If the team made each DE intall into its own folder (.KDE, .Gnome) would that male you able to have a GTK & QT DE & have no issues?
No. However, using a separate User account exclusively for each DE would go some way toward minimising any risks.
Complications can arise when different DMs are needed; for example, KDE uses SDDM and Gnome uses GDM (or did last time I bothered to check). You can only use one DM at a time, and from a compatibility perspective, they were not all made equal.
Those wishing to experiment with another desktop environment are probably better off configuring a multi-boot scenario; but, this is only my opinion. Multi-boot does tend to need ongoing care, perhaps too much for some to manage. 
3 Likes
Once upon a time — and actually for quite a long time — it was perfectly possible to install multiple graphical environments side by side on the same system, whether they were fully-featured desktop environments or standalone window managers. And each of them had its own configuration files, and stayed out of the others’ way.
When I first installed GNU/Linux — it was the Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack — I actually had all of the then common desktop environments and window managers installed, and I could switch between them from the login screen. If I remember correctly, then I had the following all installed side by side…
- KDE 1.1 — it was not called Plasma yet at the time
- GNOME 1, with Enlightenment E16 as the window manager
- WindowMaker — a NeXtSteP clone
- AfterStep — another NeXtSteP clone
- Xfce
- BlackBox — a precursor to FluxBox and OpenBox
icewmfvwmtwm— the default fallback window manager of XFree86, which was itself the common X11 server implementation at the tiime
The login screen would also remember my last choice, and so if I did not explicitly choose a particular environment upon login, it would log me into the one I had last chosen.
Unfortunately, such is no longer possible today. The main reason for this is that RedHat created the freedesktop.org initiative to streamline the interoperability between the different desktop environments, because back in the day, you could often not even drag & drop between applications written for different desktop environments — e.g. qt applications versus gtk applications.
So, freedesktop.org was created as a standardization effort, prescribing to all of the usual desktop environments where they should put their configuration files, how applications for the different environments should interact, and so on.
It was however not exactly a democratic process. In the spirit of how GNOME itself and gtk are developed, it became more of a prescriptive process than a descriptive one. Essentially, RedHat/GNOME was using freedesktop.org to lay down the law for the developers of other desktop environments, making them all abide by RedHat/GNOME’s standards.
Now, the above is only the historical angle to things. There is also another one, which is that it is technically simply impossible for Manjaro to do what you are suggesting, even if only because the vast majority of our packages come straight from Arch without any modification, and Arch itself stays as close to upstream — i.e. the plain vanilla versions as they come from the actual developers themselves — as possible.
In addition to all of that, there are now also multiple desktop environments using gtk as their widget toolkit — GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie, et al — and also several others that use qt instead, such as Plasma, LXQt, Cutefish and Deepin DE.
You can use dedicated files for the desktop-specific or even window-manager-specific configuration, but the gtk backends will all use the same configuration files, and the same is true for the qt backends.
Long story short, what you are asking for is simply not possible anymore.
6 Likes
I too remember the time… it was as easy as selecting an [enter DE here] session. Display managers were a biatch though, even then – choose one to (hopefully) suit them all.
1 Like
About 11 years ago, I had Plasma 4 installed and wanted to try LXQT. I installed it, and LXQT worked great. Next time I logged back into Plasma, many of my apps were missing from the application menu, although they still worked by running them from a konsole window. This was the last time I tried to install multiple DEs simultaneously.
4 Likes
consistently different and separated user accounts for each DE is a key
but the choice really should not affect the result
I have always been able to use everything that was available and never had (or: noticed) negative consequences of having stuff from multiple DE’s installed and available.
… Enlightenment might pose a challenge and be different - It’s a long time ago that I decided against using any of it.
I was exited by it at first - but then, reality kicked in … 
2 Likes
Yes, and a fine mess it often made of your system.
1 Like
Not so much in those days, though. Sure, there were some occasional issues — usually caused by GNOME — but certainly not at the level it would if you were to try that today.
1 Like
That’s true. I did install both GNOME and KDE when installing Mandrake, and yes I got away with it. But I soon discovered it was better to choose one or the other, and just install the apps from one or the other. Yes you get the backend as needed, but that still works today.
1 Like
It is now a (virtually) complete desktop environment in its own right, but given that it’s neither based on qt nor gtk, it generally won’t get in the way of other environments — emphasis on “generally”, because I’d still not advise it.
1 Like
Oh bummer, that would be a cool feature.
Seriously. Not really.
The actual cool feature is already installed, no matter the desktop environment.
What cool feature? you ask.
The fact that any application from any desktop environment can be installed, and it more or less fits the current desktop theme, and functions correctly.
2 Likes
still happens to me like-wise, but it is only a issue until you rebuild plasma-application caches, therafter plasma (launchers, icons, panels, etc.) resume working normally.
i dont have multiple DE installed but have plasma and icewm (when i need bare bones functionlaity i.e. to run VMs) invoking plasma apps within icewm screws up the application cached but rebuilding the caches always fixes things.
i think having plasma and LXQT should be possible with aforementioned issues with minimal fuss because LXQT now has fully migrated into QT6
WARNING:
well one thing i leaned the hardway was having multiple file managers. as much i love pcman(pcman-qt in this instance) and dlophin i still have no idea which deleted some of my user directories while using them in different DE
This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.