I have tried it on several distros before and it always causes problems because you get a million more packages intermingled with your already installed packages and sometimes you get conflicts or whatever. But it usually messes up my system. is there a safe way to have several desktops installed? or do you pretty much install a new one then remove the old one? thanks

    • Bluefruit@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      What a mood. Im very guilty of not making backups and ruining setups only to have to start all over.

      I’m a fairly new linux user so this is bound to happen again lol.

  • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
    103·
    1 year ago

    Containerization!

    Use either Nix (the package manager) or Distrobox.

    With Distrobox, you can create a few containers, install the favoured DE in each one separated, and use the “distrobox-export -a your-DE” function.

    But I don’t know how seamless it will work, you might have to read into it.

  • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 year ago

    I’m on Slackware, so having 2 different desktop environments and …checks notes… 5 window managers installed is the default.
    I’ve never noticed any conflicts.

    I feel like a lot of frustration and 50% of broken installations could be avoided if people just learnt to ignore installed packages they don’t use, instead of spending valuable time to free worthless amounts of disk space.

    • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      You see, through all my trials I have learned about DE’s and display managers but nothing about window managers… maybe that’s my issue haha

  • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
    4·
    1 year ago

    For me, the only issue I have ever experienced is DEs like to force themes on you, so if I was to log into plasma, it will make the plasma theming default. This means thatvwhen I go bacl to a window manager, I have to change my theme again and oftentimes log out and log back in to ensure my theming is applied.

  • ElRenosaurusReg [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Install the DEs manually instead of from metapackages so ,out don’t end up with their entire software suites being installed. Additionally, probably use Debian instead of Ubuntu if you’re gonna be doing stuff like that, less fingers in the pie make for an easier tinkering experience.

    • dalingrin@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      In my experience the main issue are configuration conflicts not package issues. They’re usually just annoying issues not breaking issues.

    • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      thanks, I’m currently on Debian 12 and tried the whole tasksel method and it’s really neat and all, but it still doesn’t separate all the DE’s. they are all mish mashed and intermingled with each other’s software.

    • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      I have read a little bit about this interesting distro. Haven’t explored it much, though have read a ton of negative and mixed reviews. Isn’t Rhino Linux sorta similar?

      • RotatingParts@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        They are both rolling releases. Rhino is based on Ubuntu and BlendOS is based on Arch. The difference is that Blend OS lets you install software from supported distributions (Arch, Fedora, and Ubuntu) into containers. Rhino (as far as I know) out of the box doesn’t do that.

        • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          good to know, thanks. arch is out of my comfort zone lol though I have ambitions to slowly work my way into it with something easy. I used manjaro years ago and loved it. seems to have a bad rep, but I think their distro is most functional and beautiful, but again, i’m no Arch expert

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    How are you installing the DEs? I’ve consistently had at least 3 DEs on every machine I’ve had for the past decade and never had any issue with it. The secret is that I installed them through the package manager and don’t uninstall parts of it or anything of the sort, they’re there for when needed, I have enough disk space that it’s a non-issue.