Ubuntu needs to develop a solution for convergent Desktop Environments

I have always loved that Ubuntu offers more than one desktop environment but I’ve never run more than one due to the mess having two DE’s make. It would be nice if a DE would be like a service that is run from the login menu and all apps from that environment required that main service to be on, and apps from another DE be excluded from launchers also.

Yes, I think that would be nice idea. Though, it would be a load of of work for the devs. Firstly, simply in terms of implementing it. Secondly, in terms of predicting what other desktops might be installed on top of the default one.

So, to follow the logic of this through:

I am guessing that it could be implemented by a given desktop environment such that all other desktop environment elements, other than the one in question, would have all of their launchers hidden when the one in question was loaded. The advantage of doing it that way is that the given desktop environment would not have to predict what other desktop environment was present. It would simply hide all other desktop elements that were not on its prescribed list.

But, the above could lead to bugs, whereby items were being hidden that were not elements of other desktop environments but were, instead, legitimate programs that should not be hidden.

Additionally, even assuming that the above problem was resolvable, we would then need every single desktop distro out there to adopt this approach. Otherwise, it would work some of the time and sometimes not. Which, arguably, is worse than it not being implemented at all.

So, on reflection, after thinking this through, it seems to me to be a monumentally difficult thing to achieve, in an environment where devs have enough on their plate as it is.

For myself, I have this very issue. I am currently running Ubuntu Studio - which comes with the XFCE desktop as default. Given that I do not like the XFCE desktop, I have installed the Ubuntu Mate desktop over the top. What I then have done is gone into the menu editor and manually hidden all of the XFCE desktop elements.

It’s a slight inconvenience, but not a major one.

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i may be wrong but can’t you install several de’s and chose witch one you would like to run at the login screen top right corner.

on older computers i have installed ubuntu server and then ldx on top of that and then installed i3, at the login screen you can chose between ldx, openbox, or i3 . i’v installed ubuntu-mate 16.04 and then i3, at the login screen chosen i3 it seems to be less comber-sum when using x11vnc.

ldx is built on top of the openbox de.

The problem is when you do that, in every environment all apps show and there’s mixup mash

Maybe it could be partially implemented just recognizing file managers, terminals and documents viewers. Like, just starting with basics. I’m thinking using groups in menu launchers, let’s say a desktop entry says it belongs to the KDE group so it is showed and utilities can say it belongs to system group. There has to be a neutral group. Displaying the neutral group along system andKDE group then shows all apps except the XFCE side. And voila.

Desktop entries already have categories so there could be facilities to do this. There’s more to polish like OSD notifications conf not getting overwritten.

my main os is um 16.04, and i have the right click on desktop to open my most used programs through caja scrips .
i like openbox because you can configure right click on desktop and only have the programs you want.
caja / nautilus both allow you to use a script folder, if you can run a script for it can be ran .

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