Tbh youre probably better off on something like Linux Mint or something else Debian or Ubuntu based. Fedora is a good distro but rpms are a lot less common than debs are and alien does not entirely fix that issue.
While I would still recommend Ubuntu or Mint or even Debian, I have been using openSUSE for years and have never run into a case where I had to compile software.
I'm not sure why you are bringing Gentoo into it here. I mean that all the software I have tried to install is either available in the repos or available as an appimage/flatpak. Were it not available in binary form I would need to compile it - and I have not run into that scenario.
I'll probably end up settling on Ubuntu. Thought I'd try a couple before making a final decision.
Ubuntu is doing an annoying attempt to generate lock-in and profits by forcing snap on everyone and making it annoyingly difficult to avoid.
Consider one of the ubuntu derivatives (there's a number of them, Mint, Pop etc) in preference to ubuntu itself, a debian derivative (KDE neon for example) or go with Fedora if you're a business orientated user.
I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed about five years ago and still don't see myself hopping to another one
Opensuse TW or Fedora
Fedora Plasma is truly awesome!
Install gentoo
But for real, depends on your use case I use arch on my dev machine and you get nearly every package in the AUR
Plasma. It’s the most customizable and you can dive in and shape it. It feels much more natural for me to jump into.
I put xfce on older hardware.
Distro wise I tend to go with Ubuntu flavors most because they seem to have better compatibility for various software and stuff I need, but I haven’t really shopped around too hard in years. Work is RHEL (and clones) and they make me sad.
I’m thinking of settling on Ubuntu for the same reason. It’s easy enough to get a VM setup and test other distros if needed
KDE is what finally got me to switch from Windows.
Out of the box I found it a better user experience than Windows 10s desktop, but having it be stupid easy to customize and theme on top of that has made me never wanna go back.
KDE for me. As much as I hate windows, I like the floating windows, task bar and tray. KDE has that out of the box and lets me tweak all the little annoyances away.
Of all the things I hate about Microsoft Windows, the GUI design is not one of them. The content of those windows is janky as all hell. But the floating windows, taskbar, and tray? Those are all great.
I love the minimize all windows button. It is so small and functional, I always use the KDE Widget that copies it, and IMO, KDE should use it by default
Plasma, but only on Wayland (which is better anyway unbiased opinion).
Man i didnt realize how much better Wayland is until I had to use a provided setup for a few weeks.
The fact that I can't swipe to switch virtual desktops on xorg was enough to make me question why xorg doesn't offer such basic things after all the years
The swiping thing is apparently a deliberate decision by KDE for whatever reason.
Well, yeah, but they made that decision, because X11 is a pain to implement and debug this stuff on.
Oh I see. But I thought such gestures were available a long time ago, I remember apps like Fusuma, and there was talk of adding them to libinput so that every DE could let the user assign actions to gestures.
Yeah, this is now using the libinput gestures. It's mainly exciting, because it's available out-of-the-box, even for non-techies and lazy people (me).
With general technological advances and I believe Windows having similar gestures, it's now also rarely the case that touchpad hardware doesn't support multi-touch input...
Gnome 44. Simple, familiar and all my extensions work!
I use Debian with XFCE.Really lightweight and stable
Back to Debian after a long hiatus and XFCE was my choice for the exact same reasons.
me as well
Xfce. It's lightweight and looks great with a little bit of customisation. For me it's the perfect balance between performance, usability and looks
KDE
It's like a swiss-army knife of DEs.
I try to make it look like Windows 7.
Sway
Sway is a WM not a DE. So you create your own DE? Or, I see Regolith is integrating sway, I think with Gnome Flashback as with i3. Not sure if there are others.
Yeah, I thought about not responding on the basis that Sway wasn't a DE, but someone else responded CWM, so I figured at least if I bucked the system, I wouldn't be alone in it.
Plus, not everyone really knows the difference between a DE and a WM. And not everyone knows that a lot of people don't use a DE. So, often times, people use "DE" and "WM" synonymously, not really knowing there's a difference.
(Not saying that describes OP or anyone here in particular. But there was definitely a time when that described me. And I wouldn't be surprised if that described some folks who were browsing this thread.)
Oh, but to answer your question directly, no I don't use anything that could be considered a DE. I use "dmenu_run" from Suckless to launch applications. That's about the only thing I "add" to Sway in my setup.
I didn't realise that people use them interchangeably. I've got an idea on what a WM is and what a DE is but nothing super in depth.
A WM is literally just the window manager. It makes windows work and have a border and maximize and stuff but that's it.
A DE gives you a lot of other stuff: a root window that makes up the "desktop", panels & widgets, notification area, an application menu, workspaces, window and workspace switchers, global hotkeys, the concept of a session and stuff related to it (things to run on start, or saving your session between reboots), a unified theme and fonts etc. etc.
There are also programs that fall somewhere between these. For example tiling WM tend to fill the whole screen so they don't care a lot about all the things I mentioned but they can integrate with some other stuff to some extent. Or something like OpenBox which includes a very lightweight desktop, menu and panel so I guess you could call it a DE but it's all contained in one executable.
I've really appreciated running i3 within gnome-flashback. I keep hitting things that just work, that I didn't even realize I wanted. I hit the pause/mute button on my headphones when watching youtube and it paused... Things like ssh agents, hotplugging monitors and having it remember your preferred config, the main gnome settings GUI, the compose key, etc.. I'm just not interested in reinventing all that, even though each individual step is usually not hard.
I'm glad to see Regolith is making a DE with Sway. One day I'll migrate from i3 and I may let Regolith give me a DE.
Gnome
KDE
XFCE. It's just so easy to click and drag things where I want them and edit icons to be uniform.
Have you tried testing out DE in a virtual machine? It's a big time saver versus installing it on actual hardware.
I'm doing all my testing on a VM before committing and doing a bare metal install
Ah good to hear. I was not smart enough to do that when I was first getting into Linux and I only had one PC so you can imagine the headache.
You can also boot a live CD. Last time I switched distro I got a bunch of live CDs and picked the one where everything was working out of the box (accessing shares, playing music/video, printing, Bluetooth, hooking up my phone to USB, gaming controller etc.) (Ended up on Manjaro btw.)
Totally. You can typically get CDs at the dollar store these days. I have a few from dealing with older computers now but I also have a sizeable amount of USBs now and several computers.
What made you decide on Manjaro?
Oh it's only "CD" in the name, you can boot the image from a USB stick. No need to go out and buy actual CDs.
I wanted to move away from Ubuntu and .deb based desktop distros because they don't do well with long term use.
The way debs work, if you want third party software you have to add repos individually. But each of them tracks dependencies only within their scope. So eventually you end up with combinations of packages that the installer cannot solve anymore and you can't upgrade your main packages. Which results in an reinstall.
I wanted something Arch-based because I heard it takes "rolling distro" seriously and you can keep upgrading and using it indeterminately. And there's a single third party repo (AUR) which only breaks its own packages when the main system is updated, but not the main system. Which seems like a reasonable compromise.
But I wanted a more polished desktop experience so no plain Arch. The candidates were Manjaro, Garuda and Endeavour so that's where the live CD test came in.
Yeah I know I've used them for years but I keep some on hand for older devices.
Fair enough. I used Manjaro for a while, maybe a year, and it kept breaking my system. I've been using EndeavourOS and Fedora ever since and haven't had an issue.
Good call, just be aware that while you can (pretty much) install any DE on any distro. Many distros will have a ready prepared install that may feel quite different to you adding the DE later.
If that's not clear, Ubuntu with cinnamon DE is very different to Mint Cinnamon. Same with Kubuntu (KDE Ubuntu) and KDE Neon (Debian KDE).
