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

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    161·
    11 months ago

    I’ve never had trouble with package conflicts. You get duplicates for just about every built-in application (password managers/calculators/calendars/etc.) if you install all the recommends, but they should all work together as long as you don’t enable foreign PPAs and other known conflicting package sources like that.

    I tried KDE a while back and it seems to add a boatload of services and tools, so when I went back to Gnome I removed leftovers for weeks; I really should’ve made Timeshift take a snapshot.

    • Bluefruit@lemmy.world
      7·
      11 months 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.

        • Bluefruit@lemmy.world
          3·
          11 months ago

          Yup. Ive heard timeshift is good. Now i just gotta actually use it.

          Hows the experience with timeshift been when youve used it? Pretty easy to restore from?

          • MrTHXcertified@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            5·
            11 months ago

            Pretty easy, and it’s saved my bacon a handful of times. Most recently I restored from command line because I borked my display driver (legacy Nvidia user).

            Aside from that instance, everything else was done through the GUI.

      • Macaroni9538@lemmy.mlOP
        5·
        11 months ago

        oh dude i never do backups each time i start over from scratch its a brand new version of linux. the only “important” files (that I know of), i sync to the cloud.

        • Bluefruit@lemmy.world
          3·
          11 months ago

          Haha i feel that man. I’m thinking of switching to Linux entirely and ditching Windows so i gotta get better at making backups otherwise its gonna be full reinstalls no stop.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
        4·
        11 months ago

        That’s why I use Timeshift, snapshots only take a second to make and (if you set up the script right) will be made automatically whenever apt is called. It’ll probably be a lot slower on non-BTRFS systems (hard links instead of snapshots) but it’s still a lot faster than basic copying.

        • Bluefruit@lemmy.world
          2·
          11 months ago

          Oh thats neat. I’m assuming that can be configured for other package managers when you’re calling the apt equivalent?

          • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
            2·
            11 months ago

            Any package manager with pre install hooks should work. I know someone has written the necessary hooks for pacman, if Timeshift is in your distro’s package standard package manager I bet there’s a hook pre-written for you as well.

            If there isn’t, Timeshift can also take daily/weekly/monthly/per-boot snapshots (with an optional limit for each separate type to keep). Because snapshots only track the differences, and /home is excluded by default, snapshots are generally smaller than a gigabyte or so because they only track OS updates and such. Older snapshots will grow in size as the difference between them and the current system state grows, but 9 months and an upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 to 22.10 only took up 54GB on a 1TB disk.

            I like the “take a snapshot each boot” option because you can revert every boot rather than specific actions, especially when your package manager lacks the necessary hooks.

  • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
    103·
    11 months 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
    4·
    11 months 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·
      11 months 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

  • ElRenosaurusReg [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    11 months 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·
      11 months 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·
      11 months 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·
      11 months 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·
        11 months 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·
          11 months 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

  • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
    2·
    11 months 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.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    1·
    11 months 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.