Which distro do you find the most visually appealing?

Einar@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 85 points –

It's in the eye of the beholder, of course. But it would be great to see some solid recommendations.

104

The distribution doesn't to too much, its mostly the desktop environment. I like the look of KDE Plasma the most. But usually I craft my own look after a while.

I like the look of KDE Plasma the most.

GNOME vs KDE gang fight has been summoned.

The look of GNOME isn't the problem of GNOME. ;-) I'm not a good citizen right now.

Absolutely. GNOME often looks better, but it just doesnt work. Basic things everywhere are removed or not added.

One man’s “basic” things are another man’s clutter …

So you mean...

  • editing images (in the viewer, screenshot tool)
  • being allowed to customize the UI of any app
  • changing the login screen (gdm) background
  • creating a textfile from the filemanager
  • editing .desktop entries graphically
  • ...

?

Hahaha, I disagree

Yea, none of those things matter to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of fun customizing DEs but I don’t really need that on my daily driver. I also have more of a terminal based workflow so perhaps shell customization scratches that itch for me.

To each their own :)

This is not about customizing. What app do you use for editing images, or dont you do this at all?

On GNOME either using Gwenview (KDE) or GIMP, Krita, Kolourpaint, Pinta would work. Which are all very big programs.

Sometimes I use Drawing for adding some annotations but I mostly just paste directly from the screenshot tool.

In terms of editing, I work more with SVG where I use a very simple editor BoxySVG.

I have given in to GNOME. Set dark mode, install the extension "Tactile" and never touch the setting again.

Well GNOME has issues but in terms of look it's 69420x better than KDE.

The thing I've learned in the many years of watching this fight is that the things Gnome people (of which I am one, though I have immense respect and appreciation for the KDE project) don't like about KDE tend to be the things KDE people like about KDE and vice versa.

These projects are almost diametrically opposite. GNOME tries to provide a very simple, solid but not very configurable desktop with good accessibility and stability while KDE tries to make a very configurable and powerful environment that can be customized to anyone's needs. I don't like KDE because it's unstable, way too powerful for my personal needs (their "simple by default; powerful when needed" concept doesn't really work) and I just don't like the UI. Though KDE's better performance is an objective advantage.

I tend to agree. I mean, the gnome workflow is more appealing to me (though I have since moved to a WM), but my dislike of KDE comes down to (a) too many options everywhere and (b) it looks too “sharp”. If KDE had an “I’m done fiddling” mode that hid most of the options and I found a softer theme, I’d probably like it fine.

Absolutely nothing I just said should take away from others’ preference for KDE. I’m glad we can like what we like.

I have to agree. I'm hoping Cosmic will be somewhere in-between!

It seems to still be strongly gnome-adjacent, which fits with the softer, "calmer" aesthetic Pop has, but with functional tweaks that are more aligned with Win11/KDE (absolutely intended as a positive statement, as far as moving the ball forward on UX design). I worry that team KDE won't like the "sane defaults" simplicity that it appears to have inherited from the gnome days, but that might just be the part of me that experiences terminal choice paralysis every time I fire up KDE. :)

Agreed. I think it's not about distros we should have pay attention, but desktop environments.

And about "most appealing" DE I think it's subjective. Surely KDE has the most flexible structure and may be exactly what you want, but Gnome is also appealing for some people (myself included).

Again, there is no right or wrong, just personal preferences

You don't need much to make something look fancy or modern. Even XFCE can look modern.

edit: made it less offensive.

Good for you that you like your XFCE environment

I would like to see how your desktop is, if you don't mind

However, again, it's personal preference

Can't. feddit.de can't upload images and in browser i suddenly get a server error(?) with my lemmy.ml account.

Well uh, left bar with virtual desktop overview bottom, window buttons top, autoexpand
right bar with network and systemload bars top, sensor numbers bottom, fixed size
top bar Android style with left hand clock and date, whiskermenu (symbol view) as the empty space in the center (title only and whitespaces as title), right hand systray with mail and connman-gtk, pulseaudio plugin. Bars are on intelligently autohide, theme is Adapta.

This is on my notebook with touchscreen.

Nice thing is, XFCE can pin bars to specific displays or main display. Meaning, if i plug my ultrawide in, the top bar stays on notebook while left and right bar switch to the ultrawide, a center bar with Wiskermrmu with list view for desktop usage appears.

I took it as a question of which distro looks nicest out of the box (like, which distro manager has made real effort to make something particularly nice looking).

Somebody needs to tell me what they’re doing to Plasma to make them like it so much because when I install it with Breeze it just looks like Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 looks nothing alike KDE Plasma with Breeze theme. But besides that point, you don't have to like what others like. It's just taste.

