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?

  • nafzib
    12•3 months ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
    4•3 months ago

    I’m using PopOS Cosmic alpha (not based on Gnome) on my new laptop and like it a lot so far. It has a few rough edges, but nothing I’d switch to something else over. (In fact, I did use the Gnome version of Cosmic until my previous laptop broke.)

  • @[email protected]English
    9•3 months ago

    Plasma for the last decade. Then probably XFCE, then Cinnamon.

    I try Gnome every year or so, but every time I get pissed off with it within a few minutes and wipe it off my machine.

  • TurboWafflz
    4•3 months ago

    Probably either KDE or NsCDE, I always seem to come back to those

  • @[email protected]Deutsch
    1•3 months ago

    Well, for me it would be the setup i am now using since about 15 years:

    WM: flwm Filemanager: ROX-Filer Background: feh

    … and a ton of tools i accumulated over the yesrs

  • Lka1988English
    14•3 months 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.

    • @[email protected]
      2•3 months 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!

  • esa
    5•3 months ago

    I used Ratpoison for well over a decade, and only replaced it with sway once I had a new machine and figured it was time to try Wayland. Apparently that’s some 4-5 years ago already.

  • @[email protected]
    16•3 months 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.

  • @[email protected]English
    11•3 months ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
    6•3 months 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.