I have tried it on several distros before and it always causes problems because you get a million more packages intermingled with your already installed packages and sometimes you get conflicts or whatever. But it usually messes up my system. is there a safe way to have several desktops installed? or do you pretty much install a new one then remove the old one? thanks
I’ve never had trouble with package conflicts. You get duplicates for just about every built-in application (password managers/calculators/calendars/etc.) if you install all the recommends, but they should all work together as long as you don’t enable foreign PPAs and other known conflicting package sources like that.
I tried KDE a while back and it seems to add a boatload of services and tools, so when I went back to Gnome I removed leftovers for weeks; I really should’ve made Timeshift take a snapshot.
Install the DEs manually instead of from metapackages so ,out don’t end up with their entire software suites being installed. Additionally, probably use Debian instead of Ubuntu if you’re gonna be doing stuff like that, less fingers in the pie make for an easier tinkering experience.
thanks, I’m currently on Debian 12 and tried the whole tasksel method and it’s really neat and all, but it still doesn’t separate all the DE’s. they are all mish mashed and intermingled with each other’s software.
In my experience the main issue are configuration conflicts not package issues. They’re usually just annoying issues not breaking issues.
Have you considered doing stupid shit and used Bedrock Linux?
It’s great, but it’s still baking
Containerization!
Use either Nix (the package manager) or Distrobox.
With Distrobox, you can create a few containers, install the favoured DE in each one separated, and use the “distrobox-export -a your-DE” function.
But I don’t know how seamless it will work, you might have to read into it.
Seconded, Distrobox is the way to go.
Here’s how you can actually make it work seamlessly @Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml :
https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/posts/run_latest_gnome_kde_on_distrobox.md
I believe you can do this (and more) with Blend OS https://blendos.co/
I have read a little bit about this interesting distro. Haven’t explored it much, though have read a ton of negative and mixed reviews. Isn’t Rhino Linux sorta similar?
They are both rolling releases. Rhino is based on Ubuntu and BlendOS is based on Arch. The difference is that Blend OS lets you install software from supported distributions (Arch, Fedora, and Ubuntu) into containers. Rhino (as far as I know) out of the box doesn’t do that.
good to know, thanks. arch is out of my comfort zone lol though I have ambitions to slowly work my way into it with something easy. I used manjaro years ago and loved it. seems to have a bad rep, but I think their distro is most functional and beautiful, but again, i’m no Arch expert
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Nix has intrigued me, a bit of a learning curve though. maybe i’ll dive in further