I don't really care how it looks precisely, so long as its semi-professional and consistent in its style.

Like, I change the font to Fira Sans, because Noto Sans gives me depression, but the rest of my customizations are all just to carve out my ideal workflow.

I don't think it's the distros job to look visually appealing. That's the job of the desktop environment. Seriously I wish distributions would just ship vanilla desktop environments. All of the themed variants always have some issues. Maybe I'm just old and stubborn but that's my opinion.

Fuckin same. It took so long for me to realize a lot of issues I had wasn't because gnome was shit, it was because every distro fucks with gnome until it's unusable. I finally tried fedora and now gnome is my favorite DE and I love the workflow.

Yeah, distros should, at most, change the default accent color and some pannel icon, but no more than that.

Assuming that the default is good then yes. But some default DEs are ugly as sin, or just hard to use.

I can't think of any desktop environments that are ugly or hard to use out of the box

Granted.

For a beginner, however, this is a difference that would take some explaining. As you said, some distros heavily theme the desktop environments (DE) before shipping, so in that sense the question is fair.

By extension, of course, I am with you, as with the right amount of work, any distro can run any DE and make it look any way.

Definitely OpenBSD's default fvwm

Does OpenBSD really default to FVWM in 2024? Metal.

Yes, and not even the modern fvwm3, due to licensing issues.

Garuda Hyprland edition. All the neon-RGB styling of Garuda gamer on top of Hyprland's smooth UI.

Upvoted. I forgot about this distro. I don't like its neon style at all but it's something different and pleasing for some people.

It's finally an opinionated distro I agree with. Of course you can get anything to look like anything but I just like how they picked a path and went so far down it to make their own unique out-of-the-box experience.

I don't like some of the other decisions in Garuda, but it's become hard to get away from it when even regular non-technical people who see it are like "Whoa, what is all that" and you literally just finished installing it and didn't even change the wallpaper. It's a very different feeling from what I'm used to with Linux and I'm into it.

I don't know why other distros don't offer out-of-the-box rices like this. It's just fun.

You're asking about the desktop environment and its default settings, which may or may not be the same on any given distro.

But I have a tie between Plasma and Cinnamon (mint's DE). They both take only minor tweaking to get where I want them, and I can use them both out of the box with zero complaints.

Many distros customize the colour schemes and theming of their desktops. The out-of-the-box XFCE in EOS looks nothing at all like vanilla XFCE for example.

The new COSMIC desktop by System76 and Pop!_OS is very promising. I've been running the pre-alpha, and have been very impressed.

The current pop_os dark is already pretty damn good, it's a very refined theme

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EndeavourOS has a pretty nice colour scheme and wallpaper going by default.

If I was forced to use a default distro look, it would be that or Linux Mint probably.

Fedora Workstation. Gnome is pretty great on the eyes, and there's a healthy Libadwaita apps ecosystem that is just *chefs kiss*

ElementaryOS also looks great for the system and core apps, although there's not really a third party app ecosystem that fits with the Pantheon theme, unfortunately.

I second this but after getting Hyprland setup to my liking I don’t think I’ll ever go back to gnome or kde

Hyprland is definitively not noob friendly. Are you running it on Arch or Fedora? I've been wanting to try it, but with all the config file work needed, it scares me to have it break at some or other update.

I’m using regular Fedora 40 workstation with Gnome

If you enable the update testing repo you can just install “stable” hyprland using dnf.

I’d say the tricky part of config at the start is getting your monitors setup but you can use ‘hyprctl monitors’ to list the monitors and get the ids. The documentation/wiki is really good

Once you’ve got it installed you can logout of gnome and select hyprland from the cog on the login screen.

If you want the git release of hyprland you can use this Copr https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/solopasha/hyprland/

Other stuff I use Rofi for launching apps Hyprpaper for wallpapers Waybar-git for the bar Kitty for terminal

Awesome. Fedora is my main driver (when i'm not distrohopping, lol). Thank you so much for sharing this. I'll be taking it for a spin over the weekend.

Nice! have fun.

I’d definitely avoid downloading other people’s hyprland dot files. Most are over complicated.

Just keep it simple to fit your needs

I think GNOME looks very visually appealing with it's consistency. The Libadwaita library has a nice aesthetic and looks very clean with nice spacing for elements to "breathe".

I still prefer KDE since I can tailor the look to my needs and I prefer to have clutter over extra clicks. (I have top bar with "Opened programs", Launcher, System tray, Time and a global menu and KWin script for managing Activities)

I feel like modern era of design has gone a bit overboard with the "clean" direction. It can be contrasted with Windows XP where you click "All programs" and you literally get all programs in the start menu with options of how to run or open them. I prefer to do "Menu" - > "Submenu" - > "Thing I want".

