Do we want to have a "How do I switch from one desktop environment to another?" question?

Question

Through my sojourns through the Ask Ubuntu world, I've seen this question several times:

"How do I switch to ?"

• How do I switch to the Classic GNOME Desktop?

• Switching between Kubuntu and Ubuntu without re-installation

• While this one doesn't ask that exact question, it is similar, and should have been mentioned in the answer.

I think there were XFCE, LXDE and Unity 2D questions, but I can't find them so maybe not.

Anyhow, here's the problem:

The answer of all of these will include

Logout, select [desktop environment name here], and log back in.

So, is this something we want? With Unity being the default desktop period (no way to escape to normal GNOME2!) in 11.10, we're likely to get a lot more of this kind of question.

Answer 1

I think they should be separate because when you google for something you're thinking "How do I use XFCE in Ubuntu?" or "How do I use LXDE", etc. and you'd want to read the target page with instructions for that instead of one huge mega list with every window manager on it.

That way we get a nice standalone page for each one (my fave is Unity 2d) that people can just reference to in the context for that desktop. I've crosslinked that page a ton of times and it's nice because it's a specific answer with a simple screenshot.

So whever wants to do this can just fire up a virtual machine install a bunch of desktops, screenshot each dropdown entry in lightdm/gdm and then post/improve one question for each one and toss them in login-manager or something.

Also for some reason these sorts of questions are popular blogspam entries or something, so we might as well do them. :)