Linux @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What's your preferred DE?

I’m currently testing Fedora KDE on a VM (windows host) before eventually switching over to Linux completely.

196 comments

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
  
  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.
  
  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

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.
  
  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.
- 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.

Gnome

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

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.

KDE Plasma. Number 2 is Cinnamon

KDE and Cinnamon.

KDE. I tried gnome, xfce etc. but theyre either stripped down (xfce) or designed in a way that bothers me. (gnome)

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.

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
  
  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.
  
  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.

KDE, I enjoy the whole ecosystem both visually and functionally.

GNOME

I love cinnamon a lot

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.

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.

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 like Vanilla GNOME the best atm.

I like Xfce and Plasma, it's pretty hard to decide between the two

Cinnamon LMDE

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

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.

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

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...

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! :)

Gnome on laptop, gnome with extentions on one pc and kde on another.

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

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

Hyprland
- Honestly, this is the first I've heard of Hyprland, but it looks sick.

I much prefer Cinnamon.

LXQT followed by Plasma
- Same

KDE, I've been using it since the late 90s. I've tried other DEs but nothing comes close IMO.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

Cinnamon. It's comfy.

Xmonad!!! (And in 25 years, Waymonad!)

196 comments