Long time i3 user, recently switched to Hyprland+Wayland. I just don’t like mice, don’t enjoy using them, and I find the snappiness and responsiveness of keyboard-centric workflows very fun and enjoyable.

I am a software developer, and I am very impatient when it comes to my tools: I like my feedback cycles and interactions to be as tight as possible. This limited study from 2015 showed that developers, on average, spend ~26% of their productive time on stuff that is not related to either code editing or comprehension, including 14% spent on UI interactions. Tiling window manager allows me to streamline most of these interactions through hotkey bindings and shell automation, >!so I prefer spending literal months polishing my dotfiles instead!<

KDE Plasma on all my computers and also as desktop mode on Steam Deck. because it supports the latest technologies especially when it comes to graphics (HDR, VRR) also has best support for Wayland and multi-monitors. It looks great out of the box and it has a lot of features out of the box and I do not need to battle with adding some extensions that break with almost every update. KDE Plasma is also the most flexible desktop and I can set the workflow really to fit my desires and I can actually set many options and settings. And despite all these built-in features and configurability it still uses very few system resources and is very fast and smooth. Oh and the KDE community is one of the most welcoming I have met in FOSS world, and they listen to their users instead of the our way or the high way mentality I have so often encountered in GNOME for example. So yeah TLDR KDE Plasma is the one I like the most of all in the industry, even when compared to proprietary closed alternatives.

KDE for my main PC. Pretty with floating panels, KDE Connect, QT apps are often the best apps in their class and are perfectly integrated (FreeCAD, krita, okular, kdenlive, vlc, dolphin, etc…) And konsole is also very full featured.

I don’t know what KiCAD uses, but it also seems very well integrated into the KDE desktop unlike most gnome apps.

XFCE on MX Linux for an old Intel Compute Stick to keep it very usable.

It’s hard to go back after Sway/I3 with pywal coloration, when everything is so sluggish in comparison. It’s amazing to see gnome and KDE adding like a second to launch/quit of common applications. Tried hyprland, but animations seemed choppy (beefy AMD desktop), has that changed?

Gnome on one machine, LXDE on another.

I use Gnome on my main laptop, a Thinkpad P50. I bought it with a dock thinking I’d use it at my desk and on the sofa but it’s a bit of a beast so that stays on my desk and I use an L440 with LXDE on the sofa. Considering trying LCARS on the sofa machine.

Sway, will try the new cosmic once its in beta

Currently, Plasma. But I have ADHD a bit, so I’ve gone back and forth between that and Gnome mostly. I do like Cinnamon and I really want to spend time with Xfce and maybe others just to see what feels most comfortable right now. I’m trying to go for keyboard comfort these days, so we’ll see where I land at some point!

KDE, because despite my bitterness for the loss of Unity 8, I know it’s merely nostalgia for me. I want something I feel like I can make my own without too much difficulty.

Gnome on Nixos I like how standard it is I know what to expect

Sway on a chromebook with 4gb ram, sway on thinkpad t430, xfce on my gf’s laptop, and gnome on my gaming rig that will go soon either cosmic or just sway. For me sway is thewinner. Sway with me… Marimba… Lalala

Edit: also gnome on the kichen pc with touch. Gnome is the only one that works fully on touch.

Nobody uses cinnamon? Honestly - I really like using cinnamon with Debian. I heard that they promised not to fuck with the UI for no reason unlike… everyone! @Mwa Cinnamon is a fairly nice, easy to use desktop - I don’t really care which is better, but if they change it, you have to re-learn it. Top tip for UI design - don’t think that your users want to re-learn how to interact with your UI - they might go outside, or elsewhere.

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Usually KDE, but I’m messing around with qtile atm.

Plasma, because I want things to Just Work™ and the customizability and modernity are neat. I like right click --> pin to top/bottom as well.

I’m old, I come from old X11R4 time, motif, mwm, twm, fvwm, things from previous century. In modern Linux I used mostly gnome, and Cinnamon for a few years and tried to love it but cannot, I finally went back to Xfce because it works, it’s simple, neat, nice, I have no icon on my desktop, I have a kind of windows 3 setup: a startup menu (and some quick launches), the window bar, the notification area with time etc

I’m using MX Linux for maybe 8 years now with Xfce

updated screenshot: