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What desktop enviroment do you use and why?

So a few months back I asked about you guys os in c/asklemmy, so this time I wanna ask about your desktops you use on this same account.
(I use kde but plan to move to cinnamon I find kde buggy and gnome tracker3 randomly broke for no reason + themeing so yh idk if these happened to anybody)

332 comments
  • KDE Plasma on all my computers and also as desktop mode on Steam Deck. because it supports the latest technologies especially when it comes to graphics (HDR, VRR) also has best support for Wayland and multi-monitors. It looks great out of the box and it has a lot of features out of the box and I do not need to battle with adding some extensions that break with almost every update. KDE Plasma is also the most flexible desktop and I can set the workflow really to fit my desires and I can actually set many options and settings. And despite all these built-in features and configurability it still uses very few system resources. Oh and the KDE community is one of the most welcoming I have met in FOSS world, and they listen to their users instead of the our way or the high way mentality I have so often encountered in GNOME for example. So yeah TLDR KDE Plasma is the one I like the most of all in the industry, even when compared to proprietary closed alternatives.

  • Cinnamon. Desktop environment peaked in the Windows XP/Gnome 2 days and everything else is just change for the shake of change. :C

    My only annoyance is lack of Wayland support. Tried out cosmic, but it doesn't have the Windows XP/Gnome 2 style window list.

    Screenshot for anyone interested:

  • Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

    Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

    I'm just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that's okay.

    • Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn't use it.)
    • The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
      • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it's a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I'm wrong, you aren't going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it's going to bear no fruit.
      • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn't true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that's good enough for me. 🙂
    • I'm unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don't remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

    Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

    You'll note I don't claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren't bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I'm sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

    There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven't even looked at any alternatives. If there's ever a time that I don't find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team's approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I'll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

  • Gnome, be it PC or Laptop. It just remains out of my way with it's minimalism. Tried KDE for a while, and I seriously can't stand it, personally.

  • KDE Plasma. I just like it. It seems to have options to do what I want, for the most part. There's some things I wish it had, like a way to programmatically get the active window under Wayland, so StreamController could automatically change pages.

  • KDE all the way, it's incredible especially since 6

    • It's been great almost since I started using it.

      I started using it exactly when 4.0 came out, because that's when I started using Linux and I thought learning 3 didn't make sense. But 4 only got stable around 4.4 I think. The problem was that 4.0 wasn't intended to be for end users yet, but distributions didn't realize that and packaged it right away.

      KDE didn't repeat that mistake. 5.0 was almost completely smooth sailing (some applications took a long time to port and looked ugly, that's it), and 6.0 was completely seamless.

  • LXDE/LXQT because I grew up using potato computers and now I can't stand it if my DE uses more than 2% of my hardware resources

    though I am currently using KDE because for fuck knows what reason, Kubuntu is the only prepackaged Linux I've been able to get to boot on my weird Samsung laptop and I haven't bothered to gut KDE and replace it with LXQT yet

  • Gaming PC: GNOME (it works fine and I don't care about much else there)

    Laptop: dwl (dwm for Wayland) and suckless tools. Ultra lightweight and comfy for browsing and watching videos. Usually at the same time.

  • My desktop environment of choice would be XFCE. It's simply easy to configure while not giving me choice fatigue like KDE does. Also I don't like Qt for some reason.

    GNOME is great but I find their extensions to be super clunky sometimes. Some of them even break in between updates. The main selling point of gnome (for me) is the minimal look and feel, extensions kind of ruin that a little bit.

    Don't get me wrong plasma and Gnome are wonderful DEs but XFCE provides a simple and balanced desktop IMO. The only thing that's missing is full Wayland support.

    P.S : Anyways most of the time I would be running a window manager instead of a DE, my current favourite Wayland window-manager is Labwc because it gives me openbox vibes.

  • i3. Superb for keyboard-driven environment. Ultra fast, so responsive and configurable. The best.

  • Xfce4.

    y tho

    It's inexpensive on resources while leaving me nothing to really... need extra, I suppose. It's old so there's thousands of themes and ways to set it up, and it just feels like home. The speed of the animations and defaults to everything has a very stock Windows XP feel to the desktop despite it looking like nearly anything. The system doesn't get in the way of programs from other desktops or setups in mind and always steps aside.

  • KDE Plasma. I am not good with making edits/tweaks to desktop environments and really like how MX has it set up.

  • gnome currently because nearly everything i use is designed for gnome and looks mismatched on other DEs. but the gnome workflow largely feels like a prison.

  • I use KDE, no bugs for me (I found one but it's already fixed in the latest update) and it's feels like my second home

  • Traditionally I've been running lighter desktops like opebox, xfce, or lmde. Last couple of years I've been using MATE with good results.

332 comments