Share your favorite Linux Desktop Environment

KDE sets a really high bar with all the packages and extensibility. Almost everything (not including the lesser known and used packages) is feature-packed and just works. I really don't know any other software that constantly amazes me like KDE.

XFCE, tried cinnamon a couple times it was okay but I just prefer the simplicity and stability of xfce

Seems like I'm the outlier here that prefers Gnome over KDE. Gnome feels more polished than KDE for me. Granted KDE comes with more features out of the box, but I don't find anything lacking in Gnome for me.

Tried KDE long time ago to compare it to Gnome 3, went back to Gnome. Tried KDE again a few months ago to compare to Gnome 42, came back to Gnome again.

I also can't stand having all my programs' name starting with K.

xfce for a very long time. I really like tiling WMs but always come back to xfce

GNOME, for sure. It works out of the box, and it's kind of pretty out of the box.

I also tried it on a touch screen PX and it works surprisingly well.

Vanilla Gnome. It's simple/boring, and I like that. It seems like most people that like Gnome don't care that it's not a poweruser DE, and aren't excited to talk about it either.

I use gnome, but it's basically the worst DE, except all of the other ones that have been tried

It has the least features, so by default the least bugs.

I'm a simple person. I see KDE, I upvote.

KDE. Because it's mostly a complete package and has tons of knobs and dials to tune for anyone's needs edited

Default GNOME (Wayland), it just works

KDE forever!

Love me some Cinnamon. Specifically what comes out of default Linux Mint. It isn't trying to do more than it already is. As cool as tech is I wish I didn't need to care about Wayland or X11. I just want it to launch applications, feel like the windows I used as a kid, and stay out of my way. Cinnamon does this all for me. And since freaking high school mint has been there trying to do that.

KDE is love, KDE is life

i3. I mean, it's fast, customizable, and you can make it look good. That's all i need.

Absolutely KDE Plasma.

I've been using Cinnamon for years. It's stable, fairly lightweight, and pleasing to the eye.

KDE Plasma on desktop

Cinnamon on (older lower spec) laptop

I like Gnome with Pop OS's tiling

Gnome with pop_os tiling window manager

i3 / Sway with Albert or dmenu or rofi

I just love keeping my hands on the keyboard

Xfce, i just like it.

Gotta be KDE for a full featured DE.

But using Sway for now.

Mine is MATE:

It's still GNOME 2, but I see no problem with that, it works and I'm used to it and I like traditional desktops. I don't need (or care about) round borders or those on/off switches of modern desktops, that make them look like phone screens turned 90°.

Cinnamon is the best

GNOME, with a little bit of extension customisability!

Sway or GNOME (Wayland) with Pop shell extension.

XFCE and/or AwesomeWM

Permanently Deleted

Cinnamon. Stupidly simple and elegant looking.

I am enjoying GNOME at the moment. But I think I may switch to Cosmic DE when that gets released.

For aesthetics: Budgie, with Cinnamon a close second For simplicity and speed: XFCE

Hyprland ftw!

No DE just DWM

KDE if it was less buggy.

i use i3 + kde its really cool

I used to only use KDE or KDE plasma with i3 but after using fedora I've fallen hard for Gnome and the design philosophy of the project.

Sway and dmenu when in a keyboard productivity sorta mood, KDE otherwise.

Vanilla Gnome

It's between XFCE for it's simplicity and KDE for it's Wayland support for me

I've got used to XFCE.

KDE

Pop! _OS's Cosmic Version of GNOME (regular GNOME kinda stinks) but KDE is also pretty great. Can't wait for COSMIC DE. I'm sure that one will rock itself up to the number 1 spot really quickly.

Although I use sway, I used KDE for a long time and XFCE prior. They're both phenomenal. I'd love to see XFCE make its way to wayland in the future.

As an aside, I feel like Wayland has a market ripe for the introduction of lightweight DEs. Sure, it has the very lightweight (hyprland, sway, river, dwl) and heavyweight (KDE, Gnome) but nothing between like XFCE, LXDE or MATE

BSPWM and Polybar because I am too lazy to figure out eww and I use KDE as a backup in case anything breaks lol

KDE + bismuth

i3wm at work and at home

Kde because it has a really useful and functional out of the box tools, being dolphin and connect the most useful ones for me.

Never had an issue since last year, but yeah, was buggy as hell.

Mate if I want more juice from a not so good pc, and xfce for the low end ones.

KDE - using it with Manjaro now, but also used it on Mint before that.

Xfce overall, but I like MATE a lot as well. Just give me a traditional desktop experience, I don't need mobile-like options on a desktop.

I actually switched to MATE primarily because I like its suite of software a bit more (calculator, file manager, file archiver) than Xfce's, though I use some of MATE's stuff (Caja mainly) on Xfce on my laptop.

I keep wanting to try out vanillaOS and everytime I liveboot it, I immediately regret my decision. I cannot stand Gnome.
I love KDE, I love it for how versatile, intuitive and customizable it is.
Bot to mention, I rarely experience any bugs. It just works.

