So a few months back I asked about you guys os in c/asklemmy, so this time I wanna ask about your desktops you use on this same account.
(I use kde but plan to move to cinnamon I find kde buggy and gnome tracker3 randomly broke for no reason + themeing so yh idk if these happened to anybody)
KDE Plasma on all my computers and also as desktop mode on Steam Deck. because it supports the latest technologies especially when it comes to graphics (HDR, VRR) also has best support for Wayland and multi-monitors. It looks great out of the box and it has a lot of features out of the box and I do not need to battle with adding some extensions that break with almost every update. KDE Plasma is also the most flexible desktop and I can set the workflow really to fit my desires and I can actually set many options and settings. And despite all these built-in features and configurability it still uses very few system resources and is very fast and smooth. Oh and the KDE community is one of the most welcoming I have met in FOSS world, and they listen to their users instead of the our way or the high way mentality I have so often encountered in GNOME for example. So yeah TLDR KDE Plasma is the one I like the most of all in the industry, even when compared to proprietary closed alternatives.
Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.
Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.
I'm just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that's okay.
- Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn't use it.)
- The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
- Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it's a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I'm wrong, you aren't going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it's going to bear no fruit.
- KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn't true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that's good enough for me. 🙂
- I'm unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don't remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.
Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.
You'll note I don't claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren't bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I'm sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.
There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven't even looked at any alternatives. If there's ever a time that I don't find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team's approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I'll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.
You can try something like budgie,mate and cinnamon if you rlly want gnome done right.
i use zorin os's gnome with forge, once cosmic comes out ill switch to that
KDE, because it has all the features I need and also because I love theming and while QT apps can be themed pretty easily, GTK theming is somewhere between being absolutely horrible and non-existance.
The guys at catppuccin who made a gtk theme said it was a pain to maintain which makes sense.
It's been great almost since I started using it.
I started using it exactly when 4.0 came out, because that's when I started using Linux and I thought learning 3 didn't make sense. But 4 only got stable around 4.4 I think. The problem was that 4.0 wasn't intended to be for end users yet, but distributions didn't realize that and packaged it right away.
KDE didn't repeat that mistake. 5.0 was almost completely smooth sailing (some applications took a long time to port and looked ugly, that's it), and 6.0 was completely seamless.
Gnome, be it PC or Laptop. It just remains out of my way with it's minimalism. Tried KDE for a while, and I seriously can't stand it, personally.
KDE Plasma. It came on my steam deck which was my first intro to it, it blew me away and installed it on my laptop and finally ditched Windows shortly after. Works great for me.
XFCE4. It's intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line:
MM/DD HH:mm:ssEnough features so that it "just works" (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.
Can't wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don't have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.
I use gnome on my main machines, but looking to migrate to cosmic, and I use xfce on more limited devices.
I like the kde project, but I tend not to use it, because I find it a bit overwhelming, even after customizing it, it's hard to explain. I have issues with too many elements in front of me.
"Overwhelming", that's the word I was looking for to define KDE. Thank you.
agree i wanna get rid of kde but i dont wanna reinstall on my distro cachyos.
Gnome. I actually started with KDE. It's a good DE, but it's got so many options that I had choice fatigue. I constantly tweaked my taskbar instead of focusing on what I wanted to do. And it was easy to get it to a "looks broken" state
When I tried Gnome, I fell in love with it. I love the unique workflow, lack of distractions, the modern adwaita design, etc. Everything felt so polished
That being said, I don't like how Gnome devs seemingly can't agree on anything with other desktop environments. And I don't like how they refuse to support server-side window decorations. Like, I agree with them that CSD are better than SSD, but it would be reasonable to support SSD for toolkits that haven't/don't want to implement CSD themselves, right?
I'm excited for Cosmic. It looks like it combines the best of Gnome and KDE, and the devs don't have the “my way or the highway” mindset
I found some negative press about cosmic which can be valid or not.
https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-on-cosmicI've seen that blog post. Tbh Vaxry is kinda unhinged. I think he cares about Cosmic being written in Rust more than the "rust cultists" themselves :P
I don't like how Gnome devs seemingly can't agree on anything with other desktop environments
Yeah, especially how they dont include minimize and maximize window buttons by default, that's incomprehensible LOL
I'm not a Gnome user but I stopped minimizing my windows years ago. Don't need that if you (a) don't have icons on your desktop and (b) move your windows over to another workspace when stuff gets crowded.
That's like saying I don't need to clean my room if I can just shove everything into the closet
Minimizing applications feels like a Windows workflow because it doesn't have decent workspaces like most Linux DEs. I never feel the need to minimize a window on Linux because I can arrange everything nicely in workspaces.
Shoving everything into the task bar doesn't strike me as more orderly. Less so really.
I dont use a DE, I use a WM.
Semantics aside I’m on Hyprland, been using it for 6 months now and absolutely love it
Depends on the computer I run. On fast computers (more than 5,000 passmark cpu points), i use gnome on whatever distro. On mid-speed computers (1000 to 5000 points), I use linux mint with cinnamon. On very old computers (400-1000), I use debian with XFce.
I actually found Cinnamon to be more resource intensive than Gnome on most computers.
Not my experience here, especially if extensions are used on gnome, but I hear you. I find xfce to be lightest. Sure, there are other more light wms, but they're not modern and suitable for daily use.
GNOME because it's the only good option that looks modern and has proper development. Excuses of KDE fanboys that GNOME team makes weird decisions are not accepted.
They do make some strange choices. But yeah, I agree. Also, on Gnome, everything else feels a bit rough around the edges.
I like both for different reasons. I'm hoping Cosmic will be a good blend of features from both, once it's ready for the general public
how about the other non big desktops (eg, mate,cinnamon,budgie,lxqt,etc)
Mate, lxqt and even xfce look very old. I know they can't have fancy effects but I think it's weird they don't come with a modern theme. They could make them look at least like Cinnamon. Even Windows 10 didn't have rounded corners and looked great, with or without blur. Simplicity can look good imo.
Cinnamon is great but it's GTK3 and a little bit older in terms of design (though it's more sane than whatever the new trends are so it's not bad but just not my thing).
Budgie isn't a very big project so idk how consistent it is (it's something I care about a lot). Though I think I never tried it myself.
But actually I don't hate all of that projects. I just like GNOME and it works so so so well for me. My troll behavior towards other DEs is just a joke inspired by "Mii beta" YouTube channel. Btw KDE has performance, even though it's more than feature-rich. That's impressive.
Well not sure if I can call it satire because I think libadwaita is simply the best (and not MacOS stuff because it's a bit bloated).
I used that combination, too. But I have settled for only the useless gaps extension for now. PaperWM was behind Gnome version too long and now I have seen there is Niri getting better and better. I will switch someday, I guess. It has the same concept as PaperWM, but is a scrollable/linear WM from the ground up.
I love niri, last time I looked it was not yet on par with paperwm which is why I'm still on it.
