caja VS mate-optimus

I don't know if you are DE shopping, but I've been very happy for the past few years with the MATE Desktop Environment, which "...is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems."

https://mate-desktop.org/

Among a great number of things I really like, I will mention that Caja, the MATE version of GNOME 2's Nautilus file manager, still can still be switched to spatial mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager

Generally speaking, I too really liked GNOME 2.32 and its predecessors, and, as far as I'm concerned, MATE is as it describes itself.

I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation.

However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design...

https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo...

https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910

https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...

MATE

Mate https://mate-desktop.org/ would be decent for GTK apps. https://www.gtk.org

Arch devs endorsing MATE 😮

> Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM that takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces, expo mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and gives them a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's aesthetics, with minimal compositing that can run fast on hardware as minimal as a prototype RISC-V board. Or really, what we need is a truly minimal DE. Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and stays lean.

Mate desktop environment in my opinion comes closest to the simplicity of the Windows 95/GNOME 2 environments of the old: https://mate-desktop.org/.

Not sure how hardware-frugal it is since maintaining it under GTK 2 was not feasible and it's now developed against GTK 3 (with still maintaining the look and feel of GNOME 2).

Some people deliberately put mate on their PCs.

I have been using MATE for a couple of years now on an Intel Mac mini and it works... mostly. Things I am not a fan of: 1) Snap packages. For anyone that chimes in about how wonderful they are I have yet to see any evidence of that and, please, do show me how you launch OpenShot Video Editor because, well, it doesn't. 2) X-Windows. I'm sorry, but this should be brain-dead simple as running xhost+ on the device you want to receive the X application on, ssh to the other machine with -Y -C flags so you don't have to set the display variable (and you get compression) and then launch the application and it appears on the desktop session you are using. I've been doing this with UNIX machines since the first week I used one in 1992 or so (only I used telnet and set my display instead of using ssh but that's not the point). Anyway, it should work but almost never does without a mind-numbing around my crap to deal with. I keep a Raspberry Pi 4 running just for this purpose oh and ... 3) VNC. Should work. Does not without a lot of tinkering. Also 4) I recall that I had to take some extra steps so that users on the same MATE box could not see the contents of one another's home directories but this was a while back. The fact that it was ever set to allow users on the same system to view the contents of each other's home directories was and is insane.

when I started out, I used red hat, Suse linux, and then finally I jumped to Ubuntu, when they killed gnome and rolled out their new GUI later, I switched to Ubuntu Mate, with xfce alternatively installed. And then later came MINT. which is based on ubuntu anyway.

Prepare a blank USB stick with a copy of Ubuntu (write the ISO to the USB stick with Rufus)

Ubuntu MATE (simple, well maintained, has the Ubuntu ecosystem support and should work well)

Linux Mint has its advantages, but your title doesn't make sense when there's Ubuntu MATE.

(btw: since the PC is older I would reccommend Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu as those come with a lighter Desktop)

You can always change desktops later to Cinnamon or MATE or XFCE. If you want to try those desktops on your USB drive, you can download Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu and try them on USB, just like you're currently doing.

My experience has been that Ubuntu's Gnome DE is somewhat less suitable to older computers than Ubuntu "official flavors" with lighter DE's -- Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Kubuntu (KDE Plasma DE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE), and Xubuntu (XFCE DE) -- all of which use somewhat less resources than the Gnome DE.

Consider looking at several of the Ubuntu official flavors -- Kubuntu (Plasma DE), Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE). I wouldn't bother with Lubuntu (LXQT DE) unless you need a lightweight distro, because the LXQT DE is not as mainstream or well-supported as the others.

Based on recent experience helping a handful of friends move from Windows to Linux, I suggest starting with an official Ubuntu flavor (Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu, Xbuntu, Ubuntu Mate) 22.04 LTS release, picking which ever desktop environment appeals to you. Official Ubuntu flavors are the Ubuntu OS layer with standard but different desktop environments.