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Neil Bothwick eats Linux desktop problems for breakfast!

Q Desktops galore

I like using different desktop environments on Ubuntu, particularly MATE and Budgie. I’ve only ever done this with multiple instances of Ubuntu installed on my machine (managed with GRUB), but I know it is possible to install more than one environment on one instance of Ubuntu.

Given that different environments use different software and settings, is it OK to install and switch between different environments or is it safer to have each one isolated in different installs?

Mark Mearns

A It is perfectly acceptable to have more than one desktop environment installed at the same time. The various environments do use different software and settings, as you say, but these are kept separate. In the main, each piece of software has its own configuration file or directory. Making a change to one does not normally affect anything else. Occasionally, a program uses a generic configuration file. For example, desktops may refer to ~/.config/ mimeapps.list to see which program you would prefer to use to open a particular type of file. That is fine, because your preference would normally be the same whichever desktop you were using. Also, a lot of the software is the same for each desktop. You would use the same web browser and the same office suite whichever desktop was currently in use.

One area where you should be slightly cautious is that of email; using different clients could potentially cause a problem if you use POP to collect your mail. With IMAP, this is not an issue, because the mail remains on the mail server.

We would actually go further and say that having more than one desktop environment installed is not only possible, but it is a good thing to do. Imagine the situation where an upgrade to your favourite environment causes a problem that prevents it loading. Being able to switch to a different desktop so you can load a browser to search for a solution Installing multiple desktops on the same distro is a good way to give more choice, and necessary if you have multiple users with different tastes.would be a godsend (please don’t mail in saying to use Lynx in a console).