I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it’s Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)…etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.
Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the “Flagship Manjaro version”. I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.
After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.
What about you guys?
KDE, it’s the swiss army knife of DEs.
KDE, always
Used it since I switched to the Linux Desktop 25 years ago. Quickly tried gnome, and others, and hated it.
KDE is fast, efficient, looks awesome, is ready to work with, and highly customizable
KDE plasma, unless it’s on a tablet, then Gnome
KDE Plasma for ease of use if using Nvidia Otherwise Hyprland or exwm
Cinnamon for 2 reasons
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KDE is missing a lot of features which still only works in Gnome. Like the taskbar Calendar app syncing events with services like Google Calendar
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cinnamon is extremely stable and doesn’t move your icons around when you connect to an external display with your laptop and the display has a different resolution.
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Switched from i3 to sway to hyland. I like the virtual desktop setup and noiseless facing interaction.
I’m a long time supporter of Xfce, but I have to say Cinnamon these days. It’s light on resources while being feature rich. Also it’s the default on Mint and it just works.
I use XFCE, but I like Cinnamon too. I use Nemo and Xed instead of Thunar and…whatever.
Cinnamon by and far.
I’ve used so many distros and DEs I don’t even know where to begin, but Cinnamon got me hooked for the long run. It’s legitimately the most polished and “ready to run” DE I’ve ever used, yet still allowing for far more customization than Windows ever offered.
Cinnamon’s been working well for me; I’d choose that, and I don’t mind waiting till my laptop breaks to reassess what DE I want!
There is nothing better than Xfce, if you dont like the desktop, at least Xfce allows you to customize. KDE seems interesting, but the last time i tried it, 10 years ago more or less, it was a bit buggy.
You owe KDE a second look if it’s been that long.
Agreed. I used to be a diehard XFCE fan and hated KDE.
Then I saw their resource usage came pretty close to each other but KDE had way more development behind it so they could add Wayland support (which I actually don’t even use.)
KDE used to be buggy and bloated. They’ve been improving stability for years and their efforts really show. I used to think it was bloated, but it really isn’t if you only use the parts you need. I use it pretty similarly to XFCE, it just has more dev support.
I remember when kde looked like xfce and yeah back then it was buggy. Today it looks like a slightly jank windows 7 but with the giant buttons and curved corners that characterize 2015 software.
Most of the bugs seem to come from Wayland still being vaguely trashy and kde not having fully migrated from xorg
True people only use i3 or the-other-i3-for-wayland
/s, of course. But still my personal choice
Xfce
I’m a cog in the machine and use KDE, but xfce is awesome, I would use xfce if I couldn’t use KDE.
Well, it’s gotta be a tiling system. And a good one. At this point I can’t function in a non-tiling environment. Specifically a manual tiler with an auto-tile a la i3 w/ i3-alternating-layout or a dynamic tiler that still let’s you break stuff (doesn’t really exist).
It’s just a better way to use a computer, and I can’t go back. It’s so much nicer. I would stop using a computer before I go back to dragging windows around.
And that rules out most DEs. It rules out Mac OS and Windows, as well, but at least on Windows I can almost get by with Fancy WM. It’s “okay.”
And speaking of just getting by, that’s Polonium with KDE. KDE is pretty good as an “environment,” but it doesn’t have a tiler that meets my needs, or at least I thought it didn’t until recently. Then I discovered Polonium. It works pretty well. Used it for several months (and still do on one machine). It’s very bare bones tho, and is hard to configure the handful of floating windows I do want like popups. So KDE is just scraping by.
GNOME on the other hand has the excellent Pop Shell 2. But well, GNOME is GNOME. It’s buggy when you try to use it a different way than intended. God forbid I want Qt, Gtk2, Gtk3, Gtk4, and libadwaita apps to all look nice on my system! It’s clunky, but the tiling is excellent at least.
Now you mention XFCE. So what about that? You could use i3 as the WM for Xfce. I used i3 for years and years and years as my WM and know how to build a DE around it. Why not use Xfce + i3?
Well, the thing is X11 is as good as dead, and while XFCE now supports Wayland, you can’t use a tiling system with the Wayland version of XFCE.
So what does that leave me?
Nothing. At least for a full on DE, which is what you asked.
There is not a single (pre-made) Desktop Environment that suits my needs. Not a one. Either it doesn’t support good tiling, is too rigid, or hasn’t switched to Wayland.
My only options are:
- Roll my own DE built around Hyprland/Sway, and since I’m on nvidia, those aren’t fantastic options (albeit Hyprland works a lot better on Nvidia these days), and that’s what I’m using.
- Deal with the slight annoyance of the under-implemented Polonium in KDE
Right now I’m on Hyprland. May go back to KDE bc multi monitor is being weird on Hyprland rn.
My one hope is that COSMIC polishes itself up and gets to its first real release.
That’s not too hard a question for me, I’ve been using the same DE for years: KDE
KDE is one of the main reasons for me to use Linux. I immensely like the performance, silence and battery lifetime of MacBooks. But if I have to work with anything but KDE, it’s not worth it for me. The only thing OSX does better than basically any other desktop out there, is the ability to drag whole virtual screen between monitors.
I’m running XFCE (but you could do KDE) on my intel Mac, you can get best of both worlds. I heard silicon is more difficult with Linux tho.
Has KDE improved since 2010-ish? I gave up KDE because gnome was just a better DE at the time. Gnome sucks now, but I found i3/sway. Haven’t given KDE a second chance yet
Oh yes. Much better since the KDE4 branch / debacle.
KDE
