Of the desktop environments i鈥檝e tried, i prefer Cinnamon overall. But i find that i鈥檇 rather use the KDE or Mate versions of some programs. I don鈥檛 need Nemo when i鈥檇 rather use Thunar, or Gnome Characters when i prefer mate-character-map or kcharselect.
Is there any reason i can鈥檛 start with nothing that鈥檚 specific to any one DE, then install whatever i need to have Cinnamon applets with the Mate and KDE programs i want? I don鈥檛 expect this to be easier than picking one DE and sticking with that, but is it so much harder that it鈥檚 not worth the trouble to have my computer so customized? How common is it to use a custom blend like this?
This was sparked when, while cleaning up my system that still has similar programs from several DEs, i accidentally broke Cinnamon and had to reinstall it, complete with everything i鈥檇 removed in favor of some other DE鈥檚 version of a program.
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What window managers are recommended for situations like this? I鈥檝e always used whatever comes with my DE, without really being aware of the window manager. How does that affect what display manager i need?
That鈥檚 perfectly fine. You can mix and match. Only downside is that you get all the dependencies from different DEs as well.
That has occurred to me. My current computer has enough storage (assuming i don鈥檛 lose hundreds of GBs to system log files like i did back in Mint) and i already have dependencies from several DEs from when i was trying some out and didn鈥檛 know how to fully uninstall the ones i don鈥檛 want.
The dependencies will be removed with the package you tried when you remove the package.
The biggest issue you will find is getting gtk and qt apps to look, feel and integrate together. There is nothing wrong with mixing and matching, it can just get a bit complicated. Lots of people don鈥檛 even use a de, and just build their own gui with a compositor or window manager, plus all the tools and apps they want to include to make it functional. I haven鈥檛 used a de in over a decade on my main desktop.