KDE + Latte dock is what I use. Very simple and minimalistic setup with no widgets.

@fugepe I can live with KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce, Gnome, Lxqt., Mate... I am using KDE right now but I like Xfce more than others...

Not a DE but AwesomeWM. I like its default aesthetic and it's highly extensible using Lua which gives a lot of power to the user.

Xfce, Gnome or just a WM like Sway.

Budgie is cool

I'm not huge into customising desktop environments, so when I've tried window managers like i3, I typically only get it functional to my likings and then realise how boring I am compared to how others use it.

So typically I use gnome or kde, but I like cinnamon and xfce as well. I don't really have a favourite, they're all good. At the minute I am trying to adopt wayland and have been using gnome while I do that.

I like Gnome. It is very usable out of the box and requires the least amount of work to get it to my liking. I am current running pop_os' cosmic version of gnome though I also enjoyed vanilla-ish(that is with 2-3 extensions) version of gnome with fedora. If only mutter starts officially supporting vrr when using wayland

Xfce, didn't try KDE yet, using gnome currently.

Pop_OS underneath with Regolith (basically a pre-configured i3) on top.

KDE. It's pretty good these days. I used it in 1999 when it was new. I used it in 2009 when it was messy. I didn't use it for about a decade, opting instead for tiling window managers and plain cwm(1) on OpenBSD.

I finally installed it again in 2021 and it's been fine. Solid desktop, does what I need it to, but requires a lot of configuration up front to not be annoying. I want simple and consistent, with double click to open things and single click to highlight, and I don't want a popup dialog box in the corner every time my Konsole bell rings. I want animations and transparency, but I don't want to wait a half a second for my window to minimize. I don't want workspaces, just like I didn't want a cashew in the corner of my screen 15 years ago. If I tell my dock to be floating, it needs to stay floating and not change its shape and size when I maximize my window.

KDE requires some tweaking out of the box so that it stays out of the way. But once set up, it's nice.

3.5.10 was the best KDE ever, but I'm on 5.27 and I don't have any complaints.

I have been using cinnamon for many years. For the last 2 y it is xfce for me.

Simple, reliable and stable, low in resources, does the work well.

SwayFX (Sway with a bit more eye candy effects)

I don't have a favorite. I use Cinnamon because it disappoints me the least.

Kde for the win!

My very first WM was Blackbox, back in 2000, and I imprinted on it like a baby duck, so today I still mostly use Fluxbox. It's abandoned and unmaintained, but still works (for now). It's very minimalist and lightweight. When it finally dies completely I guess I'll finally learn how to use a tiling WM.

(I use Gnome on a laptop with a HiDPI screen, because that was too annoying to configure correctly on Fluxbox. It's... fine. I added a bunch of customisations and it mostly stays out of my way, which is what I want in an environment.)

No matter what WM/DE I use, I always add a dropdown / "quakelike" terminal application -- I previously used Yakuake, but switched to Guake. It uses a hotkey to show / hide a terminal (and you can use multiple tabs, and multiplexers inside the tabs). I can't live without this, and I highly recommend it if you often find yourself hunting around for your terminal window.

I have a hard time recommending it, but I ran Deepin on Arch a few years and was blown away by it. There were some weird limitations to how much you can customize, and I prefer window managers in general, so I eventually stopped using it. But that was the best time I had with a DE in Linux overall.

The best I can actually recommend is KDE.

Been a gnome guy for the past ~13 years with a bit of unity thrown in back when it was relevant! I've tried to love KDE repeatedly over the years but it's never quite clicked with me - the customisation is great, but using it just feels kinda wrong personally!

Enlightenment

I use Gnome at work and KDE at home. I like the workflow in Gnome and the customization of KDE.

River, not a DE but close enough. I could configure it in fennel without much problem.

I'm super torn on desktop environments. There simply are too many great choices! I like XFCE, KDE Plasma and the most recent Gnome versions - for different reasons. KDE is the perfect choice when you want the full shiny, modern, bling desktop and if you love to customize it in all kinds of ways that are possible out of the box. When I spend time with KDE, over the course of weeks, I keep constantly changing my wallpapers, themes, cursors, icons, colors, etc. - just for the sake of variety. With KDE, the desktop never gets boring.

BUT... I also love minimalism (to a tasteful, practical extent) and classic retro computing, as well as efficiency. That's why XFCE is very comfy to me. It only has the features you need, but still to the extent of a nice and fully featured desktop environment. Doesn't eat too many system resources, still can look very pretty with themes, does what it's supposed to. Very stable, too. There are times when KDE just feels cluttered and ... too much for me, then I retreat to XFCE.

