Default (pre-installed) template flavor - considering change from gnome to xfce

General Discussion
1

Currently the fedora-38 template is in practice the gnome one. Specifically, the installed applications are those for gnome variant of Fedora. That kinda makes sense, since GNOME is the default desktop environment in Fedora Workstation. But unfortunately some gnome applications do not fit well in qubes, example related issues:

So, we consider switching to the xfce spin. Does anybody have an opinion?

What should be the default Fedora (and possibly Debian) template flavor?

  • GNOME (the current one)
  • XFCE (templates fedora-38-xfce, debian-12-xfce etc)

0 voters

To be clear, the question is only about what template should be included on the installation image. Both flavors will remain installable via qvm-template, so if anybody prefer the other one, it will remain possible to install it.

1 Like
2

I vote for the default that makes the less friction for end users :+1: it seems to be GNOME.

3

I also prefer using GNOME, but I don’t really care which is the default.

Both the Tracker and memory usage issues are strong cases to make xfce the default.

4

Hey! What about KDE ?:confused:

5

Some of the gnome applications in the 38 template use significantly more cpu than their xfce equivalents. For example the gnome text editor seems to be really cpu hungry. This can make for quite an unenjoyable default experience on older+slower machines.

2 Likes
6

No KDE flavor exists for now.

1 Like
7

But there’s an option to install KDE, doesn’t it makes it a flavor? Or does KDE flavor means integrating all the software of the KDE to Qubes?

8

You are misunderstanding the dom0 desktop environment versus the default package set inside Fedora template.

2 Likes
9

Thanks for all the votes. It seems Xfce flavor is preferred solution, so I’ll try to squeeze that into R4.2-rc2. As said previously, the other template is still going to be maintained and installable via qvm-template (or its GUI equivalent).

4 Likes