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?

  • the16bitgamer@programming.dev
    61·
    2 days ago

    Cinnamon for 2 reasons

    1. 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

    2. 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.

  • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    131·
    4 days ago

    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.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
      2·
      3 days ago

      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!

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
    161·
    4 days ago

    My computer doesn’t really break, I’m Ship of Theseus-ing it regularly.

    Apart from that, the only one among the normal window based ones that has felt like it respects my will to configure stuff in ways that feel right to me has been KDE Plasma.

  • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
    3·
    3 days ago

    I’ve been using Mate ever since Gnome-2 transitioned to Gnome-3 and I didn’t like the transition. I like a clean screen with simple menus, Plasma is just way too cluttered for me.

  • Vopyr@lemmy.world
    7·
    4 days ago

    LXQT. Why? Because: It is lightweight, consumes little resources, is quite customizable, and has full Ukrainian localization.

    Maybe I’ll switch to XFCE/MATE, but not if there are a lot of things not translated, or if the translation is worse than even Google Translate.

  • GustavoM@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    4 days ago

    I don’t mind a little “change” every now and then, but still – “Sway” on my “potatoes” (Orange pi zero 3 and Orange pi 5 max) and “Hyprland” on my x86_64 PC.

    • aedyr@lemmy.ca
      5·
      4 days ago

      My daily driver is Arch running sway. Would be hard to go back from the simplicity and elegance.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      1·
      4 days ago

      Isn’t sway based on i3? i3 is a WM not a DE. But as sway is not X11, I’m not sure if it’s just a WM

      • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Sway still primarily counts as a WM + Compositor, but considering it has keymaps, autostart, and libinput config mechanisms embedded in it, I would say it borders a desktop environment.

  • swelter_spark@reddthat.comEnglish
    5·
    4 days ago

    I use XFCE. If their Wayland support isn’t ready when openSUSE Tumbleweed eliminates support for x11, I’m not sure what I’ll go to.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        3·
        4 days ago

        Wayland is now default, you have to add a few x11 packages to have an x11 login now. Also SE Linux Enforcing by default.

      • swelter_spark@reddthat.comEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        At some point, probably after Fedora stops supporting x11, openSUSE plans to follow suit, and it will no longer be available in the repos. There’s no firm date for when this will occur, though. I read about it on the official forum.

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.dev
    52·
    4 days ago

    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.

  • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    I settled on herbstluft in I think around 2015 and 10 years later have still never felt the need to migrate anywhere else.

    I did about a year ago give up lightDM for emptty, but that doesn’t really count.

  • Kory@lemmy.ml
    611·
    4 days ago

    That’s not too hard a question for me, I’ve been using the same DE for years: KDE

    • aksdb@lemmy.world
      14·
      4 days ago

      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.

      • jamie_oliver@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        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.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      2·
      3 days ago

      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