Is there a proper way to use several DE's on one distro or is it not advised?

Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 92 points –

I have read many conflicting things, like always. Just wondering if there's a safe way to use several DE's on one distro without messing up my damn computer lol I've tried it several times and it always messed things up. I'm currently brand new to fedora workstation 38 too btw. Thanks alot

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What things are being messed up? You should be able to just install as many DEs as you want without them interfering with each other - just select which you want on the login screen,

is it really that simple? I was trying ways to like separate them or block them from each other

No, it really is that simple. I've got Cinnamon installed since I prefer it for everyday; also, Gnome3 on Wayland for gaming (I've three monitors with different refresh rates, which doesn't work as you'd hope on X11). Log out, change desktop, log in again. No problems at all, except for more packages to update.

Pretty much, yes but they will interfere in few ways:

  • themes setup can get messy at times, but you should be able to easy override the settings
  • file associations can be inappropriate
  • you'll have varoius of app suits installed and app menus will have them all

man yoiu would think there's an easy way to keep the DE's seperate from one another to avoid any conflictions. without freaking VM damnit lol

I think it was PureOS or some other distros that allowed to run DEs in containers, but I never tried this. It all boils down to the dotfiles in your home. I used to jump between DEs on the same install and it was perfectly viable, just required a little manual work.

What do you mean separate them from each other?

keeping them all from sharing the same files and configs and interfering with each other