Multiple desktop environments

Can you install other desktop environments withought bricking Ubuntu Mate ?
if no , will it be possible in the future ?

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You can install whatever DE you like. There could be problems with duplicate applications that server the same purpose and possible issues with notification daemons, but nothing that will completely brick the OS.

Personally, I feel that it is better to install different DEs as separate installations on different partitions which may share a common /home. This is because there is a possibility of dependency conflicts which may lead to a breakage. This used to be a problem while installing Cinnamon in Ubuntu Unity. Also, multiple applications with similar functionality will get installed along with the new DE. For example, if one installs both GNOME and MATE on the same partition, both Nautilus and Caja, Evince and Atril, Gedit and Pluma, etc will get installed which results in a redundancy of sorts.

I am talking about LxQt will I have some sort of truble with daemons ?

I am not sure but I don’t think that you’ll run into any problems. Is LXQt stable now? As far as I remember, it was in development and was based on Qt5. Do let us know if you succeed in installing it.

Yes it is stable . I use it in my Lubuntu machine ( old PC ) .
you can install it via ppa by webupd8 . More info here
or from the lubuntu dev repos if I remember corectly

If you don’t mind me asking, I’m just interested to know, why put LXQt on Ubuntu MATE? Just to experiment and be able to switch between them?

If your machine is powerful enough, I’d install the other distro on a VM and have it open and ready at bootup in fullscreen mode on a second workspace inside Ubuntu Mate. Failing that, I would go the way of the others poster’s suggestions and install it on a seperate partition.

I Love Mate desktop but my Laptop isn’t with big specs so I need a lightweight desktop to play Games !

Interesting. I don’t know that adding LXQt to UM would get you the benefit you’re hoping for. You can take a look at some research @Wimpy actually did on different DEs. The difference between MATE and LXQt looks so small to me that if you were to install LXQt on top of what exists, you’ll actually be running heavier than you would just using the OS as it’s installed. I’m sure he could give some input on the discussion.

I have Intel 965 GMA video card . It has 128 mb of ram .
When I run Urban Terror game with Mate i get 15/25 FPS with LxQt i get 30/40 FPS .
So I need to preserve memory for the game . Every bit of free memory is good memory :wink:

What distro were you running LXQt on top of prior to trying to run it on Ubuntu MATE? I’m just interested to research the performance difference.

Lubuntu 14.04 and installed LxQt 0.8.0 from this ppa

Ah. Have you installed LXQt onto Ubuntu MATE? Without looking into it I assume Lubuntu is lighter than Ubuntu MATE because of its aim, so I would wonder how much of that plays into the difference.

No . this is why I asked about the brick of the system if I install LxQt . I used a distro focused on Mate named Point Linux based on Debian . In that distro if i tried installing a DE the packages conflicted with the Mate Desktop Packages . The main diffirence is the aim yes . Lubuntu is based on LXDE ( soon LxQt ) witch is lite . Ubuntu Mate on the other side aims to user’s who loved Ubuntu mutch more in the old days of gnome 2 . The difirence is in the Desktop Environments and the software shipped with them . Ubuntu Mate uses Thunderbird mail (which is heavier) for email and Lubuntu uses Claws mail ( which is lighter ) for example . At least that is how I see the thing . From my opinion that is it

Not that I’m discouraging the use of Ubuntu MATE, but why go with it if you’re going to replace one of the main reasons for using it? Do you like the pre-installed packages? Do you like the fact that it’s not an official flavour? Are you just a distrohopper looking for a new fix? Maybe you just really like green?

I’m an advocate for Ubuntu MATE, but if you are able to get that much better performance out of Lubuntu with the LXQt PPA then why not stick with that?

I wan’t to use Mate Desktop becouse i like it . I am really comfortable with Mate ? I like that i do not have to compile the software I am using . But I wan’t to play games without lag that is why I am going to Use Ubuntu Mate and when I play games i will just switch the desktop session to LxQt for gaming perpouses on my Laptop .
I will use Mate for General tasks and use LxQt for gaming . I am not going to delete the Mate Desktop . And as I said my Laptop is not good enough for me to play games on Medium weight Desktop Environment

Interesting, thanks for the feedback.

I think, perhaps, that by wishing both desktop to be available in the same OS installation, you will be asking too much of your machine. Many of the things that you like about Ubuntu Mate will be the things that, despite it lightweightness compared to the likes of Unity etc, add to its weight as compared to the kinds of desktop you would like to install for your games to run on.

Having run multiple desktops on the same Linux installation myself several times, experience has taught me that the lighter of these never runs as light as it would if it was installed alone. Xubuntu/Unity versus Xubuntu alone or Gome/Unity versus Gnome alone to cite just two examples. Thus, my suspicion is that if you were to install a second, lighter desktop on Ubuntu Mate on the expectation of it running as light as you have previously experienced it running alone, you are likely to be disappointed, especially if your hardware is somewhat limited in the first place.

Therefore, my strong recommendation would be to install them side by side as separate installations on separate partitions and then just log into one or the other from Grub depending on your needs in a given session You could even have a third partition you could use as a shared storage partition for them both.

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When exiting to Light Dm doesn’t it kill the processes of the old desktop ?