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

  • Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • governorkeagan@lemdro.idOP
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      1 year ago

      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

  • HouseWolf@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • ChristianWS@lemmy.eco.br
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        1 year ago

        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

    • corship@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      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

        • Knusper@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Well, yeah, but they made that decision, because X11 is a pain to implement and debug this stuff on.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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            1 year ago

            Oh I see. But I thought such gestures were available a long time ago, I remember apps like Fusuma, and there was talk of adding them to libinput so that every DE could let the user assign actions to gestures.

            • Knusper@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, this is now using the libinput gestures. It’s mainly exciting, because it’s available out-of-the-box, even for non-techies and lazy people (me).

              With general technological advances and I believe Windows having similar gestures, it’s now also rarely the case that touchpad hardware doesn’t support multi-touch input…

    • OddFed@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      But screen sharing was not possible for me. Which is kinda a deal breaker. Is that implemented yet?

  • mapletree@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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

  • atetulo@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    KDE

    It’s like a swiss-army knife of DEs.

    I try to make it look like Windows 7.

    • sping@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • governorkeagan@lemdro.idOP
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          1 year ago

          I didn’t realise that people use them interchangeably. I’ve got an idea on what a WM is and what a DE is but nothing super in depth.

          • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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            1 year ago

            A WM is literally just the window manager. It makes windows work and have a border and maximize and stuff but that’s it.

            A DE gives you a lot of other stuff: a root window that makes up the “desktop”, panels & widgets, notification area, an application menu, workspaces, window and workspace switchers, global hotkeys, the concept of a session and stuff related to it (things to run on start, or saving your session between reboots), a unified theme and fonts etc. etc.

            There are also programs that fall somewhere between these. For example tiling WM tend to fill the whole screen so they don’t care a lot about all the things I mentioned but they can integrate with some other stuff to some extent. Or something like OpenBox which includes a very lightweight desktop, menu and panel so I guess you could call it a DE but it’s all contained in one executable.

        • sping@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I’ve really appreciated running i3 within gnome-flashback. I keep hitting things that just work, that I didn’t even realize I wanted. I hit the pause/mute button on my headphones when watching youtube and it paused… Things like ssh agents, hotplugging monitors and having it remember your preferred config, the main gnome settings GUI, the compose key, etc… I’m just not interested in reinventing all that, even though each individual step is usually not hard.

          I’m glad to see Regolith is making a DE with Sway. One day I’ll migrate from i3 and I may let Regolith give me a DE.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • zabi94@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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!

    • bastion@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • zabi94@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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

  • Corroded@leminal.space
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • Corroded@leminal.space
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          You can also boot a live CD. Last time I switched distro I got a bunch of live CDs and picked the one where everything was working out of the box (accessing shares, playing music/video, printing, Bluetooth, hooking up my phone to USB, gaming controller etc.) (Ended up on Manjaro btw.)

          • Corroded@leminal.space
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            1 year ago

            Totally. You can typically get CDs at the dollar store these days. I have a few from dealing with older computers now but I also have a sizeable amount of USBs now and several computers.

            What made you decide on Manjaro?

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Oh it’s only “CD” in the name, you can boot the image from a USB stick. No need to go out and buy actual CDs.

              I wanted to move away from Ubuntu and .deb based desktop distros because they don’t do well with long term use.

              The way debs work, if you want third party software you have to add repos individually. But each of them tracks dependencies only within their scope. So eventually you end up with combinations of packages that the installer cannot solve anymore and you can’t upgrade your main packages. Which results in an reinstall.

              I wanted something Arch-based because I heard it takes “rolling distro” seriously and you can keep upgrading and using it indeterminately. And there’s a single third party repo (AUR) which only breaks its own packages when the main system is updated, but not the main system. Which seems like a reasonable compromise.

              But I wanted a more polished desktop experience so no plain Arch. The candidates were Manjaro, Garuda and Endeavour so that’s where the live CD test came in.

              • Corroded@leminal.space
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                1 year ago

                Yeah I know I’ve used them for years but I keep some on hand for older devices.

                Fair enough. I used Manjaro for a while, maybe a year, and it kept breaking my system. I’ve been using EndeavourOS and Fedora ever since and haven’t had an issue.

      • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        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.