I'm running Fedora Silverblue for quite a while now and although I always had my gripes about modern Gnome... after using it for a while, it really grew on me. Since version 42, modern Gnome really is going the right direction. It's nicely clean and readable, modern, performant, and once you get used to it, its different approach to the workflow really makes sense. The apps are lovely, they do one thing and do it well, and they're beautifully integrated in the same design language. There's a wonderful collection of apps called Gnome Circle, these are not developed directly by the Gnome team, but endorsed by them, as they're useful and integrate perfectly into the UI design language. There's some amazing tools in there! It all feels very unified, and with the Blur-my-shell extension, you don't need much else for a pretty look. The only downside is that this clean look sometimes is achieved by cutting poweruser features, which can be frustrating when you bump into something you need to do, but the UI doesn't account for. For example, I have multiple bluetooth adapters in this PC and can't select which one to use. Still, great desktop.

@fugepe Gnome

Boring old X11 Gnome for me, it looks pretty, it's reliable and it has all the stuff I'd expect out of a desktop environment

Wayland doesn't play nice with my GPU and I've heard it's not great for gaming anyway

For me efficiency and less eye strain is important. I want my eyes to be at the center of the screen for the majority of my session. Gnome is my goto for that reason but any tiling windows manager would do as welll.

KDE and the windows start bar lookalikes constantly have your eyes going to the corner or sides to open and find apps.

I'm a Gnome user, with a few extensions but mostly vanilla.

xfce

I usually use WindowMaker or FVWM but as a desktop environment... CDE

I personally like Mate, especially with i3 as the window manager.

xfce if i had to run a desktop environment, but i usually stick with dwm and haven't got around to trying wayland yet

sway + bemenu for building my own utilities

btw what distro are my fellow sway users on? i'm loving the control i get over what i install with gentoo

how is everyone interacting with audio, networking, bluetooth?

Hyprland + bemenu. Minimalistic, very little overhead, but still a pretty boi.

KDE for my main and XFCE for my lower powered systems or VM's

XFCE, while it doesn't have all the fancy animations and such it is incredibly customizable while still being super light weight.

For me it was Enlightenment DR16 (discontinued). you could make themes with shaped borders (transparent regions, buttons and titles anywhere, even overlapping into the window a bit), have it remember window positions, change border style for a window (e.g. drawer, so it can be collapsed sideways) and it would not steal focus. it had really good effects and features. I miss it a lot in Wayland. Check the web for some screenshots, if you want to be inspired.

i3 on my laptop, gnome on my gaming rig (cuz wayland)

@fugepe I use a mostly vanilla Gnome, with the exception of the Blur My Shell and Vitals extensions

@fugepe Wow, not a lot of replies are saying Gnome, but there's a lot more XFCE than I thought I'd see

@fugepe XFCE is the best in my opinion. It's lightweight, full customizable & easy to set up....

kde

FVWM.

is anyone used herbsluftwm for low powered CPU here?

I am on pop is for my home desktop. I like the built in tiling manager. Ubuntu for work. Might give nix or kde a go next.

Vanilla Gnome Shell. I know it's heresy, but I've been using it since beta and I actually enjoy the work flow.

I really like KDE, but I’ve been daily driving Gnome since version 40. Insanely polished and I really like the workflow of everything. I do wish they were faster in implementing stuff like VRR though.

TDE (for those who haven't encountered it before, the Trinity Desktop Environment forked from KDE3 more than a decade ago). It might not be the flashiest or the newest, but it has a decent selection of features and applications, and presents a traditional desktop environment whose interface doesn't get changed for the sake of change. In other words, it stays out of the way and lets me get things done.

(If I'd liked Gnome 2 better than KDE 3 rather than vice-versa, I probably would have gone for MATE instead.)

I cannot but mention xmonad wm with my own configurations

Mine is a combination of Sway + i3bar. Stick with it since I downlosded Pop!_OS

EXWM (Emacs X windows manager)

all it lacks is a good editor

(j/k, I've settled on Cosmic on Pop for the last few years, and now I'm so lazy, I barely update it)

i3 counts, right? I have always been a keyboard oriented user and a big part of what drove me from Windows is them breaking or changing the hotkeys I used regularly. To me it is the perfect "you have control, this is your device, it works and looks how you want." wm

@fugepe I use Ubuntu but, is KDE easy to pick up? Just getting into Linux my self.

barless dwl, love the simplicity

Debian/KDE

I've used gnome for years, about a month ago I decided to give KDE a try on my old spare laptop. Two days later it was on my desktop and work laptop. I am loving KDE.

dwm, I got too much used to "it just works" and never ever breaks afrer an update.

I've been using QTile for probably a year now. It's not perfect, but I like the tiled windowing and I know python.

A while back I was into KDE Plasma but for whatever reason had this bug that would cause my system to run at 100 percent at all times. When I looked into it, many stated it was a bug that related to how kde searches for stuff on the system. Dont remember much else but that had me look elsewhere.

Been on gnome for awhile now and havent had any issues.

Xfce on work desktop, gnome works well with gestures at home on my laptop. Will be changing to kde when I get a new machine at work!

Um....none.

bspwm + sxhkd, for years. Based on the Manjaro config at first, today it's my own setup. Even convinced may family. The best!

KDE if I have performance to spare. XFCE if I am running this in a container on my phone.

I like Gnome a little more than KDE.

My favourite so far is Windows as my DE and WSL for my Linux