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Recommendations for Pi desktop user interfaces

Uusally I only access Raspberry Pis via SSH, so the question of desktop user interaces hasn't really been an issue.

Now that I have had a new Pi 400 on my desk for a couple of weeks, there are some aspects of the UI that I find rather unsatisfactory.

One is the window-centric menubar arrangement; I find it much less pleasant to use than the Mac's menubar that sits at the top of the screen (also adopted by default by Ubuntu).

The other is what feels like very crude mouse acceleration profiles, that make the mouse tracking feel simultaneously too fast and too slow.

Are there easily-installed alternatives? I don't want a wholesale replacement of Raspberry Pi OS, because I'm work on and with software in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem and need components to work in the same way.

Thanks,

Daniele

Reply to
D.M. Procida
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A linux gui is made ov may individual elements that can be selected at will the menu in raspberry pi os is LX panel (the Pixel desktop is based heavily on lxde) but there are many other options available that can be used instead or even as well as.

--
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school. 
		-- George Ade
Reply to
alister

Running a MATE desktop will probably get what the OP wants - it is allegedly available for the Pi. That is the limit of my knowledge...

--
?Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.? 

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Yeah, the DE in general - one is too heavy, another to simple, the third one too fragile ...

When KDE released 4.0 I stayed on 3.5 and joined the community that mutated out of it and calls it TDE. AFAIK it supports arm on couple of systems

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Advantage is stability and memory/cpu footprint, disadvantages - I let them for you. I am actually thinking of replacing the desktop pc fully with the RPI 4 with TDE on top.

I am not sure if Raspbian was the official RPI OS, or something else though.

Reply to
Deloptes

Someone else said it uses lxpanel - which I use on all my linux desktops. Right click on the panel, and choose panel settings. You can have the panel at bottom, top or either side. You can even run 2 panels top and bottom!

I've had problems with mouse settings and not found a completely satisfactory resolution yet, so would also be interested in any tips from others.

Have you looked at the number of programs, including window managers, and other GUI components you can choose to install on Rasperry PiOS? You are not stuck with the default as from a standard install.

I usually install the Lite version (no gui), because I usual run my Pi's headless, and just ssh in. If I need a desktop then I install a very minimal desktop of lightdm, openbox, lxpanel and xterm to get me going.

Happy hacking.

Reply to
Jim Jackson

No allegedly about it! I've been using the Mate desktop for years on the Pi 3B, 3B+ and now the 4B where it really flies on the faster processor, and freed from the limitations of 1GB.

---druck

Reply to
druck

You can replace the pi panel with lxde panel - or try xfce.

Reply to
ray carter

Well thanks for that. I use MATE in this desktop but had no experience on a Pi at all.

--
To ban Christmas, simply give turkeys the vote.
Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Have you thought about installing GNOME, which is the default desktop used by Ubuntu and Fedora:

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It pinches quite a bit of UI from the Mac.

You can configure it to do top-of-screen menus (Ubuntu has flip-flopped about whether that's the defualt).

It appears GNOME has a limited number of acceleration profiles, but you may have to dig around (via gnome-tweaks) to change them.

Be warned that GNOME is fairly heavyweight - probably OK on a Pi 4, but earlier Pis will struggle.

Theo

Reply to
Theo

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