All of the differences are of course replicable, they're themes and tools and configs. But for example it took me literally most of a day to get Arch with cinnamon to feel like Mint cinnamon.
Personally I've been on KDE for a few years, I love the way I can customize my workflow, from the default apps to the panels layout.
The KDE team has made fantastic progress since I've started using it, and it's now very stable and feature rich.
I'm very excited for the upcoming Plasma 6
And as a reminder to everybody, please donate if you can, no matter what software you use. Especially if you've been using that DE for a while. Open source projects like these are always in need of funding!
Every time I hear this, I'm tempted to try KDE again, but every time I do, I run into stability issues.
I really like the customizability, particularly being able to set up the workflow you want. But then I hit stability issues and that just kills it for me - pun only somewhat intentional.
I guess it's a hit or miss depending on the hardware. I've never had a single stability issue with plasma ever since I started using it
I doubt it's a hardware issue. That said, fair enough re: experiences may vary.
KDE Plasma. Number 2 is Cinnamon
KDE and Cinnamon.
I love KDE Plasma, been using it for years. Cinnamon is very good too, especially for folks that like the Windows 7 style.
Cosmic is nice from the little I've used it, but I prefer a DE with more options.
Not a Gnome fan personally, I've tried it many times, just can't get into it, but objectively it's solid.
KDE. I tried gnome, xfce etc. but theyre either stripped down (xfce) or designed in a way that bothers me. (gnome)
GNOME
I really like plain "boring" vanilla Gnome. It's straightforward, I like it's workflow, it does everything I need it too, and looks nice too. I'm not a fan of "power user" UIs as I feel like they have too many features I'll never use filling them up. You can always get more programs to do more things anyway. Like I use compilers and disassemblers all the time, but I'm not upset that Gnome doesn't ship with those features built in when I'm in some weird 1% of users that need them. On the other hand, I think KDE is important to the ecosystem too, and I donate $100 a year to both the Gnome and KDE projects.
I love cinnamon a lot
KDE, I enjoy the whole ecosystem both visually and functionally.
GNOME. A lot of people customize it to look and behave more like Windows or Macos, and I used to as well, but after giving the default configuration a chance and getting used to it, I prefer it over everything else. It's way more focused and organized, and I can navigate through my open windows quicker and easier. It's just a different workflow you need to adjust your brain to.
I like Xfce and Plasma, it's pretty hard to decide between the two
Kde Plasma. Customized so there are no visible panels, only an auto-hide panel at the top for wifi/bluetooth etc. I do app switching and opening new apps via the Overview effect.
I have to say KDE Plasma, but I look really forward toward Cosmic Rust.
KDE is simply so damn old and has weird quirks everywhere, it has features and basic things like
functional apps: dolphin, spectacle, kate, kde connect, systemsettings, discover, ...
SSD with hitboxes in the very corner (looking at you GNOME)
wayland support
a regular but modular bottom panel
extensible everywhere
But it also just has too many features. Extensions are not tested or versioned so many simply dont work anymore, often some of the dozens of components has an issue. I cant imagine Cosmic reaching the level of features in like 3 years, but if it would do, this could be great. But in the end its up to the devs, so I have no idea at all.
I dont find GNOME usable really. At least in the default settings. The decorations make no sense on Desktops (they are perfect for tablets), the top bar makes you look down too much, the ubuntu way wastes space too. Everything is too thick, too little GUI settings and the standard apps could be from Android, the little features they have.
Plasma 6 is coming out soon. Not sure if it addressed any of your issues though.
I think they clean up a lot, thats true. I am very excited!
maybe this is a hot take but I just really like vanilla KDE. I don't even customize that much, I just think it looks and feels nice out of the box
Cinnamon LMDE
Hyprland
Honestly, this is the first I've heard of Hyprland, but it looks sick.
I like Vanilla GNOME the best atm.
I much prefer Cinnamon.
I LOVE KDE. Seriously. But there is no proper Sliding TWM for it at the moment and it's soooooo good having a proper one. I tried Karousel but it was too glitchy, especially when streaming. Thus, I am on Gnome with PaperWM. A simply phenomenal experience! :)
LXQT followed by Plasma
Same
hyprland currently but maybe switching to awesomewm or qtile. it takes effort to configure/learn them so idk if you are open to try them at the beginning. or if you prefer a conventional environment like gnome, kde, xfce...
KDE, I've been using it since the late 90s. I've tried other DEs but nothing comes close IMO.
xfce. For me, it strikes that perfect balance between lightweight and featureful, looks good but not too fancy, is customizable and usable. I set it up the way I like it and it never changes on me.
Same for me, XFCE is light, stable and efficient. I believe that's the reason it's chosen for Debian as default DE
Keep in mind I am insane and you shouldn't take this as a recommendation unless you are also weird in the ways I am, but I absolutely love NsCDE, it's an FVWM based modern clone of the old CDE desktop from old UNIXs and VMS and it is so so well executed and I love it.
In my (and my friend's) experience, KDE has been notoriously unreliable. We faced issues like the wifi icon just disappearing randomly, the time thingy disappearing, etc.
I have been using GNOME for around five years now (I temporarily switched to KDE 2 yrs back and reswitched to GNOME 3 months later). Till now, GNOME has been extremely stable for me. The only issue that I experienced was a memory (although that was fixed in subsequent updates).
Hence, based on this experience, if you're looking for stability, I would highly recommend GNOME. However, if u'r looking for more customization at the cost of less stability, KDE ain't bad.
KDE is very stable. You are using some bad, 2 years old version because Ubuntu LTS cycle.
I don't think so. I was using Garuda at the time, which is based on Arch.
I use Hyprland, but if not, then GNOME... It's just pretty and easy to use out of the box
Man, Hyprland looks so cool. It's unfortunate I own an Nvidia GPU, it shits she bed even on Wayland KDE
No DE. Just openbox + polybar + rofi
Do you think OpenBox is usable with minimal config? I'm looking for a WM which I won't have to spend too much of time configuring, which is why I'm considering floating WMs
Honestly you can use Openbox right out the bag if you really wanted to. If you need to configuring autostart and hotkeys and the menu is really easy
I'll configure the theme, hot-keys and maybe install a compositor or something. Thanks for the tip, I'm trying to decide between OpenBox and IceWM right now
Gnome on laptop, gnome with extentions on one pc and kde on another.
Cinnamon. It's comfy.
sway - stable and productive.
Hyprland - beautiful, but performance is worse.
i3 - same as sway, but sometimes better for legacy X11 stuff or applications that are still buggy at Wayland
Thanks for all your discussions. All your experiences are very helpful for me.
Now here is my top list and reasons:
Cinnamon (most familiar and very stable for me)
XFCE (I like the responseness and lightweightness)
MATE (stable and reliable)
KDE (I like the configurability, but unfortunately I experienced a lot of instabilities and accidents)
Gnome (I don't like the new UI concept. When I tried it, it was laggy and non-responsive)
Out of this list:
I3 (only head good things, but never tried it on my own installation)
Cosmic (first time I heard about today)
Budgie (first time I heard about today)
Cinnamon is, straight up, the best. The only annoying part is that damn debugger thing that shows up that damn and useless LookingGlass thing which defaults to Super+L. Super+L definitely should be Lock Screen instead.
Gnome will be slow without acceleration. Were you running it in a vm?
Tried it on VM and Backup Notebooks. Especially on old Notebooks its hardly usable.
That is likely true although it may also have to do with a lack of ram and bad GPU support.
I'm running Plasma with Arch, but I like Gnome to, it's simple and easier to use, but I also think that plasma is more customizable.
I recently switched back to GNOME after a few years on KDE, mostly because of Wayland support. I honestly don't care much about the DE, provided it gets out of my way. I used to use a Tiling WM, so I may give a Wayland tiling WM a shot.
