I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
Gnome is a good desktop environment but between Gnome, KDE and Xfce I find Gnome the heaviest. While the difference may not be drastic on newer systems, on my older systems (I think 7+ years old at the youngest) small differences can be noticeable.
KDE surprised me when I tried Neon and it clocked in around 700MB idle. More than Xfce but less than Gnome (both by ~ 200MB). More significantly the lag in how long actions take is more significant with Gnome. I can use a stopwatch to time how long it takes for the Dash to open, with animations off. I don't get the same slow-down in the other environments.
Gnome does, however, have a lot of positive features and feels comfortable. I prefer a number of GTK applications over their Qt equivalent and the idea of features such as Online Accounts.
Gnome definitely benefits from the breadth of extensions available from helpful utility to fun add -on.
I look forwards to seeing what the folks at Ubuntu bring into the fold for Gnome.
This is always a difficult decision and one I usually cannot stick with for long .. :) If I don't change distro, sometimes I'll just change the desktop environment.
I tend to go between Gnome, Xfce and KDE.
In Gnome I like the Online Account (theoretically, haven't gotten it to fully work yet, but that is coming to KDE as well soon).
KDE is nice and I was surprised when KDE neon clocked in around 700MB when idling. Just some of the apps don't work how I like them compared to some GTK applications.
Unfortunately my systems are not getting any younger so Xfce is my fallback. It's lighter than even KDE (at around 500MB), uses the familiar GTK apps and is more customizable than either of the other two.
Then again, if somebody gave me a more powerful system than I currently have and it came with a distro and a desktop then I would go with THAT for a while.