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?

  • Kory@lemmy.ml
    6·
    10 months ago

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

    • aksdb@lemmy.world
      2·
      10 months 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.

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
    3·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    10 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.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    2·
    10 months ago

    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

  • lengau@midwest.social
    1·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    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.

      • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • desentizised@lemm.ee
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        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)_/¯

  • miguel@fedia.io
    1·
    10 months ago

    KDE. I’ve been using it as my daily driver for roughly 10 years now, and barring any unforeseen excitement, it’ll stay that way indefinitely. Proably until I stop using Linux, anyhow.

  • floppybutton@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    10 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.

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 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.

  • Vopyr@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 months 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.

  • the16bitgamer@programming.dev
    1·
    10 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.