Come to think of it I should probably make a launcher for KDE.

Pop!_OS

Gnome with a bit of a macOS twist. I really like it. I'm excited for Cosmic!

Linux Mint has a smooth, out-of-your-way look & feel to either MATE or Cinnamon that just makes me feel at home

You mean Desktop?

Distro, I think Lubuntu does LXQt better than Fedora LXQt.

But LXQt is a huge mix of mostly KDE Theming.

Honestly, whilst I would not recommend this at all, I find CutefishOS (you could argue it doesn't even need to be a distro) incredibly visually appealing.

Perhaps I will get downvoted for being a sucker for modern visuals, but the theme is consistent, simple and easy on my eyes.

Although I like GNOME, the consistency bothers me and some of the design choices are inconsistent and don't make for a great user experience, looking at Nautilus for example.

Hardy Heron

Hardy Heron

Ah, I really liked Ubuntu looks in old (4.04 - 8.04) versions. The brown/orange is so much better than the newer gray/purple/red whatever. Since 10.04 the theme and color scheme has been awful.

As one comment mentioned, it depends more on the DE. But out of the box, I’d say Peppermint, Elementary, and Mint.

I loved Peppermint. Has it been updated/does it work?
Used to use it but it crapped out on me and last couple of versions haven't worked or had printer issues.

Xerolinux. It's basically a heavily themed KDE

Hmm there is stuff like Archcraft (maybe it has a different name now idk) that is made specifically for visuals. In terms of usable distros I'd say Xero is the best I know. It seems to be discontinued though. CachyOS has some nice WM setups too but the appealing visuals can't be consistent in that case because they are not full DEs and the unreasonably tiny calendar pop-up window from Xfce always ruins everything.

Really depends on the desktop but in terms of default desktops that are shipped with distros I'm picking Fedora's GNOME (pretty much stock) and MX Linux's XFCE.

Just installed a USB boot for Mint (cinnamon) and MX (xfce).

Both are so much nicer than I expected.

Trying to figure out how to put together a sub-distro for friends & family that are considering moving away from windows.

MX ranks higher out of the box (comes with VLC installed).

Out of the box, I love Vanilla OS's color scheme and wallpaper, with Fedora in second place for a default Gnome environment. I like the Pop_OS theme. I use River WM with a gruvbox theme (Vivaldi with no open tabs pictured), which is about as far from out of the box as you can get. Incidentally, I've been team light theme forEVER, but I've switched with gruvbox.

desktop screenshot

My favourite looking DE is GNOME with the WhiteSur theme and SF-Pro system font

I've seen Gnome spiffed up to a level of polish I'd expect from an Apple commercial. I hate using it, but some folks get it looking nice.

I like the look of tiling wms with a top bar. Hyprland looks especially nice with rounded corners and color gradients. Too bad it's not stable enough to be my daily driver at the moment.

Logos and soft branding are important for my aesthetic pleasure so I like Fedora GNOME with Papirus icons and Oxygen Blue cursors. Manjaro GNOME, similarly set up, would be my second choice.

elementary! It’s macish, but I still think pantheon is my favorite DE

I tried their icons on KDE (there is a theme) and these old, very detailed icons just dont make sense. Too much color, very incoherent style and way too much detail that you cannot see anyways.

But I have not tried it, as I was too dumb that you need Javascript to have the payment download button work.

Elementary has some very clean sober themes. I fell in the tilling windows craze and ricing so I'm sporting an Arch (I use it btw) with AwesomeWM, so very minimalistic.

Debian with the Awesome WM. I'm biased because that's what I use.

Mint with Papirus icons and blue accent colour set to match the folder icons of Papirus theme.

I like simple default, so it is easier to customize. But If I have to keep the default I would say Garuda.

Current distributions, I like EndeavourOS sway edition and Window Maker Live (wmlive).

Historically, I liked HP-UX and OpenSolaris with Gnome and the Nimbus theme. Linux Mint Darnya was nice. So was OpenSUSE 9.3 I think with Gnome and its custom launcher. Red Hat Enterprise Linux / Scientific Linux 6 was nice looking. We went a couple of years without CentOS so everyone used SL6.

It's dead now, but Apricity was the first distro I really enjoyed the look of. Now I know better than to care about out of box appearance.

Out of the box experience is valuable though. No every user wants to tinker for an afternoon to make a system suit their needs. Some want to install and go, nothing wrong with that.

Out of box experience is a personal preference. It always has been. Every person expects something different so I don't really care about it anymore.

Weird way to misspell desktop environment. Or wm defaults. A gnome reskin isn't a distro.

Anything with GNOME is visually appealing but unfortunately the usability is pure garbage. KDE is the exact opposite and Xfce is quick but sits on an awkward place.