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?
XFCE
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. 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.
I mean, they added a ton of features, especially minor or niche ones, but a lot of amazing ones like KDEConnect too.
But what makes KDE the best is that the features don’t get in the way of core functionality anymore, the basic DE is always safe and they generally layer stuff on such that it doesn’t break anything.
So basically the opposite of most of modern software nowadays.
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.
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, it’s the swiss army knife of DEs.
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.
KDE the customization is off the charts
KDE plasma, unless it’s on a tablet, then Gnome
KDE Plasma for ease of use if using Nvidia Otherwise Hyprland or exwm
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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I keep coming back to KDE time and time again. It’s so easy to mess with, I can set it up exactly how I like it without much effort, and it always looks good because someone else did all the work making themes and widgets I use.
That said, I love XFCE, I’m just trash with CSS so it takes me forever to get it how I like, and on my Surface I can’t get the scaling to work so everything is beyond tiny.
Always wanted to like gnome but never could, and xfce is fine but I much prefer KDE, it is verry likely that I’ll actually keep it till my pc breaks.
That’s the beauty of gnome: they don’t give a single fuck if you like it. You can return the favor.
Gnome has the apple philosophy that the user conforms to technology, not the other way around.
Apple actually had good visionaries and design decisions, sometimes.
Never been a fan of apple’s hardware decisions, but their software is routinely state-of-the-art even to this day.
They value treating the user like a human instead of a programmer. GNOME values removing as many features as possible to make their jobs easier.
No shade to Gnome, because there is a place for them in the ecosystem, but this is why I moved from Gnome 2 to KDE (with a few stops along the way). One size will not fit all.
Oh yeah for sure. I think if Gnome works for people they should use it. I’m not stoked on the situation of Gnome Extensions being needed for some pretty basic customisations, adding instability to the DE though.
Plenty of people just don’t have the brain capacity to read settings or multitask and that’s fine. If that works for them, good for them.
Until they need gnome to do something it doesn’t do…