Hmm I am using Wayland on KDE for 6-12months with no problem, why did you need to swap to Gnome to get it working ?
Just curious, no tribal warfare intended (the gnome vs kde fight is a bit silly to me)
IDK, Wayland was super unstable for me on KDE, even on my AMD GPU (RX 6650XT). It wouldn't launch at all through SDDM (black screen, and I checked other TTYs), and it would lock up quickly (maybe a kernel panic?, I couldn't even switch TTYs) when I launched through the command line. I used NVIDIA before that, and couldn't get KDE to launch at all on Wayland (GNOME did, but was buggy), so I used KDE on X until I replaced my GPU.
I honestly didn't look much into it, but launching GNOME through GDM worked perfectly, so I didn't feel the need to debug further.
My goal was to use Wayland, and I didn't particularly care which DE did it. I have a slight preference for KDE, but I honestly don't use enough DE features to care too much, I just want something to launch apps and then go away. As long as it has a decent terminal with tmux, can switch windows, and has a clock with a calendar, that's enough for me.
Interesting. I'm using the 6600 on arch kde wayland with no problems. I wonder what caused your issues.
Anyway as you say if you've got a working setup great.
I would say try Gnome. If you don't like it, use KDE. Those are the 2 big ones right now so they'll be the most reliable. Gnome is either love it or hate it, KDE is very vanilla. I personally use Gnome, because I love the workflow.
Cinnamon! Although I want to give KDE another chance to become my default DE.
I like Budgie. It looks nice, lightweight, and doesn’t get in the way. There’s a few missing features but I like that it’s a smaller community project.
My university Linux cluster was my first introduction to Linux in general, and they ran MATE of all things.
A few years later, when I decided I was done with Window's bullshit and wanted to jump my daily driver to Linux, I installed Ubuntu MATE so I'd have the best familiarity edge I could to minimize friction.
MATE is alright. Despite being rather barebones and dated (being a life support fork of GNOME 2, I understand that is indeed kind of the point), it served me well for about 5 years.
I got a real urge to switch, though, due to just how little support or documentation there is for anything in MATE. I was also getting fed up with Ubuntu's Snap crap as well. So I decided to dump both for something else.
I wanted to stay on Debian's architecture for now, but no longer had need for Ubuntu's handholding, so raw Debian it was. As for the DE, I personally like the rich, full-fat ones more than the lean ones, and I wanted something modern, popular, and with highly proliferous support resources. That basically meant GNOME 3 or KDE Plasma. And I guess maybe Cinnamon, but I always see it marketed as the "newly ex-Windows user training wheels" DE, and that isn't my need.
GNOME 3 strikes me as the "MacOS" of Linux DEs. It wants to swim against the current to introduce its own paradigm. Everything designed to work in its ecosystem is buttery smooth and sexy, yes, but since it's also a counterparadigm, that tends to relegate you to the pack-in software and a handful of big vendors. Most other software has to rely on clumsy shims to fit in. I'm not about it, tbh. I'm sure it's fine, I just don't think higher highs are worth the lower lows, and I generally wasn't in the mood for a drastic paradigm shift.
So, KDE Plasma for me. It was unfortunate I made the leap just as they decided, "Wayland is stable and supported enough for everyone now!" (it isn't, lol), so it's a bit rockier than I was hoping, but whatever. Stability and support can only improve with time. And I expect faster adoption of Wayland than I do the GNOME 3 paradigm since Wayland is currently the only ship of its kind in the water that isn't sinking.
Aaaaall that said, KDE treats me pretty well, minus the Wayland issues. Upgrading to it from MATE was like trading up from a cheap, dingy hostel to a clean 4-star hotel. Should've leapt years ago.
Thank you for that very detailed response!
Gnome. It looks simple and elegant, is easy and intuitive to use, and everything I need is either built in or available as an extension.
The one caveat is that you probably shouldn't update it right on day one of a new version release, because usually some extension devs need a few more days to update their stuff. My distro (Fedora) always releases new versions a few months after Gnome does, so this works out perfectly.
MATE as is or Xfce with some MATE software (swapping Thunar for Caja, swapping the XFCE calculator program for MATE's calculator, using Engrampa instead of whatever Xfce uses for a file archive manager, etc.). I like things simple and following roughly the same paradigm that I've used for years.
And for the love of god, PLEASE KEEP MENU BARS AS THEY WERE IN THE PAST! Stop removing menu bars from programs in favor of "hamburger buttons" or whatever nonsense modern programs like to use! That's honestly one of my biggest gripes with "modern" software, they keep changing the paradigm to something that I haven't used and I can't be bothered to relearn everything.
Hyprland. Fast, wayland, tiling, animated. Checks off all the boxes and just works(TM).
GNOME. I currently use it without any extensions, but sometimes use “Blur my shell” for the visual effect.
GNOME “just works” and looks extremely polished and consistent. It gives the application the maximum amount of screen real estate. The keyboard shortcuts are great. It’s very power-user friendly IMO.
kde with bismuth for tiling
sway on wayland (the only WM that doesn't crash even though it lacks a lot of features), awesomewm on xorg (fast and very customizable, but has quirks)
@governorkeagan Xfce first and then Cinnamon. Xfce is more flexible than Cinnamon, which is solid.
Gnome, which looks so nice, requires too many extensions for my taste. So it is not for me.
I tried Plasma many times. It is a mess with all the options (I don't know if they are going to fix this in the next releases) and whenever I tried it there were always some small annoying little bugs. They are changing the release cycle, so maybe in the future these problems will become more rare.
KDE and Budgie
That I use? Cinnamon, because lazy. That I prefer? Fluxbox, because fast af.
Cinnamon. It just works and I can make it look how I like. i3 on laptops, because hackor.
Well for DE its KDE for me but in general DWM
I found GNOME in my early days, Cinnamon and Budgie after GNOME went "convergence," and KDE ever since. A nice thing about Linux is we have some variety so you can pick something that will let you work/play your way.
There are other great options like XFCE and MATE.
Switched to GNOME a couple of months ago from KDE. Very much love the function of GNOME, but still prefer the customizability of KDE.
I bounce between Xfce and Plasma. I used Xfce for... I don't know, 15 years? And only switched to plasma for a while because of getting a hidpi laptop before Xfce had support for it.
Sway is really impressively stable if you're willing to learn it and set it up. It's a tiling WM.
I've been running the same arch install with roughly the same sway config for 3 years. My computer has never been so boring!
I love Sway with Arch, been running it for about two years across a few devices. Sway has yet to freeze, crash, or otherwise act unstable. It's wonderful.
The only ones I've really ended up liking are KDE Plasma, and Cosmic (both the modified Gnome version, and hopefully the Rust version in the future too. Right now I'm enjoying Cosmic more than KDE Plasma so I have high hopes for it, both are great though.
I love how Cosmic just stays out of your way and let's you work. Never looked back after switching to it, hopefully the new one is the same thing but faster.
When I first switched from windows I loved KDE. Then I felt frisky and tried Gnome. Now I love them both
I got used to XFCE, but, with my new awesome Tuxedo laptop, I got KDE as a DE for a stock OS, and I could say it feels much more complete. But the performance drops, when opening a terminal, for example.
For me, from most to least favorite, it goes:
Cinnamon
Mate
KDE
xfce
Bash-only; no GUI
doing my math homework by counting on my toes
Losing three fingers in a table saw accident
GNOME
Edit to add: I love the "one newline in the editor is no newlines in the published comment." The internet isn't getting worse by the minute at all.
Gnome. But I use 3 extensions (dash to dock, desktop icons and appindicators) and the adw-gtk3 theme so GTK3 apps looks the same as GTK4/libadwaita apps.
