What's a good DE to try?

Hey guys,
I've been using linux for about a year now and a few days ago I decided to use arch. I was suprised when looking at the beginners section of the Arch Linux wiki about the amount of different DE. I've tried KDE and Gnome, but I know nothing about the three other main ones: Xfce, openbox, and fluxbox. So I wanted to ask you guys this question, what kind of DE should I install to really get a feeling of what Arch Linux is all about, or what one would be good as a first experience out of the norm of Gnome and KDE.
Thanks guys!

A DE is just a number of applications that work together to give you a full-fledged desktop experience right out of the box, without much tinkering. A window manager is one part of your desktop, the part that lets you move, rename, minimize, hide windows. Some people don't need much more, but there are lots of apps out there which add some functionality to the basic premise of managing windows: Panels, system trays, docks, system monitors, file managers, etc. Look here to get a brief overview on some of these.
A panel keeps your opened windows neatly organized, think of the Windows task bar.
System trays display system messages that might be of interest - volume control, IM notifications, new mail, new updates...
System monitors display information about your computer's internals, mostly in text or graphical form (temperature, CPU load, memory usage, free disk space...)
File managers do exactly that, they let you manage files and provide neat icons for folders and files.
Of course, these aren't the only things you can use to spice up your desktop.
The obligatory edit: You can, of course, change the default window manager of a DE. E.g. before I came to Arch, I used Gnome with Openbox as a window manager.
Last edited by Runiq (2009-09-06 22:05:08)

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