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
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
What a mood. Im very guilty of not making backups and ruining setups only to have to start all over.
I’m a fairly new linux user so this is bound to happen again lol.
Oh thats neat. I’m assuming that can be configured for other package managers when you’re calling the apt equivalent?
Yup. Ive heard timeshift is good. Now i just gotta actually use it.
Hows the experience with timeshift been when youve used it? Pretty easy to restore from?
oh dude i never do backups each time i start over from scratch its a brand new version of linux. the only “important” files (that I know of), i sync to the cloud.
For me, the only issue I have ever experienced is DEs like to force themes on you, so if I was to log into plasma, it will make the plasma theming default. This means thatvwhen I go bacl to a window manager, I have to change my theme again and oftentimes log out and log back in to ensure my theming is applied.
