If you have to pick only one Desktop Environment and use it till your computer breaks, what would you choose?
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I don't mind a little "change" every now and then, but still -- "Sway" on my "potatoes" (Orange pi zero 3 and Orange pi 5 max) and "Hyprland" on my x86_64 PC.
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I settled on herbstluft in I think around 2015 and 10 years later have still never felt the need to migrate anywhere else.
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If it has to be a DE then I'd go with XFCE, otherwise I'd probably go with openbox.
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Difficult. Paperwm/ Niri has the best workflow.
I am looking forward to set niri as compositor on cosmic.
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I have literally been using the same build of dwm as my desktop env since 2007.
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That's not too hard a question for me, I've been using the same DE for years: KDE
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Probably either KDE or NsCDE, I always seem to come back to those
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XFCE, using it for over 10 years, not planning to change it unless the DE changes radically.
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My current desktop is xmonad + xfce in no-desktop mode. Almost no configuration in xmonad, all the stuff like monitor layout and mouse props is handled by xfce. And yes my laptop that I used it on for 6-7 years is now broken (ish) so I've already unlocked this acheivement.
I do feel slightly guilty about not moving to wayland, but I'm not sure how that would improve my experience at all. I did hear xfce is almost there on wayland, so maybe I can move to sway + xfce on wayland at some point.
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I've been daily driving Hyprland for 4 years now. Before that it was DWM, and before that Gnome. I was never a KDE fan, don't know why... I never disliked it, I just preferred Gnome.
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KDE - I love to tinker and own my DE.
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it's probably gonna be plasma6 by a hair over cinnamon on a rolling distribution. as much as people shit on manjaro here and on that other site, it has never broke on me--whether i update constantly or let it go 2-3 months between them.
but if the de and the underlying os are magically compatible, and those and programs kept up to date, never obsolete, and new ones appear for it as needed or desired... then sorry, it won't be linux... i'm going back to something like 95osr2, 98se or w2k.
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I've been using Cinnamon for most of the last decade, but switched to Gnome3 recently, heavily customized to work like Cinnamon. Basically because Wayland is finally stable enough to use.
If Cinnamon gets Wayland support working well, that's my choice. Otherwise I've got some Gnome3 configs that make it work pretty well, and I'd happily run it into the ground too.
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It's gotta be a tiling system. At this point I can't function in a non-tiling environment. Specifically a manual tiler with an auto-tile a la i3 w/ i3-alternating-layout or a dynamic tiler that still let's you break stuff (doesn't really exist).
It's just a better way to use a computer, and I can't go back. It's so much nicer. I would stop using a computer before I go back to dragging windows around.
And that rules out most DEs. It rules out Mac OS and Windows, as well, but at least on Windows I can almost get by with Fancy WM. It's "okay."
And speaking of just getting by, that's Polonium with KDE. KDE is pretty good as an "environment," but it doesn't have a tiler that meets my needs, or at least I thought it didn't until recently. Then I discovered Polonium. It works pretty well. Used it for several months (and still do on one machine). It's very bare bones tho, and is hard to configure the handful of floating windows I do want like popups. So KDE is just scraping by.
GNOME on the other hand has the excellent Pop Shell 2. But well, GNOME is GNOME. It's buggy when you try to use it a different way than intended. God forbid I want Qt, Gtk2, Gtk3, Gtk4, and libadwaita apps to all look nice on my system! It's clunky, but the tiling is excellent at least.
Now you mention XFCE. So what about that? You could use i3 as the WM for Xfce. I used i3 for years and years and years as my WM and know how to build a DE around it. Why not use Xfce + i3?
Well, the thing is X11 is as good as dead, and while XFCE now supports Wayland, you can't use a tiling system with the Wayland version of XFCE.
So what does that leave me?
Nothing. At least for a full on DE, which is what you asked.
There is not a single (pre-made) Desktop Environment that suits my needs. Not a one. Either it doesn't support good tiling, is too rigid, or hasn't switched to Wayland.
My only options are:
- Roll my own DE built around Hyprland/Sway, and since I'm on nvidia, those aren't fantastic options (albeit Hyprland works a lot better on Nvidia these days), and that's what I'm using.
- Deal with the slight annoyance of the under-implemented Polonium in KDE
Right now I'm on Hyprland. May go back to KDE bc multi monitor is being weird on Hyprland rn.
My one hope is that COSMIC polishes itself up and gets to its first real release.
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Fedora Gnome. In my head it’s Linux.
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Fluxbox.
Technically, not a DE, but a WM...which makes me the DE, I guess.... -
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. -
I just don't like KDE and am not a big fan of stock Gnome either but the PopOS version with COSMIC features plus the Dash to Panel extension make it pretty useable