When I switched from Windows definitely Cinnamon but by now it's Gnome, it's a little odd at first but I absolutely love the workflow!
Gnome doesn't really support multiple monitors without addons.
As someone who uses GNOME on two monitors...I dont understand
Do you have any information on your second like weather or time? I love that most DEs have a panel or an option to have a panel in the second monitor.
I used to use this extension a while back, seems to have been forked and Ihaven\t tried it lately but it did it\s thing back when I used it.
I’ve been using Debian with Cinnamon desktop for a while. I tried XFCE but it didn’t click and I really disliked how you added an app launcher to the dock. Cinnamon gets out of my and just works for the little that I need.
Started with GNOME, then once I got more comfortable I jumped ship to hyprland
KDE or cinnamon are probably the closest ones to windows if you're looking for familiarity but I think gnome/tiling wms improve on that
Hyprland and other tiling wms are great but only if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker and fiddle constantly
only if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker and fiddle constantly
What if, completely hypothetically, I'm the kind of person who is incredibly lazy and just wants things to work out of the box with minimal effort and maintenance?
Definitely Gnome
but not if you want two or more windows on screen at the same time. It hates you if you want that
Gnome or if you want something a bit different pantheon
Any classic desktop environment will work, you don't have to tinker with them unless you don't like the default organization and settings. But there's no way to guess what you'd like out of the box.
Tiling window managers are a niche for power users, they're a different category.
I do enjoy tinkering so I might play with it on a VM
Just bare in mind you start with basically nothing with many of the tilers, gotta install your own top bar, app launcher, guis for WiFi,Bluetooth, audio devices
I would not recommend you try it as your first daily driver
Totally agree! I won't be installing it as a daily driver anytime soon
I also feel that tilers with best when used mainly with apps that have extensive keyboard support. If you have to switch between keyboard and mouse too much it breaks the flow. But I can see it working with a track pad or nub.
"keyboards are for the weak"
Opens paint
"Shiiiiit"
Gnome. On my laptop KDE and cinimon have given me a LOT of issues. I've had a lot of linux problems due to my hardware tho but finally found a fix and don't want to change
@governorkeagan My preferred Desktop environment is Cinnamon. I used to prefer swaywm but it's not a complete DE.
Ubuntu 23.04 and GNOME.
I'm currently using KDE Plasma with i3. I like it fine. I love i3, and KDE works to tie everything together and add consistency for theming. Previously I was using i3 on XFCE, that was easier to set up. Plasma tends to require special configuration to make it play nice with i3, but once you're over that hump it makes for a pretty decent combination.
Gnome, KDE is also nice but the default doesn’t function in a way that makes sense to my brain anymore after using gnome
plasma, xfce and sway/swayfx.
plasma and xfce are DEs, sway is a wlroots-based wayland compositor (tiling window manager).
Ubuntu's GNOME.
I've used Dwm for a long time, then switched to awesome, for the easier configuration! Loved both, really can't stand a floating wm no more
Not technically a DE, but for productivity and full customization I use DWM (DWL is available for Wayland). It is super easy to use, keyboard centric and can be modified to behave exactly the way you want, as long as you patch it.
I'm now full time on sway
Productivity is through the roof!
Gnome, but only with dash-to-panel. Otherwise XFCE.
I use gnome as a primary, it feels really polished and doesn’t break or crash. Very modern, but if you want to have a super-customized experience, you’re gonna have a bad time. Extensions break every update and so do themes, so you either wait for the dev to port it or so it yourself. Annoying, so I only use vanilla for now.
Maybe I’ll try plasma, looks cool.
GNOME 2. I tried 3 for a year or two and the task bar crashes or lack the very basic feature of swapping window position. It's an external plugin so I don't expect it to be fixed in any year soon. Then I realize GNOME 2 was perfect before they ruined it in 3 so now I've been on MATE desktop for 4 years now. I think the new team is too small to catch up on any modern changes (webp support is lacking, and no wayland) and nothing I could do can fix that (minor development work on build system, donation) but I'd still accept a perfect 2010 era desktop over 2023 desktop that doesn't feel right after a decade of development.
Started with XFCE but migrated away due to bugginess with my outdated system. Next was KDE. I was pleasantly surprised by how lightweight it ended up being after hearing otherwise. Now I'm on Sway, and it makes this old computer scream!
Generally Plasma. I really like the look of Libadwaita applications, but the GNOME desktop is very much a "do it our way, or take a hike" - and some of the interactions that I've seen in the past between the GNOME group and others... well, lets just say whenever I see drama in the Linux community as of recently its always been either with GNOME or Wayland. That doesn't necessarily instill a lot of confidence in me using either of those.
What’s with all the drama regarding Wayland? I’m seeing it constantly.
Some Wayland fans like to ignore reality, like the fact 80% of Linux users use Nvidia, or that Nvidia offers a free Linux driver for their own reasons and have zero incentive to open source it, or that even if it weren't for Nvidia we still can't use Wayland because it's not ready and doesn't do everything that X does.
When you ignore reality you tend to get into arguments constantly.
As far as I understand, its the major push for moving forward with Wayland and dropping X11 as fast as possible yet Wayland still doesn't work for a lot of workflows (say, making use of global hotkeys, or Nvidia users, etc).
I love the swipey gesture workflow on gnome on the laptop
For VMs I use IceWM. I like MATE (Gnome 2.0 feel) for daily driving.
I started with Zorin, then GNOME via Pop!OS, then KDE, vanilla GNOME, then KDE again.
Who knows cos they all have good features.
TDE. Does its job, doesn't mess with my workflow by changing stuff that worked perfectly well before, but still has plenty of built-in software and general stuff for the occasions that I need it. But then, I'm a weirdo by tech enthusiast standards.
My favs:
(probably) Cosmic
GNOME
Plasma
I love gnome but too used to kde to switch.
Gnome. Mostly vanilla except for some extended tiling for when I need it. Also sped up animations.
I bind Activities to an extra mouse button. But I'm also comfortable without that.
I've used a lot of stuff over the years. Started with the kde 3 series. I just don't really want to do a lot of fiddling anymore, and find the default Gnome workflow to be a really good fit for me.
I have used xfce and cinnamon without any problems, I think I like xfce a little more.
I'm new to this but KDE basically has all of the aesthetics customization features and quality of life features I always wanted out of Windows + Rainmeter. Finally I can have my videos pinned on the top easily every time. Finally I can have my fancy widgets. I can have universal color themes and fonts beyond what Windows ever offered. So there is more abstract stuff out there, but for now I'm living the long lost dream.
I prefer Plasma, but having an nvidia GPU makes using wayland a non-starter.
XFCE is my second favorite.
AwesomeWM is my current daily driver but outside the scope of the question
@governorkeagan gnome, comes cause it doesnt look like windows
Cinnamon at the moment because I'm running LMDE 6. After that it would be gnome however it does have a higher RAM usage. I find Gnome based DE's easier to read and understand.
Whereas KDE just confuses me with its illegible font, awful icons (especially in Libre Office) and the nonsensical horizontal blue lines in some settings.
Gnome, sometimes XFCE on older hardware.
Blorp
KDE if you want a customizable DE, Gnome if you like simplicity and XFCE if you are on less than 4GB. Anything else is mental illness mixed with boomer nostalgia.
I don't like any DEs, tbh both KDE Plasma and Cinnamon felt worse than Win7 DE. And I'll never ever even try Gnome
Gnome. Feels most polished and least cluttered to me.
Seconded. I used to use Ubuntu, but I switched to Debian + GNOME and I love it.
I agree. I use gnome on nix and it has been great, especially on a touchpad.
