Hi
I use Fedora xfce. What I like about Fedora is its spins. It’s very easy to download a distribution with a specific DE. I want to migrate to PureOS but GNOME is the barrier. I know It is possible to install xfce or KDE on PureOS but not all people are expert. Many people prefer a DE with a taskbar and Icons in the desktop.
So I think it would be nice if PureOS comes with some other DEs beside GNOME.
Gnome with the dash to panel and arc menu extensions do that very thing. Gnome is very customizable. If that is the only reason you prefer XFCE I don’t believe it is enough to move away from Gnome.
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Purism is aligned with GNOME and the FSF, which has historically aligned with GNOME. Purism has gotten libhandy, Chats and Calls accepted as official GNOME projects, and is trying to get libhandy incorporated into GTK.
I don’t know if it will happen because GNOME 3 is based on Mutter and Phosh is based on Phoc, so they use different composers, but it appears that Purism’s long term goal is to get GNOME to adopt Phosh as an official project. I can see it eventually happening, because none of the companies that contribute to GNOME (such as IBM/Red Hat, SUSE, Google and Canonical) care about mobile devices and GNOME needs a solution for mobile devices to match KDE’s Plasma Mobile. Purism has worked very hard to make Phosh compatible with the standard GNOME libraries and applications, so Phosh will be the easiest way for GNOME to go mobile.
Purism’s goal to get as much of its software as possible to be adopted by GNOME makes strategic sense because if brings a big developer community and helps convince other projects to adopt Phosh. Purism’s decision to use GNOME Web instead of Firefox and Nautilus instead of Nemo appears to me like a conscious decision to court the GNOME community.
I’m not a big fan of GNOME Shell, but it very easy to change the DE in PureOS:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install task-xfce-desktop
sudo reboot
At the login screen, there is an option to select XFCE as the DE and GDM (or another display manager such as LightDM) will remember your selection for the next login.
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@Aryan you might want to search around lbry dot tv or odysee dot com if you want some GNU/Linux DE reviews …
i can start you here > https://open.lbry.com/@AlphaNerd:8/pop-os-by-system76-review:c < some of the more up-to-date ones