Window Managers

There are 2 things that make up the graphical environment: 1. The desktop - this is the underlying architecture 2. The window manager - this is also called the compositor and provides the eye candy.

Gnome has become too weird so I don't like using it.

KDE is too heavy and I don't like it either.

I like eye candy: rotating cube, wobbly windows, etc.

So you can use xfce4.

xfce desktop

keyboard shortcuts

application menu - window manager - set the windows key to open

/usr/bin/xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu

using kwin eye candy

cp ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml.orig
cp /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-session.xml ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml
vi ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-session.xml

on line 12 replace xfwm4 with kwin

test by running

kwin --replace

in a box. This may take a little while, but is a good test. If it works, log out then use a standard terminal to delete stuff in ~/.cache/sessions before rebooting the machine (otherwise you may not see any window borders after rebooting.

NB After doing this, you will have to use the kde-system-settings to change settings!

razor-qt

Very lightweight and runs the openbox windows manager as standard. Is apparently fused with lxde to become lxqt. The changelog was last edited on Jan 12, 2013

lxde

slightly lower memory footprint than razor-qt and merged with razor-qt to become lxqt

lxqt

doesn't exist in Debian Jessie, so no comment