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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
That’s not too hard a question for me, I’ve been using the same DE for years: KDE
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.
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.
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
Oh yes. Much better since the KDE4 branch / debacle.
KDE
Plasma, been using it since I was a kid
Plasma’s not that old, it just came out a few years ago…
2008?
K so I just realized they didn’t call it plasma until 2008, I first used KDE in 2005.
I’d rather not use a computer at all than use GNOME for the rest of my live.
For me it’s KDE Plasma all the way.It’s wild to me how GNOME evokes such strong opinions in folks. It really is a love it or hate it kind of deal (I’m in the “love it” camp).
I wonder why that is. I like KDE ok, but it doesn’t elicit a strong emotion from me. KDE works fine, I just really like GNOME.
There must be something about GNOME in particular that some people love, and others hate.
Personally, I’m disgusted by the “matter of fact” tone GNOME devs take to criticism only to be wrong in the end.
It’s like, they dig their heels in so deep on dumb shit like “the dock should be on the side because vertical space is at a premium!” and then renege after years of users telling them they’re wrong. Literally whoever is floating ideas like that on their team needs to be fired and blacklisted, but unfortunately they’re probably promoted.
They also can’t be arsed to include proper settings, so it’s up to everyone else to pick up their slack.
At some point, it starts to feel like weaponized incompetence. I genuinely do not want GNOME’s culture to pervade more parts of the free software ecosystem.
For those of us that expect room to breathe and make our machine work for us rather than the other way around, we feel like Gnome takes a lot of liberties away for the sake of “simplicity.” There is so much missing from Gnome that is present in most other DEs and even custom WM setups.
The primary contributors who work under The Gnome Foundation also come off as controlling and arrogant in a lot of cases, and refuse to take community feedback to heart, whereas KDE has literal summits to get user feedback on major core features we want to see which then later get added to their backlogs and sprints as Epics. Gnome acts a lot like Apple in the sense that they’re very much “we know what’s best for you better than you do.”
Now, the singular area I can give Gnome true props in is their accessibility functionality, but that’s primarily it. KDE’s accessibility is fairly behind by about a decade in comparison.
That’s just my take, take it as you will.
can you exemplify a few of the things you miss?
I miss old Gnome. I wish they’d stuck with the old Gnome 2 design philosophy but breathed new modern design principals into it, instead of trying to go the Ubuntu Unity route. Maybe something like Cinnamon but even more flexible and feature-rich.
Use Mate. It is based on the old Gnome 2
I mean, we already know the solution to gnome’s crappy design decisions is to use something else.
This comment chain is specifically about criticizing gnome.
I was waiting for someone to say that.
I like that Mate is a thing, but like I said, I’m looking for something thats based on it but as if its had the same 20 years of enhancements everything else got.
The closest thing to that I’ve found is quite literally KDE. So I use KDE.
I also wouldn’t have as much of an issue with gnome for removing features if they also made the right design decision in place of those features.
They want to remove features to make things easier on them, not users.
There is so much missing from Gnome that is present in most other DEs and even custom WM setups.
There are also plenty of features that gnome has that kde and other desktops and wms don’t have. It’s all about tradeoffs and what’s acceptable or necessary for you.
Honestly, that defaulting to the Search field in the Save dialog when I’m trying to save something just gets me wild. It beggars the imagination why the developers think that’s a reasonable thing to do and it colors my whole perception of the DE.
This and shortcut for creating a subfolder doeesnt work in save dialogue.
I haven’t lasted long enough after the Search piss-off to notice the tomfoolery of that. Well, you probably shouldn’t be creating new folders from there, don’t you understand how the workflow-as-handed-down-by-Jehosaphat is supposed to be used?
There must be something about GNOME in particular that some people love, and others hate.
GNOME is heavily opinionated.
As such it gets praise from people that share that opinion and gets hate from the people that do not. Many other DEs are much more configurable, giving a broader audience the possibility to adjust everything to their liking.
GNOME is a lightly upgraded MacOS interface. Every time I’ve had to use a Mac has pissed me off so GNOME gives me war flashbacks.
Not necessarily the DE’s fault but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ok.
But, in Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, all three of which I work in regularly, I open up a terminal and type stuff in it, open up applications in windows and work in them, and copy and paste between them.
Really, any DE can handle this stuff. Not sure what all the fuss is about otherwise. But it’s all good.
Gives me more Windows 8 flashbacks than Mac.
An interface that works well on touchscreens, but feels clunky on mouse and keyboard and the general theming of it looks more phone like than a desktop PC. Gnome itself being harder to theme doesn’t help with that.
That being said I’d pick Gnome over all else for touch devices. I threw it on an old Surface 3 and it worked better than the original Win8 interface.
I agree it looks kind of like a phone. But, and take this with a big grain of salt because I didn’t use Gnome for very long at all, I thought it was really nice to navigate. I ended up using the mouse much less than I do now with Cinnamon.
You know how the ending of LOST or Game of Thrones can bring up feelings in people? That’s how it was for me when Gnome 3 first came out. I had been using Gnome 2 for a few years and had a good workflow, and then suddenly, everything changed. Back then Gnome 3 was buggy and lacked a lot of things, which didn’t help. It also didn’t help that the devs took a “the problem is you” stance to all feedback. That said, I use Gnome now, and I like it, it took some years to mature and become good. But the feeling is still there sometimes.
I was team Gnome before Gnome 3 came out. Nowadays I don’t mind it for auxiliary computers that I don’t interact with regularly. It has a huge community behind it and that is a quality in its own right. But since MATE never really managed to become a worthy successor to Gnome 2 I guess I’m team Plasma now. I got it “forced” on me by my beloved Steam Deck and I can definitely see why Valve went for it.
Currently I’m experimenting with Hyprland but that is definitely too early to call it my forever pick, so Plasma it is.
why do you think gnome is the default on everything?
Because distros have a sick sense of humour.
And there was me thinking because it’s really good?
It’s not though.
The most popular de is no good
Baffling
Much like Windows.
Except people are forced to use windows. Not so with gnome
DE is no good
totally
GNOME because it works out of the box like GNOME
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.
KDE Plasma.
It has been great for gaming, adopting Wayland protocols at a faster rate than other DEs due in part thanks to Valve’s contributions.
I freaking love GNOME & Adwaita, but I’ll switch back when I deem it better than Plasma.
Desktop environment? Who needs a desktop environment?
Bro watches videos through ASCII conversion in the cli😭
mpvfor the winbut if you really want your ASCII conversion:
mpv --vo=cacaormpv --vo=tctIt’s actually possible! Thats amazing lol
Bro doesn’t need DE to watch videos. Bro doesn’t need DE to do anything.
Bad apple in text may be more impressive than it on the Nintendo.
TBH, I’ve always wanted to do this.
Definitely Gnome here. Though I have a long list of notes, it mostly just works exactly like I expect with little friction or guessing. I donate $100/year to both Gnome and KDE since they are both good pieces of software, and I love that I get to chose mine. Further, I think KDE is the logical choice for something like the SteamDeck where it’s going to have a lot of gamers that expect computers to work like Windows. (even if I don’t like it, >_<)
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.
XFCE, using it for over 10 years, not planning to change it unless the DE changes radically.
username checks out [also: same]
Also an old fart, also love XFCE
+1
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.
