the corner office : tech blog

I spend most of my time in Windows but I do have a couple of Linux VMs which I fire up as and when I want/need them. I switched to Xfce when Ubuntu came out with Unity, and it's served me well ever since.

But I do like to look and play around occasionally. I was feeling a bit bored tonight and wasted a few hours playing around with the latest and greatest in Linux desktops.

• (worth throwing in that I fired up a live DVD of the latest Ubuntu recently. Don't like Gnome 3 at all. Just no.)

• I read about elementary OS and Pantheon. I installed it. I didn't like it either. Same thing. I don't like the dock on the bottom of the screen and the top of the screen seems a waste with a few widgetey things and the 'Activities' menu (iirc). No right-click on the desktop. Just no.

• I installed Ubuntu MATE and Mint MATE. I tried Mint in 2012, fell out of love with it very quickly for some reason, and haven't made friends with it since. What about MATE itself? I liked it, it feels old-Gnomish (which is rather the point). At rest Mint used about 600MB and Ubuntu used about 660MB. I liked the feel of Mint slightly more (menu set-up etc), but there wasn't much between them. I could probably use and get to like MATE.

• I tried Solus Budgie but didn't get far. The installer didn't give English UK as an option, and the interface felt a bit sluggish (moreso than others). I saw it was Gnome/Unity-ish from the outset, so didn't bother going further.

• finally, I tried Bhodi Linux, which provides a fork of Enlightenment called Moksha. I installed it. The interface is interesting, with mouse pointers lighting up and the like. You get a sense that you could get into a parallel world of interesting user experience if you gave it the time. But... no.