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

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