Plasma definitely. Xfce is second.
Any preferences on the distro? I’ve been enjoying Fedora but I’ve also tested Ubuntu and enjoyed that
You should try Arch btw
Not for beginners, that's just mean
Tbh youre probably better off on something like Linux Mint or something else Debian or Ubuntu based. Fedora is a good distro but rpms are a lot less common than debs are and alien does not entirely fix that issue.
While I would still recommend Ubuntu or Mint or even Debian, I have been using openSUSE for years and have never run into a case where I had to compile software.
@raptir @xkforce Isn't compiling normally for #gentoo ?
I'm not sure why you are bringing Gentoo into it here. I mean that all the software I have tried to install is either available in the repos or available as an appimage/flatpak. Were it not available in binary form I would need to compile it - and I have not run into that scenario.
I'll probably end up settling on Ubuntu. Thought I'd try a couple before making a final decision.
Ubuntu is doing an annoying attempt to generate lock-in and profits by forcing snap on everyone and making it annoyingly difficult to avoid.
Consider one of the ubuntu derivatives (there's a number of them, Mint, Pop etc) in preference to ubuntu itself, a debian derivative (KDE neon for example) or go with Fedora if you're a business orientated user.
I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed about five years ago and still don't see myself hopping to another one
Opensuse TW or Fedora
Fedora Plasma is truly awesome!
Install gentoo
But for real, depends on your use case I use arch on my dev machine and you get nearly every package in the AUR
Plasma. It’s the most customizable and you can dive in and shape it. It feels much more natural for me to jump into.
I put xfce on older hardware.
Distro wise I tend to go with Ubuntu flavors most because they seem to have better compatibility for various software and stuff I need, but I haven’t really shopped around too hard in years. Work is RHEL (and clones) and they make me sad.
I’m thinking of settling on Ubuntu for the same reason. It’s easy enough to get a VM setup and test other distros if needed
KDE is what finally got me to switch from Windows.
Out of the box I found it a better user experience than Windows 10s desktop, but having it be stupid easy to customize and theme on top of that has made me never wanna go back.
KDE for me. As much as I hate windows, I like the floating windows, task bar and tray. KDE has that out of the box and lets me tweak all the little annoyances away.
Of all the things I hate about Microsoft Windows, the GUI design is not one of them. The content of those windows is janky as all hell. But the floating windows, taskbar, and tray? Those are all great.
I love the minimize all windows button. It is so small and functional, I always use the KDE Widget that copies it, and IMO, KDE should use it by default
Plasma, but only on Wayland (which is better anyway unbiased opinion).
Man i didnt realize how much better Wayland is until I had to use a provided setup for a few weeks.
The fact that I can't swipe to switch virtual desktops on xorg was enough to make me question why xorg doesn't offer such basic things after all the years
The swiping thing is apparently a deliberate decision by KDE for whatever reason.
Well, yeah, but they made that decision, because X11 is a pain to implement and debug this stuff on.
That sounds like a pretty good reason yeah
How are you swiping, out of curiosity? I have windows occupying the whole screen.
I switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut or by clicking buttons on the panel.
It's with three fingers on a touchpad.
There's some short clips of it here: https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.25.0/
Oh I see. But I thought such gestures were available a long time ago, I remember apps like Fusuma, and there was talk of adding them to libinput so that every DE could let the user assign actions to gestures.
Yeah, this is now using the libinput gestures. It's mainly exciting, because it's available out-of-the-box, even for non-techies and lazy people (me).
With general technological advances and I believe Windows having similar gestures, it's now also rarely the case that touchpad hardware doesn't support multi-touch input...
But screen sharing was not possible for me. Which is kinda a deal breaker. Is that implemented yet?
Gnome 44. Simple, familiar and all my extensions work!
I use Debian with XFCE.Really lightweight and stable
Back to Debian after a long hiatus and XFCE was my choice for the exact same reasons.
me as well
Xfce. It's lightweight and looks great with a little bit of customisation. For me it's the perfect balance between performance, usability and looks
KDE
It's like a swiss-army knife of DEs.
I try to make it look like Windows 7.
Sway
Sway is a WM not a DE. So you create your own DE? Or, I see Regolith is integrating sway, I think with Gnome Flashback as with i3. Not sure if there are others.
Yeah, I thought about not responding on the basis that Sway wasn't a DE, but someone else responded CWM, so I figured at least if I bucked the system, I wouldn't be alone in it.
Plus, not everyone really knows the difference between a DE and a WM. And not everyone knows that a lot of people don't use a DE. So, often times, people use "DE" and "WM" synonymously, not really knowing there's a difference.
(Not saying that describes OP or anyone here in particular. But there was definitely a time when that described me. And I wouldn't be surprised if that described some folks who were browsing this thread.)
Oh, but to answer your question directly, no I don't use anything that could be considered a DE. I use "dmenu_run" from Suckless to launch applications. That's about the only thing I "add" to Sway in my setup.
I didn't realise that people use them interchangeably. I've got an idea on what a WM is and what a DE is but nothing super in depth.
A WM is literally just the window manager. It makes windows work and have a border and maximize and stuff but that's it.
A DE gives you a lot of other stuff: a root window that makes up the "desktop", panels & widgets, notification area, an application menu, workspaces, window and workspace switchers, global hotkeys, the concept of a session and stuff related to it (things to run on start, or saving your session between reboots), a unified theme and fonts etc. etc.
There are also programs that fall somewhere between these. For example tiling WM tend to fill the whole screen so they don't care a lot about all the things I mentioned but they can integrate with some other stuff to some extent. Or something like OpenBox which includes a very lightweight desktop, menu and panel so I guess you could call it a DE but it's all contained in one executable.
I've really appreciated running i3 within gnome-flashback. I keep hitting things that just work, that I didn't even realize I wanted. I hit the pause/mute button on my headphones when watching youtube and it paused... Things like ssh agents, hotplugging monitors and having it remember your preferred config, the main gnome settings GUI, the compose key, etc.. I'm just not interested in reinventing all that, even though each individual step is usually not hard.
I'm glad to see Regolith is making a DE with Sway. One day I'll migrate from i3 and I may let Regolith give me a DE.
Gnome
KDE
XFCE. It's just so easy to click and drag things where I want them and edit icons to be uniform.
Have you tried testing out DE in a virtual machine? It's a big time saver versus installing it on actual hardware.
I'm doing all my testing on a VM before committing and doing a bare metal install
Ah good to hear. I was not smart enough to do that when I was first getting into Linux and I only had one PC so you can imagine the headache.
You can also boot a live CD. Last time I switched distro I got a bunch of live CDs and picked the one where everything was working out of the box (accessing shares, playing music/video, printing, Bluetooth, hooking up my phone to USB, gaming controller etc.) (Ended up on Manjaro btw.)
Totally. You can typically get CDs at the dollar store these days. I have a few from dealing with older computers now but I also have a sizeable amount of USBs now and several computers.
What made you decide on Manjaro?
Oh it's only "CD" in the name, you can boot the image from a USB stick. No need to go out and buy actual CDs.
I wanted to move away from Ubuntu and .deb based desktop distros because they don't do well with long term use.
The way debs work, if you want third party software you have to add repos individually. But each of them tracks dependencies only within their scope. So eventually you end up with combinations of packages that the installer cannot solve anymore and you can't upgrade your main packages. Which results in an reinstall.
I wanted something Arch-based because I heard it takes "rolling distro" seriously and you can keep upgrading and using it indeterminately. And there's a single third party repo (AUR) which only breaks its own packages when the main system is updated, but not the main system. Which seems like a reasonable compromise.
