[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Slightly OT] What Desktop Environment is the most X11-friendly now?

On 11/26/25 9:58 PM, Bruce Steers wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 at 13:32, Lily White <lilywhite2005@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:lilywhite2005@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: 

    Hi

    Gambas still works abysmally on Wayland, and wayland is also breaking
    for me elsewhere, so I'm thinking of switching back to X11. However,
    most major DEs like GNOME have already abolished X11, or will do so in
    the next few releases.

    What DE is, comparatively, still treating X11 as first-class citizens?
    What is your recommendation?

    (Although, with X11 I'd need to fight with fractional scaling, but
    that's another story)

    Lily
I've always used MATE because i am a fan of the old Gnome2 way of doing things. 
So my personal preference would recommend MATE.
When Gnome2 was abolished for gnome3 it created 2 new Gnome2 forks, MATE and Cinnamon.  (the Gnome2 die=hards) Cinnamon is now doing wayland (experimental) but MATE has yet to move towards it.
But i would not count x11 as fully out yet.  gnome3 was supposed to replace Gnome2 but community interests developed 2 new DEs instead so in a way Gnome2 did not vanish completely, it evolved into 2 new things. I suspect a similar fate for x11. it's popularity and preference to wayland will probably keep it alive and developers interests happy. 

Respects
BruceS
I dabbled with MATE for a while back but I didn't get how to configure it for my workflow. I was used to the windows way of Meta Key + type program name + launch. But the mate panel is hard to configure. Also, I didn't quite get how to make fractional scaling work on MATE (my laptop needs a 133%).
Cinnamon managed to get fractional scaling sane on X11, but it is too tightly tied to Mint. 

It is going OT now but I'll definitely learn more about MATE now.

Lily