Linux

LXQT followed by Plasma

No DE. Just openbox + polybar + rofi

I'm running Plasma with Arch, but I like Gnome to, it's simple and easier to use, but I also think that plasma is more customizable.

sway - stable and productive. Hyprland - beautiful, but performance is worse. i3 - same as sway, but sometimes better for legacy X11 stuff or applications that are still buggy at Wayland

MATE as is or Xfce with some MATE software (swapping Thunar for Caja, swapping the XFCE calculator program for MATE's calculator, using Engrampa instead of whatever Xfce uses for a file archive manager, etc.). I like things simple and following roughly the same paradigm that I've used for years.

And for the love of god, PLEASE KEEP MENU BARS AS THEY WERE IN THE PAST! Stop removing menu bars from programs in favor of "hamburger buttons" or whatever nonsense modern programs like to use! That's honestly one of my biggest gripes with "modern" software, they keep changing the paradigm to something that I haven't used and I can't be bothered to relearn everything.

My university Linux cluster was my first introduction to Linux in general, and they ran MATE of all things.

A few years later, when I decided I was done with Window's bullshit and wanted to jump my daily driver to Linux, I installed Ubuntu MATE so I'd have the best familiarity edge I could to minimize friction.

MATE is alright. Despite being rather barebones and dated (being a life support fork of GNOME 2, I understand that is indeed kind of the point), it served me well for about 5 years.

I got a real urge to switch, though, due to just how little support or documentation there is for anything in MATE. I was also getting fed up with Ubuntu's Snap crap as well. So I decided to dump both for something else.

I wanted to stay on Debian's architecture for now, but no longer had need for Ubuntu's handholding, so raw Debian it was. As for the DE, I personally like the rich, full-fat ones more than the lean ones, and I wanted something modern, popular, and with highly proliferous support resources. That basically meant GNOME 3 or KDE Plasma. And I guess maybe Cinnamon, but I always see it marketed as the "newly ex-Windows user training wheels" DE, and that isn't my need.

GNOME 3 strikes me as the "MacOS" of Linux DEs. It wants to swim against the current to introduce its own paradigm. Everything designed to work in its ecosystem is buttery smooth and sexy, yes, but since it's also a counterparadigm, that tends to relegate you to the pack-in software and a handful of big vendors. Most other software has to rely on clumsy shims to fit in. I'm not about it, tbh. I'm sure it's fine, I just don't think higher highs are worth the lower lows, and I generally wasn't in the mood for a drastic paradigm shift.

So, KDE Plasma for me. It was unfortunate I made the leap just as they decided, "Wayland is stable and supported enough for everyone now!" (it isn't, lol), so it's a bit rockier than I was hoping, but whatever. Stability and support can only improve with time. And I expect faster adoption of Wayland than I do the GNOME 3 paradigm since Wayland is currently the only ship of its kind in the water that isn't sinking.

Aaaaall that said, KDE treats me pretty well, minus the Wayland issues. Upgrading to it from MATE was like trading up from a cheap, dingy hostel to a clean 4-star hotel. Should've leapt years ago.

Cinnamon. It's comfy.

Xmonad!!! (And in 25 years, Waymonad!)

I recently switched back to GNOME after a few years on KDE, mostly because of Wayland support. I honestly don't care much about the DE, provided it gets out of my way. I used to use a Tiling WM, so I may give a Wayland tiling WM a shot.

I use i3, I love it

Thanks for all your discussions. All your experiences are very helpful for me. Now here is my top list and reasons:

1. Cinnamon (most familiar and very stable for me)
2. XFCE (I like the responseness and lightweightness)
3. MATE (stable and reliable)
4. KDE (I like the configurability, but unfortunately I experienced a lot of instabilities and accidents)
5. Gnome (I don't like the new UI concept. When I tried it, it was laggy and non-responsive)

Out of this list:

• I3 (only head good things, but never tried it on my own installation)
• Cosmic (first time I heard about today)
• Budgie (first time I heard about today)

Hyprland. Fast, wayland, tiling, animated. Checks off all the boxes and just works(TM).

kde with bismuth for tiling

KDE and Budgie

I like Budgie. It looks nice, lightweight, and doesn’t get in the way. There’s a few missing features but I like that it’s a smaller community project.

GNOME. I currently use it without any extensions, but sometimes use “Blur my shell” for the visual effect.

GNOME “just works” and looks extremely polished and consistent. It gives the application the maximum amount of screen real estate. The keyboard shortcuts are great. It’s very power-user friendly IMO.

Gnome. It looks simple and elegant, is easy and intuitive to use, and everything I need is either built in or available as an extension.

The one caveat is that you probably shouldn't update it right on day one of a new version release, because usually some extension devs need a few more days to update their stuff. My distro (Fedora) always releases new versions a few months after Gnome does, so this works out perfectly.

I would say try Gnome. If you don't like it, use KDE. Those are the 2 big ones right now so they'll be the most reliable. Gnome is either love it or hate it, KDE is very vanilla. I personally use Gnome, because I love the workflow.

Cinnamon! Although I want to give KDE another chance to become my default DE.

@governorkeagan Xfce first and then Cinnamon. Xfce is more flexible than Cinnamon, which is solid.

Gnome, which looks so nice, requires too many extensions for my taste. So it is not for me.

I tried Plasma many times. It is a mess with all the options (I don't know if they are going to fix this in the next releases) and whenever I tried it there were always some small annoying little bugs. They are changing the release cycle, so maybe in the future these problems will become more rare.

I found GNOME in my early days, Cinnamon and Budgie after GNOME went "convergence," and KDE ever since. A nice thing about Linux is we have some variety so you can pick something that will let you work/play your way.

There are other great options like XFCE and MATE.

Cinnamon. It just works and I can make it look how I like. i3 on laptops, because hackor.

Well for DE its KDE for me but in general DWM

That I use? Cinnamon, because lazy. That I prefer? Fluxbox, because fast af.

sway on wayland (the only WM that doesn't crash even though it lacks a lot of features), awesomewm on xorg (fast and very customizable, but has quirks)

Gnome. But I use 3 extensions (dash to dock, desktop icons and appindicators) and the adw-gtk3 theme so GTK3 apps looks the same as GTK4/libadwaita apps.

When I switched from Windows definitely Cinnamon but by now it's Gnome, it's a little odd at first but I absolutely love the workflow!

I bounce between Xfce and Plasma. I used Xfce for... I don't know, 15 years? And only switched to plasma for a while because of getting a hidpi laptop before Xfce had support for it.