With systemD, the alternatives have a curve because so much IBM money and monopolization has gone into it. But systems using OpenRC(alpine) or SysV(MX linux, Devuan) work great in my experience. there are other init systems like runit (void linux) also seem to work great too, I just haven't used them.
As for desktop environments, the choice is very easy. Because there are simply better options.
For normal users, I always suggest KDE Plasma or XFCE, Cosmic is still in development but looks very promising, cinnamon also looks great, but I don't use it (I know it's a gnome2 fork).
But for power users, the choice of WMs are pretty trivial. i3, xmonad, qtile, niri, leftwm, etc.
The experience of using a WM instead of a full DE is incomparable for professional and power users. That is why I LOVE XFCE because it is modular. you can use parts of the XFCE ecosystem in any WM (power manager, theme manager, file manager etc.) or just replace xfce wm with your WM of choice (although I don't recommend this).
I admit I'm an edge case, but last year I installed Slackware on my main desktop specifically to escape the clutches of systemd, and by god it feels great to have a working /etc/rc.d again!
I do use containerised solutions for a few things (e.g. conty[0] for Steam, and a couple of rocm containers for messing with ML things).
KDE is the default desktop and does everything I need. I haven't used gnome for a decade anyhow.
I would like to recommend Mate, which is a continuation of Gnome 2.
I like to think of my Desktop Environment as little as possible - if I'm thinking about it it's usually because it's getting in my way. In particular, I switched to Mate when the Gnome 3 team went Steve Jobs on us and implemented menus that couldn't be moved out of the way and a new desktop philosophy that didn't fit my current workflow. Gnome 2 worked just fine for my everyday work so by choosing Mate I know I'm getting a responsive, functional Destop Env. that won't throw random surprises at me.
To add to that: I keep trying out other new, interesting or high-profile distros, and whenever they use KDE Plasma (esp. on older HW) it is a grating experience, especially because it's slow. And after you log in, you have to wait again with an animation before your desktop shows up. On my son's desktop, I just replaced it with MATE, and now it's instantly available right after login. SO much nicer!
There is a rich world of window managers, if you run a proper distro with X11. IceWM for example is a great building block for your own desktop, you can combine it with the file manager you prefer, or use a terminal instead for that, use it with a dock, tray and a helper like conky instead of the default task bar. The capabilities of real WMs are great, to pin windows (permanently), have workspaces, give overviews - and that's before going into the auto tiling direction.
But that's only if you want to have something custom. Otherwise KDE would be the default alternative to Gnome, then XFCE or LXQT for smaller desktop environments.
I like Regolith ( https://regolith-desktop.com/ ), it's built on Gnome-session for its configuration screens, but otherwise runs a lightweight tiling window manager.
For my windows I only use keyboard shortcuts (no mouse) and full-screen windows (sometimes two half screen windows side by side), so I may be a bit weird.
I've been a big fan of OpenRC. Gnome has never been a pleasant DE but really went downhill with Gnome 3. I used FVWM2 until college when I switch to CWM. Not sure I'd recommend CWM to someone who just wants to experiment though
Not the OP but I switched to KDE and I'm happy with the switch. It doesn't try to force a tablet UI on you, doesn't look like a toy and actually feels snappier.
We are not lawyers. I don't care what their "parent" company is legally.
In practice, IBM influences and affects every single decision of these projects/companies.
So yes, It is their parent company. Just look at what they were doing to X11. Holding it's development back just to monopolize wayland more.
Probably going to regret asking, but what is a "redskirt"?
> doesn't matter which country you're coming from, your politicial views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you're furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just an boring average person. Anybody's welcomed, who's interested in bringing X forward.
Whoh. So normally people who talk like this are far from "strong and stable", it's a call for "all lives matter". I wouldn't touch this racist heap.
[Edit] And redskirt is just a misogynistic play on Star Trek red shirts. This dev sounds delightful.
> > doesn't matter […] your race […] Anybody's welcomed
> I wouldn't touch this racist heap.
You are clearly unhinged. I don't know how to bring you back to sanity, but as the americans say, one cannot reason someone out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into.
I notice you choose to shift the goalpost instead of engaging with the central point. The central point, stated clearly and unequivocally, is that the project maintainer wrote he welcomes anybody and does not care about race, and you call this racist, and thus there is a huge contradiction.
I suspect you double down because you are so captured by your emotions that you cannot possibly admit the lapse in critical thinking. I predict going that path won't take you far on HN.
A common refrain against any attempt to mitigate unjust effects of past racial injustice (affirmative action, protesting against unjust policing, DEI, etc) is that the mitigation itself is racist, and the best thing would be to treat everyone "equally" going forward. Thus the "all lives matter" and "we welcome everybody regardless of race" are the same coin.
I love the idea to fork X11 if it can accelerate its development or maintenance, however in this precise case it looks like the developer who created the fork has questionable opinions about e.g. DEI, vaccines, etc, but more importantly it looks like he is willing to include references to his opinions inside the project (cf the README.md)...
So, it would be awesome if somebody would just go ahead and re-fork it removing just the controversial stuff.
There is lots of work no ones wants to do in their free time. That is why you pay people money.
And why wouldn't someone be happy working on X11? It is an open source project, it is high impact work. I would jump at it instantly if someone paid me a competitive wage to do it. Or honestly even a bit under my normal expectation. Not every person wants to work on some ego-driven rewrite of a rewrite. Some people are fine working with legacy code.
Also there is a counter example right above my post. Someone was so motivated to work on it, they even forked it: https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver
Granted the fork seems weirdly ideologically motivated but anyway, case in point.
So with the plethora of people who care about progress and its success, and the army of people willing to work on it for a competitive wage, we should be seeing lots of activity on the project, right?
> Give me an option to donate directly to X11 development and I am gonna support it.
> I would jump at it instantly if someone paid me a competitive wage to do it
Nah man you don't get it. They were "monetizing" Wayland. Whatever that means. It's certainly not because X is an insanely old and difficult to maintain codebase with questionable design decisions.
If you've never tried a tiling window manager, give them a try. I've been on i3 for over a decade and love it. It takes a lot more work to setup, but once you get going, it's an amazing environment.
If you insist on using Wayland, Hyprland is an excellent choice. It's the least broken tiling widow manager for Wayalnd. Sway was the original i3-compatiable replacement and it's still not all that great.
Can you explain what's wrong with sway? I've been using it for quite a while and it's been the one of the most stable pieces of graphical Linux software I've yet seen. It seems to handle most of my features, except i3-like layout saving.
