If you have to pick only one Desktop Environment and use it till your computer breaks, what would you choose?
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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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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.
You know how the ending of LOST or Game of Thrones can bring up feelings in people? That's how it was for me when Gnome 3 first came out. I had been using Gnome 2 for a few years and had a good workflow, and then suddenly, everything changed. Back then Gnome 3 was buggy and lacked a lot of things, which didn't help. It also didn't help that the devs took a "the problem is you" stance to all feedback. That said, I use Gnome now, and I like it, it took some years to mature and become good. But the feeling is still there sometimes.
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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?
If it has to be a de, I'd pick gnome. Otherwise it's hyprland.
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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?
I've been using spectrwm for over a decade https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm and have no plans to change
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GNOME is a lightly upgraded MacOS interface. Every time I’ve had to use a Mac has pissed me off so GNOME gives me war flashbacks.
Not necessarily the DE’s fault but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Gives me more Windows 8 flashbacks than Mac.
An interface that works well on touchscreens, but feels clunky on mouse and keyboard and the general theming of it looks more phone like than a desktop PC. Gnome itself being harder to theme doesn't help with that.
That being said I'd pick Gnome over all else for touch devices. I threw it on an old Surface 3 and it worked better than the original Win8 interface.
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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?
Desktop environment? Who needs a desktop environment?
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Desktop environment? Who needs a desktop environment?
Bro watches videos through ASCII conversion in the cli
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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?
any computer I need to be stable enough for work/school: KDE
any computer whose primary purpose is for goofing off and gaming: LXQt (and I will spend the entire time configuring LXQt instead of gaming...)
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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.
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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?
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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.
can you exemplify a few of the things you miss?
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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?
i'm already doing this with gnome lol.
if my computer was older, probably xfce.
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Bro watches videos through ASCII conversion in the cli
Bro doesn't need DE to watch videos. Bro doesn't need DE to do anything.
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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?
Whatever I can hit the super key and type what program I want. If it can open a browser steam or dark table, the rest doesn't matter much. I was on crunchbang++ then popOS then fedora now I'm on arch with hyprland
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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?
-
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?
I’d probably pick KDE. I use Gnome on almost every machine, but Gnome makes weird decisions, and I assume one day I won’t like one of them. KDE always seems to get better and add more options. I can make KDE work like practically any other DE, including Gnome.
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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?
Gnome but thats because im a big time laptop user. The way i use my laptops works really well on gnome. I hide the top bar, and have whatever im doing taking up the entire screen, and then just use gestures to navigate it. Side to side 3 finger swipe switches desktops, 3 finger swipe up takes you to task view, and with the small screen id hate to have some sort of taskbar.
If i was using a mouse i would probably want something more windows-esque in its design which i think KDE does better. So for a desktop id probably go with that.
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Bro watches videos through ASCII conversion in the cli
mpvfor the winbut if you really want your ASCII conversion:
mpv --vo=cacaormpv --vo=tct -
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.
There must be something about GNOME in particular that some people love, and others hate.
GNOME is heavily opinionated.
As such it gets praise from people that share that opinion and gets hate from the people that do not. Many other DEs are much more configurable, giving a broader audience the possibility to adjust everything to their liking.
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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?
DK (similar to BSPWM or i3/sway). I have zero interest in "DE's" like KDE or Gnome, or anything heavily reliant on using a mouse.