But I wanted a more polished desktop experience so no plain Arch. The candidates were Manjaro, Garuda and Endeavour so that's where the live CD test came in.
Yeah I know I've used them for years but I keep some on hand for older devices.
Fair enough. I used Manjaro for a while, maybe a year, and it kept breaking my system. I've been using EndeavourOS and Fedora ever since and haven't had an issue.
Good call, just be aware that while you can (pretty much) install any DE on any distro. Many distros will have a ready prepared install that may feel quite different to you adding the DE later.
If that's not clear, Ubuntu with cinnamon DE is very different to Mint Cinnamon. Same with Kubuntu (KDE Ubuntu) and KDE Neon (Debian KDE).
All of the differences are of course replicable, they're themes and tools and configs. But for example it took me literally most of a day to get Arch with cinnamon to feel like Mint cinnamon.
Personally I've been on KDE for a few years, I love the way I can customize my workflow, from the default apps to the panels layout. The KDE team has made fantastic progress since I've started using it, and it's now very stable and feature rich. I'm very excited for the upcoming Plasma 6
And as a reminder to everybody, please donate if you can, no matter what software you use. Especially if you've been using that DE for a while. Open source projects like these are always in need of funding!
Every time I hear this, I'm tempted to try KDE again, but every time I do, I run into stability issues.
I really like the customizability, particularly being able to set up the workflow you want. But then I hit stability issues and that just kills it for me - pun only somewhat intentional.
I guess it's a hit or miss depending on the hardware. I've never had a single stability issue with plasma ever since I started using it
I doubt it's a hardware issue. That said, fair enough re: experiences may vary.
KDE Plasma. Number 2 is Cinnamon
KDE and Cinnamon.
I love KDE Plasma, been using it for years. Cinnamon is very good too, especially for folks that like the Windows 7 style.
Cosmic is nice from the little I've used it, but I prefer a DE with more options.
Not a Gnome fan personally, I've tried it many times, just can't get into it, but objectively it's solid.
KDE. I tried gnome, xfce etc. but theyre either stripped down (xfce) or designed in a way that bothers me. (gnome)
GNOME
I really like plain "boring" vanilla Gnome. It's straightforward, I like it's workflow, it does everything I need it too, and looks nice too. I'm not a fan of "power user" UIs as I feel like they have too many features I'll never use filling them up. You can always get more programs to do more things anyway. Like I use compilers and disassemblers all the time, but I'm not upset that Gnome doesn't ship with those features built in when I'm in some weird 1% of users that need them. On the other hand, I think KDE is important to the ecosystem too, and I donate $100 a year to both the Gnome and KDE projects.
I love cinnamon a lot
KDE, I enjoy the whole ecosystem both visually and functionally.
GNOME. A lot of people customize it to look and behave more like Windows or Macos, and I used to as well, but after giving the default configuration a chance and getting used to it, I prefer it over everything else. It's way more focused and organized, and I can navigate through my open windows quicker and easier. It's just a different workflow you need to adjust your brain to.
I like Xfce and Plasma, it's pretty hard to decide between the two
Kde Plasma. Customized so there are no visible panels, only an auto-hide panel at the top for wifi/bluetooth etc. I do app switching and opening new apps via the Overview effect.
I have to say KDE Plasma, but I look really forward toward Cosmic Rust.
KDE is simply so damn old and has weird quirks everywhere, it has features and basic things like
But it also just has too many features. Extensions are not tested or versioned so many simply dont work anymore, often some of the dozens of components has an issue. I cant imagine Cosmic reaching the level of features in like 3 years, but if it would do, this could be great. But in the end its up to the devs, so I have no idea at all.
I dont find GNOME usable really. At least in the default settings. The decorations make no sense on Desktops (they are perfect for tablets), the top bar makes you look down too much, the ubuntu way wastes space too. Everything is too thick, too little GUI settings and the standard apps could be from Android, the little features they have.
Plasma 6 is coming out soon. Not sure if it addressed any of your issues though.
I think they clean up a lot, thats true. I am very excited!
maybe this is a hot take but I just really like vanilla KDE. I don't even customize that much, I just think it looks and feels nice out of the box
Cinnamon LMDE
Hyprland
Honestly, this is the first I've heard of Hyprland, but it looks sick.
I like Vanilla GNOME the best atm.
I much prefer Cinnamon.
I LOVE KDE. Seriously. But there is no proper Sliding TWM for it at the moment and it's soooooo good having a proper one. I tried Karousel but it was too glitchy, especially when streaming. Thus, I am on Gnome with PaperWM. A simply phenomenal experience! :)
LXQT followed by Plasma
Same
hyprland currently but maybe switching to awesomewm or qtile. it takes effort to configure/learn them so idk if you are open to try them at the beginning. or if you prefer a conventional environment like gnome, kde, xfce...
KDE, I've been using it since the late 90s. I've tried other DEs but nothing comes close IMO.
xfce. For me, it strikes that perfect balance between lightweight and featureful, looks good but not too fancy, is customizable and usable. I set it up the way I like it and it never changes on me.
Same for me, XFCE is light, stable and efficient. I believe that's the reason it's chosen for Debian as default DE
Keep in mind I am insane and you shouldn't take this as a recommendation unless you are also weird in the ways I am, but I absolutely love NsCDE, it's an FVWM based modern clone of the old CDE desktop from old UNIXs and VMS and it is so so well executed and I love it.
In my (and my friend's) experience, KDE has been notoriously unreliable. We faced issues like the wifi icon just disappearing randomly, the time thingy disappearing, etc.
I have been using GNOME for around five years now (I temporarily switched to KDE 2 yrs back and reswitched to GNOME 3 months later). Till now, GNOME has been extremely stable for me. The only issue that I experienced was a memory (although that was fixed in subsequent updates).
Hence, based on this experience, if you're looking for stability, I would highly recommend GNOME. However, if u'r looking for more customization at the cost of less stability, KDE ain't bad.
KDE is very stable. You are using some bad, 2 years old version because Ubuntu LTS cycle.
I don't think so. I was using Garuda at the time, which is based on Arch.
I use Hyprland, but if not, then GNOME... It's just pretty and easy to use out of the box
Man, Hyprland looks so cool. It's unfortunate I own an Nvidia GPU, it shits she bed even on Wayland KDE
No DE. Just openbox + polybar + rofi
Do you think OpenBox is usable with minimal config? I'm looking for a WM which I won't have to spend too much of time configuring, which is why I'm considering floating WMs
Honestly you can use Openbox right out the bag if you really wanted to. If you need to configuring autostart and hotkeys and the menu is really easy
I'll configure the theme, hot-keys and maybe install a compositor or something. Thanks for the tip, I'm trying to decide between OpenBox and IceWM right now
Gnome on laptop, gnome with extentions on one pc and kde on another.
Cinnamon. It's comfy.
sway - stable and productive. Hyprland - beautiful, but performance is worse. i3 - same as sway, but sometimes better for legacy X11 stuff or applications that are still buggy at Wayland
I use i3, I love it
Xmonad!!! (And in 25 years, Waymonad!)
Thanks for all your discussions. All your experiences are very helpful for me. Now here is my top list and reasons:
Out of this list:
Cinnamon is, straight up, the best. The only annoying part is that damn debugger thing that shows up that damn and useless LookingGlass thing which defaults to Super+L. Super+L definitely should be Lock Screen instead.
Gnome will be slow without acceleration. Were you running it in a vm?
Tried it on VM and Backup Notebooks. Especially on old Notebooks its hardly usable.
That is likely true although it may also have to do with a lack of ram and bad GPU support.
I'm running Plasma with Arch, but I like Gnome to, it's simple and easier to use, but I also think that plasma is more customizable.
