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Comment by wruza | Hacker News Reader

As a user who tried a few of sub-popular DEs in recent decades, I see zero information on why would/should one choose it. ¿Does it have: snap/zones/keybindings for windows, mount features, configurable menu, hw acceleration, exposé, notifications, language menu, etc, etc? It’s not that it must support these (other programs/settings may do that), but their landing sells on completely irrelevant points, if you plan to install and use some software instead of playing with wallpapers all day.

I don’t mean to sound harsh or too negative, but it just doesn’t add up to something meaningful or specific. You can only try and find out by yourself, after reading docs on its config files/utils.

What problems does it solve?

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>What problems does it solve?

It was designed as a DE for PcBSD. Unlike Linux distros, some OS design teams do believe that having only one tool do a job and that tool should be perfectly integrated with the rest of the OS has some value.

This sentence must be an intro on that site. It makes it very clear what to expect and all the whys.

The Lumina Desktop was started in 2012 by Ken Moore. He started working on it in his free time. He wanted to design a small lightweight desktop for PC-BSD that didn’t come with the challenge of dealing with Linux-isms. However instead of designing a desktop that had BSD-isms, he decided to design the desktop to be as OS agnostic as possible with as few dependecies as possible ...

It is there in the front page, along with a link to its history - https://lumina-desktop.org/post/2021-07-01/

> I see zero information on why would/should one choose it

It says right from the start that it doesn't use any of the Linux desktop stack software.

It's for the BSD operating systems. Is there anything else competing in this space?

Yes and No ... they specifically say that while it was originally planned for PC-BSD, it was ultimately made OS agnostic:

... He started working on it in his free time. He wanted to design a small lightweight desktop for PC-BSD that didn’t come with the challenge of dealing with Linux-isms. However instead of designing a desktop that had BSD-isms, he decided to design the desktop to be as OS agnostic as possible with as few dependecies as possible ...

That doesn’t really answer the question. What are these linuxisms, and why are they problems? Are they actually technical problems, or is this mere license purity?

The reasons that they highlight seem like they are correctly aimed at the people who could want to use it. This is the highlighted features:

- Lightweight Desktop Environment

- Intuitive Layout

- Completely Customizable

- Freely Available

- Portable

If you don't care about any of those things then yeah, Lumina is not for you.

The "features" page also features even more features that potential users could care about: https://lumina-desktop.org/features/

But again, if nothing there pique your interest, then Lumina is not for you and you're looking for Gnome, KDE or something else similar to those.

> This is the highlighted features:

Doesn't this sort of prove the point of the one you're replying to? Yeah sure I care about these things, but it tells me almost nothing because I could categorize a lot of other DE with those words as well. I want to know what it is like for everyday usage. How does it manage windows would be the first thing which I'd like to see some footage or explanation of.

Exactly. This is why I use the Moksha Desktop.

> Moksha Desktop

Hadn't heard of this one, so looked it up, and all I can say is... Not again. GNOME, KDE, Enlightenment - is it the fate of every DE to make a release so bad that a chunk of the users fork an old version and run with it?

This "old version" is alive and well and has been since many many years. It is my daily driver on my laptop and my desktop. It is extremely lightweight, snappy and beautiful.

There is talk of switching to a newer version of Enlightenment since it is getting more stable again.

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