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?

  • miguel@fedia.io
    1·
    11 months ago

    KDE. I’ve been using it as my daily driver for roughly 10 years now, and barring any unforeseen excitement, it’ll stay that way indefinitely. Proably until I stop using Linux, anyhow.

  • Kory@lemmy.ml
    1·
    11 months ago

    That’s not too hard a question for me, I’ve been using the same DE for years: KDE

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      0·
      11 months ago

      Has KDE improved since 2010-ish? I gave up KDE because gnome was just a better DE at the time. Gnome sucks now, but I found i3/sway. Haven’t given KDE a second chance yet

    • aksdb@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • jamie_oliver@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        I’m running XFCE (but you could do KDE) on my intel Mac, you can get best of both worlds. I heard silicon is more difficult with Linux tho.

  • Green Wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    I’m a cog in the machine and use KDE, but xfce is awesome, I would use xfce if I couldn’t use KDE.

  • floppybutton@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    I keep coming back to KDE time and time again. It’s so easy to mess with, I can set it up exactly how I like it without much effort, and it always looks good because someone else did all the work making themes and widgets I use.

    That said, I love XFCE, I’m just trash with CSS so it takes me forever to get it how I like, and on my Surface I can’t get the scaling to work so everything is beyond tiny.

  • lengau@midwest.social
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • toastal@lemmy.ml
      0·
      11 months ago

      I would say the same & I don’t even use it—but I would trust it being around the longest & is better than GNOME IMO.