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. Coming from 30 years of running exclusively windows it’s just the most comfortable and easy for me to use (way more than Gnome). Easily configurable, works. Can’t ask for more.
KDE Plasma for ease of use if using Nvidia Otherwise Hyprland or exwm
KDE plasma, unless it’s on a tablet, then Gnome
MATE has been on most of my machines, except the BSD ones.
But past year or so, I have grown a fondness towards ctwm, and gradually migrated my machines to it, Linux and BSD alike.
It is not a DE, but the fact that I have to assemble my suite of software myself on my machines, makes the point of using DEs moot.
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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Probably KDE, it’s the most ‘complete’ feeling to me with settings and GUI for most things.
I would say the same & I don’t even use it—but I would trust it being around the longest & is better than GNOME IMO.
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.
Switched from i3 to sway to hyland. I like the virtual desktop setup and noiseless facing interaction.
KDE. Been upgrading the same environment for 5 years just keeps getting better.
I started around maybe KDE 3?
Was on KDE 2, KDE 3 was absolutely incredible, ran it on Mac when it was supported on xquartz.
4 was a mess, but got better, 5 & 6 are fine, but it’s overall far better than any other DE, it’s just so customizable, the only other thing that comes close is xmonad or something.
Glad KDE has been putting major efforts over recent years into improving stability instead of just adding features.
KDE the customization is off the charts
KDE for the desktop and xfce for the laptop
why not kde for laptop?
I’d imagine lower power laptop? Though I’m using KDE on a laptop from 2012 and it works fine
This isn’t even hard. KDE without a second thought.
I regularly try other desktops, and I regularly come back to the only desktop with any sort of reasonable thought put into it.
KDE for sure. The modern versions look exactly like how I want a desktop environment to look out of the box, and they keep the full range of customizability that a desktop should, IMO, allow it’s users to have. Which is something Windows just kept slowly getting rid of over the years.
I also prefer to have a taskbar that is ever present with a traditional start menu that’s cleanly organized by category rather than the current full screen pop up “activities” search thing gnome does nowadays.