I recently switched back to GNOME after a few years on KDE, mostly because of Wayland support. I honestly don't care much about the DE, provided it gets out of my way. I used to use a Tiling WM, so I may give a Wayland tiling WM a shot.
Hmm I am using Wayland on KDE for 6-12months with no problem, why did you need to swap to Gnome to get it working ?
Just curious, no tribal warfare intended (the gnome vs kde fight is a bit silly to me)
IDK, Wayland was super unstable for me on KDE, even on my AMD GPU (RX 6650XT). It wouldn't launch at all through SDDM (black screen, and I checked other TTYs), and it would lock up quickly (maybe a kernel panic?, I couldn't even switch TTYs) when I launched through the command line. I used NVIDIA before that, and couldn't get KDE to launch at all on Wayland (GNOME did, but was buggy), so I used KDE on X until I replaced my GPU.
I honestly didn't look much into it, but launching GNOME through GDM worked perfectly, so I didn't feel the need to debug further.
My goal was to use Wayland, and I didn't particularly care which DE did it. I have a slight preference for KDE, but I honestly don't use enough DE features to care too much, I just want something to launch apps and then go away. As long as it has a decent terminal with tmux, can switch windows, and has a clock with a calendar, that's enough for me.
Interesting. I'm using the 6600 on arch kde wayland with no problems. I wonder what caused your issues.
Anyway as you say if you've got a working setup great.
I would say try Gnome. If you don't like it, use KDE. Those are the 2 big ones right now so they'll be the most reliable. Gnome is either love it or hate it, KDE is very vanilla. I personally use Gnome, because I love the workflow.
Cinnamon! Although I want to give KDE another chance to become my default DE.
I like Budgie. It looks nice, lightweight, and doesn’t get in the way. There’s a few missing features but I like that it’s a smaller community project.
My university Linux cluster was my first introduction to Linux in general, and they ran MATE of all things.
A few years later, when I decided I was done with Window's bullshit and wanted to jump my daily driver to Linux, I installed Ubuntu MATE so I'd have the best familiarity edge I could to minimize friction.
MATE is alright. Despite being rather barebones and dated (being a life support fork of GNOME 2, I understand that is indeed kind of the point), it served me well for about 5 years.
I got a real urge to switch, though, due to just how little support or documentation there is for anything in MATE. I was also getting fed up with Ubuntu's Snap crap as well. So I decided to dump both for something else.
I wanted to stay on Debian's architecture for now, but no longer had need for Ubuntu's handholding, so raw Debian it was. As for the DE, I personally like the rich, full-fat ones more than the lean ones, and I wanted something modern, popular, and with highly proliferous support resources. That basically meant GNOME 3 or KDE Plasma. And I guess maybe Cinnamon, but I always see it marketed as the "newly ex-Windows user training wheels" DE, and that isn't my need.
GNOME 3 strikes me as the "MacOS" of Linux DEs. It wants to swim against the current to introduce its own paradigm. Everything designed to work in its ecosystem is buttery smooth and sexy, yes, but since it's also a counterparadigm, that tends to relegate you to the pack-in software and a handful of big vendors. Most other software has to rely on clumsy shims to fit in. I'm not about it, tbh. I'm sure it's fine, I just don't think higher highs are worth the lower lows, and I generally wasn't in the mood for a drastic paradigm shift.
So, KDE Plasma for me. It was unfortunate I made the leap just as they decided, "Wayland is stable and supported enough for everyone now!" (it isn't, lol), so it's a bit rockier than I was hoping, but whatever. Stability and support can only improve with time. And I expect faster adoption of Wayland than I do the GNOME 3 paradigm since Wayland is currently the only ship of its kind in the water that isn't sinking.
Aaaaall that said, KDE treats me pretty well, minus the Wayland issues. Upgrading to it from MATE was like trading up from a cheap, dingy hostel to a clean 4-star hotel. Should've leapt years ago.
Thank you for that very detailed response!
Gnome. It looks simple and elegant, is easy and intuitive to use, and everything I need is either built in or available as an extension.
The one caveat is that you probably shouldn't update it right on day one of a new version release, because usually some extension devs need a few more days to update their stuff. My distro (Fedora) always releases new versions a few months after Gnome does, so this works out perfectly.
MATE as is or Xfce with some MATE software (swapping Thunar for Caja, swapping the XFCE calculator program for MATE's calculator, using Engrampa instead of whatever Xfce uses for a file archive manager, etc.). I like things simple and following roughly the same paradigm that I've used for years.
And for the love of god, PLEASE KEEP MENU BARS AS THEY WERE IN THE PAST! Stop removing menu bars from programs in favor of "hamburger buttons" or whatever nonsense modern programs like to use! That's honestly one of my biggest gripes with "modern" software, they keep changing the paradigm to something that I haven't used and I can't be bothered to relearn everything.
Hyprland. Fast, wayland, tiling, animated. Checks off all the boxes and just works(TM).
GNOME. I currently use it without any extensions, but sometimes use “Blur my shell” for the visual effect.
GNOME “just works” and looks extremely polished and consistent. It gives the application the maximum amount of screen real estate. The keyboard shortcuts are great. It’s very power-user friendly IMO.
kde with bismuth for tiling
sway on wayland (the only WM that doesn't crash even though it lacks a lot of features), awesomewm on xorg (fast and very customizable, but has quirks)
@governorkeagan Xfce first and then Cinnamon. Xfce is more flexible than Cinnamon, which is solid.
Gnome, which looks so nice, requires too many extensions for my taste. So it is not for me.
I tried Plasma many times. It is a mess with all the options (I don't know if they are going to fix this in the next releases) and whenever I tried it there were always some small annoying little bugs. They are changing the release cycle, so maybe in the future these problems will become more rare.
KDE and Budgie
That I use? Cinnamon, because lazy. That I prefer? Fluxbox, because fast af.
Cinnamon. It just works and I can make it look how I like. i3 on laptops, because hackor.
Well for DE its KDE for me but in general DWM
I found GNOME in my early days, Cinnamon and Budgie after GNOME went "convergence," and KDE ever since. A nice thing about Linux is we have some variety so you can pick something that will let you work/play your way.
There are other great options like XFCE and MATE.
Switched to GNOME a couple of months ago from KDE. Very much love the function of GNOME, but still prefer the customizability of KDE.
I bounce between Xfce and Plasma. I used Xfce for... I don't know, 15 years? And only switched to plasma for a while because of getting a hidpi laptop before Xfce had support for it.
Sway is really impressively stable if you're willing to learn it and set it up. It's a tiling WM.
I've been running the same arch install with roughly the same sway config for 3 years. My computer has never been so boring!
I love Sway with Arch, been running it for about two years across a few devices. Sway has yet to freeze, crash, or otherwise act unstable. It's wonderful.
The only ones I've really ended up liking are KDE Plasma, and Cosmic (both the modified Gnome version, and hopefully the Rust version in the future too. Right now I'm enjoying Cosmic more than KDE Plasma so I have high hopes for it, both are great though.
I love how Cosmic just stays out of your way and let's you work. Never looked back after switching to it, hopefully the new one is the same thing but faster.
When I first switched from windows I loved KDE. Then I felt frisky and tried Gnome. Now I love them both
I got used to XFCE, but, with my new awesome Tuxedo laptop, I got KDE as a DE for a stock OS, and I could say it feels much more complete. But the performance drops, when opening a terminal, for example.
For me, from most to least favorite, it goes:
Cinnamon
Mate
KDE
xfce
Bash-only; no GUI
doing my math homework by counting on my toes
Losing three fingers in a table saw accident
GNOME
Edit to add: I love the "one newline in the editor is no newlines in the published comment." The internet isn't getting worse by the minute at all.
