Use two different desktop environments

[Passiday]

Hello,

I have installed Kubuntu 9.10 on my old laptop, and tho the graphics are nice, the performance is not spectacular.

Here's my system - humble but not too lousy either

CPU: Intel Pentium M 1.80GHz
Memory: 512MB
Graphics controller: ATI RV350 (Mobility Radeon 9600 M10)

So, I thought I'd like to test out other desktop environment, without too much bells and whistles, I am considering Xfce.

But I lack deeper Linux knowledge in order to complete this without messing up my system. I'd be grateful for some advice:

1) Is there some good guide how to install the secondary DE properly, without hurting the existing DE?
2) How much duplication takes place, when one installs the secondary DE. Ie, will I need to reinstall, say, Firefox for the other DE? I guess KDE and Xfce definitely have different desktop managers, network managers, etc, so there will be some overhead because of this. Will I be able to install new apps and enjoy using them in both DEs, will their configs be the same?

[coopstah13]

there is no duplication

the easiest way to install xfce is to install the package xubuntu-desktop this should allow you to choose KDE/XFCE when you go to login

[ptkobe]

512K is small for any graphic environment, don't you agree?

There may be - I'm guessing - same menu entries missing on the new windows manager, that's all.
(You made up Desktop Environment or have you read it somewhere?).

You don't have to reinstall anything, although reinstall may create the missing menu entries. Might, don't really know.

If you have disk space, you should be able to try all the windows manager available without messing up the one you have already running, and surely not your system.

[Passiday]

512K is small for any graphic environment, don't you agree?

Of course 512K is lousy (unless it's DOS That's why I have 512MB.

There may be - I'm guessing - same menu entries missing on the new windows manager, that's all.
(You made up Desktop Environment or have you read it somewhere?).

It's how the KDE, Gnome, Xfce, etc are called. Google for "Desktop Environment" and see yourself.

I am on now my way to test out the xfce, and report what are my experiences.

[ptkobe]

Ok

Go on, no problem, you'll see.

[oz]

But I lack deeper Linux knowledge in order to complete this without messing up my system. I'd be grateful for some advice:

Welcome to the forums!

I've personally never been a fan of mixing desktop environments because of some strange issues that can sometimes develop and because I like to keep the system clean and lean. That said, if you'll make a backup image of your current partitions, you can be as experimental as you would like and then easily restore the image if anything should go wrong.

Some good applications for making system images would include Clonezilla, FSArchiver, Ghost4Linux, and PartImage. Several if not all of those are available on the Parted Magic LiveCD should you want to try that method of creating backups.

Either way, best of luck with any desktop environments that you implement.

[ptkobe]

ozar is with tons of reason: we should always refer backup, a system clean and lean, and true, problems may always arrive with mixing many DE/windows managers.

That said, Passiday seems to me to be a linux user with at least some experience, and I do think he will have no major problems installing and using Xfce.

I also think linux users should be encouraged to try different DE's (GNOME, KDE, etc...) but I'll recommend new users to stick to the installation DE until they have more experience.

Thanks, ozar