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?
XFCE
KDE, it’s the swiss army knife of DEs.
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
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.
KDE plasma. Coming from 30 years of running exclusively windows it’s just the most comfortable and easy for me to use (way more than Gnome). Easily configurable, works. Can’t ask for more.
i3
best tiling on XI am absolutely with you about i3. Simply great (there is also dwm or qtile)! But it is a WM, not a DE, what OP asked about.
fair
xfce+i3 i guess
You mean switching between the DE xfce and the WM i3wm, right? Yep, this works and it can indeed make life sometimes easier to have a DE and a WM aside each other.
yeah, basically just running xfce but replacing xfwm4 with i3
i was kinda surprised how well it worked tbh, i had been using i3 on it’s own for like a year before i tried itOh, I did not know about the possibility of replacing xfwm4 with i3. I too am using i3 for some years and like a lot to have a clean surface which facilitates focussing on my tasks. However, never thought about integrating it in a DE.
Cinnamon for 2 reasons
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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
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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.
-
Probably KDE, it’s the most ‘complete’ feeling to me with settings and GUI for most things.
Probably Plasma because it’s familiar and you’re able to customize it extensively over time.
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.
Always wanted to like gnome but never could, and xfce is fine but I much prefer KDE, it is verry likely that I’ll actually keep it till my pc breaks.
That’s the beauty of gnome: they don’t give a single fuck if you like it. You can return the favor.
Gnome has the apple philosophy that the user conforms to technology, not the other way around.
Apple actually had good visionaries and design decisions, sometimes.
Never been a fan of apple’s hardware decisions, but their software is routinely state-of-the-art even to this day.
They value treating the user like a human instead of a programmer. GNOME values removing as many features as possible to make their jobs easier.
No shade to Gnome, because there is a place for them in the ecosystem, but this is why I moved from Gnome 2 to KDE (with a few stops along the way). One size will not fit all.
Oh yeah for sure. I think if Gnome works for people they should use it. I’m not stoked on the situation of Gnome Extensions being needed for some pretty basic customisations, adding instability to the DE though.
Plenty of people just don’t have the brain capacity to read settings or multitask and that’s fine. If that works for them, good for them.
Until they need gnome to do something it doesn’t do…
Plasma, been using it since I was a kid
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.
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.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.
DE is no good
totally
The most popular de is no good
Baffling
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.
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.
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.
KDE