Gnome. But I use 3 extensions (dash to dock, desktop icons and appindicators) and the adw-gtk3 theme so GTK3 apps looks the same as GTK4/libadwaita apps.
When I switched from Windows definitely Cinnamon but by now it's Gnome, it's a little odd at first but I absolutely love the workflow!
Gnome doesn't really support multiple monitors without addons.
As someone who uses GNOME on two monitors...I dont understand
Do you have any information on your second like weather or time? I love that most DEs have a panel or an option to have a panel in the second monitor.
I used to use this extension a while back, seems to have been forked and Ihaven\t tried it lately but it did it\s thing back when I used it.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/921/multi-monitors-add-on/
That's exactly what I mean. For decent multi-monitor support, you have to add some roughly supported addon.
Nowadays KDE.
@governorkeagan Hyprland
I’ve been using Debian with Cinnamon desktop for a while. I tried XFCE but it didn’t click and I really disliked how you added an app launcher to the dock. Cinnamon gets out of my and just works for the little that I need.
Started with GNOME, then once I got more comfortable I jumped ship to hyprland
KDE or cinnamon are probably the closest ones to windows if you're looking for familiarity but I think gnome/tiling wms improve on that
Hyprland and other tiling wms are great but only if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker and fiddle constantly
What if, completely hypothetically, I'm the kind of person who is incredibly lazy and just wants things to work out of the box with minimal effort and maintenance?
Definitely Gnome
but not if you want two or more windows on screen at the same time. It hates you if you want that
Gnome or if you want something a bit different pantheon
Any classic desktop environment will work, you don't have to tinker with them unless you don't like the default organization and settings. But there's no way to guess what you'd like out of the box.
Tiling window managers are a niche for power users, they're a different category.
I do enjoy tinkering so I might play with it on a VM
Just bare in mind you start with basically nothing with many of the tilers, gotta install your own top bar, app launcher, guis for WiFi,Bluetooth, audio devices
I would not recommend you try it as your first daily driver
Totally agree! I won't be installing it as a daily driver anytime soon
I also feel that tilers with best when used mainly with apps that have extensive keyboard support. If you have to switch between keyboard and mouse too much it breaks the flow. But I can see it working with a track pad or nub.
"keyboards are for the weak" Opens paint "Shiiiiit"
Gnome. On my laptop KDE and cinimon have given me a LOT of issues. I've had a lot of linux problems due to my hardware tho but finally found a fix and don't want to change
@governorkeagan My preferred Desktop environment is Cinnamon. I used to prefer swaywm but it's not a complete DE.
Ubuntu 23.04 and GNOME.
I'm currently using KDE Plasma with i3. I like it fine. I love i3, and KDE works to tie everything together and add consistency for theming. Previously I was using i3 on XFCE, that was easier to set up. Plasma tends to require special configuration to make it play nice with i3, but once you're over that hump it makes for a pretty decent combination.
Gnome, KDE is also nice but the default doesn’t function in a way that makes sense to my brain anymore after using gnome
plasma, xfce and sway/swayfx.
plasma and xfce are DEs, sway is a wlroots-based wayland compositor (tiling window manager).
Ubuntu's GNOME.
I've used Dwm for a long time, then switched to awesome, for the easier configuration! Loved both, really can't stand a floating wm no more
Not technically a DE, but for productivity and full customization I use DWM (DWL is available for Wayland). It is super easy to use, keyboard centric and can be modified to behave exactly the way you want, as long as you patch it.
I'm now full time on sway
Productivity is through the roof!
Gnome, but only with dash-to-panel. Otherwise XFCE.
I use gnome as a primary, it feels really polished and doesn’t break or crash. Very modern, but if you want to have a super-customized experience, you’re gonna have a bad time. Extensions break every update and so do themes, so you either wait for the dev to port it or so it yourself. Annoying, so I only use vanilla for now.
Maybe I’ll try plasma, looks cool.
GNOME 2. I tried 3 for a year or two and the task bar crashes or lack the very basic feature of swapping window position. It's an external plugin so I don't expect it to be fixed in any year soon. Then I realize GNOME 2 was perfect before they ruined it in 3 so now I've been on MATE desktop for 4 years now. I think the new team is too small to catch up on any modern changes (webp support is lacking, and no wayland) and nothing I could do can fix that (minor development work on build system, donation) but I'd still accept a perfect 2010 era desktop over 2023 desktop that doesn't feel right after a decade of development.
Started with XFCE but migrated away due to bugginess with my outdated system. Next was KDE. I was pleasantly surprised by how lightweight it ended up being after hearing otherwise. Now I'm on Sway, and it makes this old computer scream!
Generally Plasma. I really like the look of Libadwaita applications, but the GNOME desktop is very much a "do it our way, or take a hike" - and some of the interactions that I've seen in the past between the GNOME group and others... well, lets just say whenever I see drama in the Linux community as of recently its always been either with GNOME or Wayland. That doesn't necessarily instill a lot of confidence in me using either of those.
What’s with all the drama regarding Wayland? I’m seeing it constantly.
Some Wayland fans like to ignore reality, like the fact 80% of Linux users use Nvidia, or that Nvidia offers a free Linux driver for their own reasons and have zero incentive to open source it, or that even if it weren't for Nvidia we still can't use Wayland because it's not ready and doesn't do everything that X does.
When you ignore reality you tend to get into arguments constantly.
As far as I understand, its the major push for moving forward with Wayland and dropping X11 as fast as possible yet Wayland still doesn't work for a lot of workflows (say, making use of global hotkeys, or Nvidia users, etc).
I love the swipey gesture workflow on gnome on the laptop
For VMs I use IceWM. I like MATE (Gnome 2.0 feel) for daily driving.
I started with Zorin, then GNOME via Pop!OS, then KDE, vanilla GNOME, then KDE again.
Who knows cos they all have good features.
TDE. Does its job, doesn't mess with my workflow by changing stuff that worked perfectly well before, but still has plenty of built-in software and general stuff for the occasions that I need it. But then, I'm a weirdo by tech enthusiast standards.
My favs:
I love gnome but too used to kde to switch.
Gnome. Mostly vanilla except for some extended tiling for when I need it. Also sped up animations.
I bind Activities to an extra mouse button. But I'm also comfortable without that.
I've used a lot of stuff over the years. Started with the kde 3 series. I just don't really want to do a lot of fiddling anymore, and find the default Gnome workflow to be a really good fit for me.
I have used xfce and cinnamon without any problems, I think I like xfce a little more.
I'm new to this but KDE basically has all of the aesthetics customization features and quality of life features I always wanted out of Windows + Rainmeter. Finally I can have my videos pinned on the top easily every time. Finally I can have my fancy widgets. I can have universal color themes and fonts beyond what Windows ever offered. So there is more abstract stuff out there, but for now I'm living the long lost dream.
I prefer Plasma, but having an nvidia GPU makes using wayland a non-starter.
XFCE is my second favorite.
AwesomeWM is my current daily driver but outside the scope of the question
@governorkeagan gnome, comes cause it doesnt look like windows
Cinnamon at the moment because I'm running LMDE 6. After that it would be gnome however it does have a higher RAM usage. I find Gnome based DE's easier to read and understand.
Whereas KDE just confuses me with its illegible font, awful icons (especially in Libre Office) and the nonsensical horizontal blue lines in some settings.
Gnome, sometimes XFCE on older hardware.
Blorp
KDE if you want a customizable DE, Gnome if you like simplicity and XFCE if you are on less than 4GB. Anything else is mental illness mixed with boomer nostalgia.
I don't like any DEs, tbh both KDE Plasma and Cinnamon felt worse than Win7 DE. And I'll never ever even try Gnome
But I absolutely love WMs, I use i3wm