KDE vs XFCE [2]

So I have been testing some VMs to see how things compare with different GUIs running on Linux.

First tryout has been KDE running on Kubuntu. So far so good. The right click issue hasn’t gone away but drag and drop looks good.

Second tryout was LXQT with Kwin running on Debian. This isn’t a supported option from the install, you have to install something else first (or no GUI) and then install LXQT. It took a few goes to find the right packages, the ones I installed in the end were LXQT, Kwin and task-lxqt-desktop. The last one pulled in a lot of other software, but was the only way I could get the system to boot up to a KDE login window. However the drag and drop issue is still very much live in LXQT in this configuration. So I have shut down this VM and will not use it again. 

Third tryout is Debian with KDE from the standard installer options. Having got this VM going it seems to work reasonably well. With both of the KDE VMs which I am using simultaneously to do the aerial photography layers, things look roughly the same but they need more testing to see what the issues are. I intend to work as much as I can in these VMs over the coming weeks to see how well they work and whether they resolve these XFCE issues. But I also intend to have a look at XFCE settings to see if there are any that can resolve these issues.

I have decided against installing KDE as a replacement on my mainpc for now because it is so different from XFCE that a huge learning curve and setting everything up from scratch is needed should I reinstall with it. It does also seem to be fairly bloated with some of the installations on the VMs being very slow with tons of files to install. Using it in a VM is a useful workaround if running it natively under XFCE is difficult but there are XFCE settings that control the drag and drop and playing with these seems to be one avenue I can explore for now.

Subsequent testing in VMs has also confirmed the issues are not resolved by using KDE instead of XFCE so I plan to stick with XFCE and the KDE experiment is officially over for now.

I am also rearranging the screens with the second screen for mediapc, which is on the left, swapping places with the only screen for win10pc, which is on the right. This will let me use win10pc’s own Microsoft multimedia keyboard on its own and thus have all four keyboards easy to use, where it sits currently on the right it is too far away to use easily, but I can use the spare keyboard slide on the left (that is actually normally used for my drinking cup) for the MS keyboard being easily within reach. So then using the Win10pc as a fourth computer alongside the other three without switching keyboards becomes much more straightforward. When not in use the keyboard will still be stored on the right as I don’t use this computer very much with the MS keyboard, I generally use it with one of the switchable keyboards, but there have been times when I want to use all four computers at the same time and having Win10pc’s keyboard on the left and screen on the right isn’t very user friendly. This also dispenses finally with the ideas about having an extra sliding shelf of some form or another on the right, I won’t be doing any such thing now, what is on the right are the two KVMs and the scanner and these will remain unchanged.