After trying out Cosmic, Gnome,KDE Plasma, and Hyprland, I feel like plasma is the most usable for me coming from Windows. It solves the gripes I had about lack of customizability while still starting me off with a familiar homebar. I will be going back and forth with gnome for a while.
I really like gnome and the sliding desktops, and all the extensions seem to make it very customizable as well, but not directly like plasma, instead you mix and match (or make) extensions to get the look you want. (correct me if im wrong, I used it for a day)
Hyprland seems very nice for multitasking but the keyboard focus of the presets ive tried doesn’t really appeal to me, I like being able to just use my mouse sometimes.
Cosmic, is definitely an alpha and im interested to see what it becomes, wont be using it now.
XFCE and well, straightforward usage without endless tweaking and customization. On the other side, I recently(~2 years:)) felt in love with tiling window manager BSPWM and keyboard-driven usage.
Lxqt, with pcmanfm’s desktop ability turned off. I use the terminal for my file management anyway
I usually have several terminal tabs and web browser tabs open plus a tmux session. Neovim for coding and writing, feh and mpv for viewing media, mpd, supysonic, and minidlna for streaming and playing music.
KDE Plasma and it’s configured to have everything in the same places as Windows as much as possible. I have to use Windows for work and gaming and like it when I don’t have to think much about which computer I’m using right now.
I went cold turkey to gnome and I use KDE on my laptop. Both configured to use super + type in what I want to open. I quit windows since I got used to it and they stopped providing it. I like both but gnome is way more finished while kde feels a bit janky at times. I really love the customization ability of KDE and I find once I messed up and had to reinstall once, I got over my urges to needlessly rice. I don’t know if it is distro specific but I am pretty upset fedora gnome does not have create new file under right click but you have to use terminal (goes completely against gnome philosophy) or to go edit hidden folders and use terminal to create a template (goes very against gnome philosophy).
Yeah I dont think hyprland will become a mainstay for me, but I will be copying that super plus shortcut way of working over to the other DEs, im just not productive 24/7 (nor do I want to be) so fully commiting to a tiling manager doesnt make sense
Id like to see what all the buzz about hyperland is one day. When it’s not buggy and comes with a distro.
SwayWM
I’ve used several over the years, but right now I’m enjoying Hyprland. UWSM is also working well for session management.
My memory is foggy but ive used xfce for a long while, then switched to i3gaps with void linux. stopped using linux cuz they couldn’t locate the developer or something( like we didn’t get updates for half a year 0_o)
… I ended up forgetting how to use i3. I dont know what the community uses nowadays but my god i3 was AMAZING. It felt like a caveman that just learned how to make fire- and it was a big fucking fire.
I reaaaaally want to use i3 again but do not want to spend the time relearning everything. Highly recommend it though.
After a lot of jumping around I settled for Plasma, with just the default dark theme plus a few minor tweaks and that’s it. It’s super easy to use and it runs pretty smoothly now unlike 5+ years ago. I was into the whole tiling wm rabbithole for a while but got bored of it and I mostly just want everything fullscreen so I wasn’t even making use of the tiling.
Tried i3 a few years back. Never went back. Fucking love it. Would like to ditch X for Wayland soon though. Need to move to Sway but a bunch of scripts depend on X… Probably wouldn’t be too much of a nightmare to transition, but for some reason I’ve been putting it off for years.
ive used many de’s and wm’s over the last 15+ years and ended using gnome the most. most familiar with it now so, its fine for me.
Started with Gnome, then i3, Hyprland and now Sway. Gnome not being designed around customisability made me switch to i3. Hyprland has had some stability issues and regressions that annoyed me and so I switched to Sway. Thinking of trying out river at some point.
I think if I reccomend linux kde to anyone new itll be gnome with a few extensions, since plasma is easy to break imo. A lot of default plasma configs are basically cleaner/customizable windows clones tho so it might be an easier transition, it immediatelt felt familiar when I was setting up cachyos. Feed like gnome couldve scared me off, especially since I didnt know about the extensions and how easy it was to get proper menu. Once I had like 3 extensions, it felt good, was using the computer like normal and forgot I had swapped to gnome to temporarily test it.
I really like gnomes look with a few extensions tho, with plasma I feel the constant need to tinker just because I can and its two clicks away, with gnome I just use my computer and the extensions just work, not as much customization, even for placement, but definitely a lot more useful extensions that just work.
KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything “extra” to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).
GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it’s “simpler” but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).
I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.
Trying cinnamon and it might be the superior parent rec, its basically older windows, very straightforward ui, not flashy, Gnome (at least the default i had) didn’t have a start bar and required clicking the windows button to see clickable stuff that weren’t icons. With extensions it can be basically windows or mac tho. (so if you directly setitup for them or guide them its more modern feeling/superior)
Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they’re very hard to break.
Universal BlueAurora KDE, or bluefin gnome are what id prob reccomend to any non gamers trying to use Linux after looking around, bazzite for gamers who dont want to tinker, cachyos for those who do. Seems like a straightforward way to get up and running, cachyos was hella easy to dualboot tho, universal blue doesnt seem to let me load a live os from my usb with a graphical installer, that was super helpful with cachy.
KDE has given me the desktop I need for the past few years. Hyprland isn’t a desktop environment, as far as I know.
Before KDE I used Cinnamon on Linux Mint. It was functional, but after many years I wanted a change.
Use whatever suits your needs. In my experience, KDE and Cinnamon are the most complete desktop environments without having to install extensions or extra software. Both are mature, have large communities behind them, and release incremental updates frequently. Those are my criteria for a good desktop environment.
Trying cinnamon right now, Its definitely functional, closer to windows back when I liked it. Feels boring, but in a good for productivity way.
Here’s mine, simple and functional
I overcomplicated mine before going back to the simple look, even abusively adding stuff it feels less crowded than windows
I’ve jumped over the years, Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, Unity, AwesomeWM, QTile, XMonad, Hyprland.
For the last couple of years I’ve completely settled on KDE for my Desktop, and Gnome on my Laptops.
I love the customisability of KDE and being able to turn it into whatever the hell I want lol. But Gnomes gestures on a laptop are unmatched in the Linux space imo, and finally at a point that I firmly believe Gnome gestures are now on par with MacOS gestures.
For the touchpad? I basically use my laptop like a desktop with a mouse, pluggedin to power. (it was more for easy transportation from college to back home, didn’t have a desktop and gaming laptops get insane deals if you keep track, got mine $2,000 off at like $1100 and it was the best all amd alienware config at the time (still handles everything), just preemptively explaining because im used to redditors giving me shit for using a laptop as a desktop)
Lol dw, you won’t get shot here for using your hardware how you intend to use it… Why would anyone get mad about that??
Well if you don’t use your trackpad then obviously Gnome gestures won’t be a big point for you. I never really used to either back when I used tiling Window managers, I solely relied on a purely keyboard driven workflow, until I got a new job and they use MacBook Pros as our work laptops, there I got super into the trackpad gestures. For example, three finger swipe left or right to change workspace, three finger swipe up for an application/workspace overview.
I love the customisability of KDE
I read this often but found KDE so difficult to customise. XFCE or Cinnamon is what I’d consider extremely customisable, KDE doesn’t even consistently listen to what theme colour I set :-(
