How To Install Additional Desktop Managers on Fedora 21
So you have Fedora 21 / 22 Workstation running and you would like to see what other Desktop Managers are available besides GNOME 3 and KDE but do not know how to go about getting them installed. Well, no problem as with Linux there are many choices and such is the case with Fedora. But what is there and what are my choices?
First, decide which graphical desktop you want to use. You can get the available list of them from opening a terminal and typing:
$ sudo yum grouplist
From the output we see the desktops are under environment groups. At the time of this posting we see the following are available.
Available environment groups: Fedora Server Fedora Workstation Fedora Cloud Server KDE Plasma Workspaces Xfce Desktop MATE Desktop LXDE Desktop Cinnamon Desktop LXQt Desktop Sugar Desktop Environment Development and Creative Workstation Web Server Infrastructure Server Basic Desktop Minimal Install
Now we have the list so lets pick a few and install them. In this example well install Xfce and MATE Desktop.
To install Xfce Desktop
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Xfce Desktop"
To install MATE Desktop
$ sudo yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop"
You may receive an error when trying to install Xfce Desktop if you have GNOME 3 or GNOME Classic installed. To get around the error use –skip-broken. By passing this argument, we’re letting yum know that it is okay to skip those packages that would have conflicts.
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Xfce Desktop" --skip-broken
Now that you have a couple new options logout and select one of them for use.
Removal
Just in-case the desktop was not what you wanted you can remove it just as easy. While logged into another desktop manager (eg: KDE) open and terminal and type:
$ sudo yum groupremove “MATE Desktop”
or
$ sudo yum remove mate*
Either command should work, there is a possibility that the groupremove may remove files that are used by other desktop manager.
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