a nice Desktop.
You can also install a regular program style menu.
Using Fedora 16

See, I find un-shelled GNOME 3 to be kinda clunky and unwieldy. I'm not saying it's BAD, but like Unity, it's clearly got some issues.

I like the look of LXDE on Lubuntu.

Has anyone used MATE? I have seen it being integrated as part of Mint 12 to be able to use Gnome 2 (or some fork of?).

Is it actually Gnome 2 or a fork? What about compatibility?

It's a fork of GNOME 2. I have used it. It's alright, I guess. There's nothing particularly good or bad about it that I can identify. AFAIK it's compatible with GNOME 2.x applications.

If using something like Mint 12 which has Gnome 3 and MATE, do you think it will create issues in switching back and forth? I love Gnome 2 but want to give Gnome 3 a chance. Just not ready for an all-in-one switch. Suggestions?

Well.....first, Mint uses a heavily MODIFIED version of GNOME 3 that looks rather similar to a Windows desktop IMHO. If you want to use TRUE GNOME 3 you'd need to go with Fedora or something. But if you're on Mint, and it comes with both desktop environments, then you should be able to log into either one at will without issues, just like I can run both KDE and Unity desktops for Ubuntu on the same machine.

Can I install MATE with Fedora?

I think so. It's probably in their repositories by now. I don't use Fedora myself, so I can't say for sure.

I just think that Unity 3D is very beautiful, but too heavy.

Using Ubuntu 11.10, with Unity 3D, Firefox with some tabs open (Including heavy sites like Gmail, Facebook, Orkut), Eclipse for Java devel, and jDownloader.. well... with an AMD Phenon X4, 4GB of RAM, and a Nvidia 3D card with 512Mb, after 4 hours, you will have more them 4GB of swap in use. And the usability of the machine goes down.

Now, I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 with XFCE4 desktop... and wow... that's really fast... very good to use.

Has anyone tried GNOME Shell with Ubuntu 11.10? It's not too bad really. Also apparently you can install a GNOME 3 version of gnome-panel and get the same UI as GNOME 2.x, but I think it comes as a fallback mode for GNOME Shell... But I agree with paramount, Unity 3D is very, very beautiful, but it does have some drawbacks on performance.

I've tried vanilla GNOME Shell, yes. I found it unusable and went right back to Unity. Of course, the Mint guys are now creating an entirely new GNOME Shell fork with the GNOME 2.x style (as opposed to their current approach of GNOME Shell extensions modifying the look), so I may have to look into that.

Kindof repeating myself - why does it have to be a desktop environment?
IMO most of these things have got just too damn big. When I log in to a Gnome or KDE environment it's got worse than on Windows - I can't really run anything for about a minute.

I may be different from the average user (but, hey, what's this average in the first place?). Spending my day in front of a computer I usually run not more than 7 programs - well, that's a guess, let me count: jabber, mp3 player, web browser, shell window with lots of tabs, text editor. If someone nasty sends me stuff via email I probably also need some kind of Office program. Hey, that's only 6 after all

Now why do those desktop environments waste so much programming effort and system resources on making finding and picking an application out of the zillions installed on the computer as easy as possible? I for sure don't need it.

Admittedly, I'm an eye candy addict. I like to have dedicated wallpapers per workspace, and I appreciate nicely designed UI themes. Also of course I like to have an overview on the time, system status and volume control, but that stuff should not get in the way.

Now having put my criteria here, why should I use a "desktop environment" like Gnome or KDE? I want my memory for applications rather than the environment in which they run. As written in another thread already I find WindowMaker a very good compromise - it is fast and modest in resource usage, looks good, does window managing very well and has a nice configuration panel (I still often prefer editing the configuration files in a text editor, but I don't have to!) and the dock with drag and drop support. Something even MacOS does not provide out of the box: besides the omnipresent dock there's also one that can be filled individually for each workspace.

Admittedly, sometimes I use a 'desktop environment' for a couple of months, mostly out of curiosity (I'm not ideological about this, if something fits my needs any better, then why not use it?), but in the end I've always returned to WindowMaker.