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?

  • Kory@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 days ago

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

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      0·
      10 days 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 days 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·
        10 days 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.

  • nfh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.

  • GustavoM@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      0·
      11 days ago

      Isn’t sway based on i3? i3 is a WM not a DE. But as sway is not X11, I’m not sure if it’s just a WM

      • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        Sway still primarily counts as a WM + Compositor, but considering it has keymaps, autostart, and libinput config mechanisms embedded in it, I would say it borders a desktop environment.

    • aedyr@lemmy.ca
      0·
      11 days ago

      My daily driver is Arch running sway. Would be hard to go back from the simplicity and elegance.

  • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.

  • florge@feddit.uk
    0·
    11 days ago

    If it has to be a DE then I’d go with XFCE, otherwise I’d probably go with openbox.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.

    • Photuris@lemmy.ml
      0·
      11 days ago

      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.

      • lumony@lemmings.worldEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        Personally, I’m disgusted by the “matter of fact” tone GNOME devs take to criticism only to be wrong in the end.

        It’s like, they dig their heels in so deep on dumb shit like “the dock should be on the side because vertical space is at a premium!” Literally whoever is floating ideas like that on their team needs to be fired and blacklisted, but unfortunately they’re probably promoted.

        They also can’t be arsed to include proper settings, so it’s up to everyone else to pick up their slack.

        At some point, it starts to feel like weaponized incompetence. I genuinely do not want GNOME’s culture to pervade more parts of the free software ecosystem.

      • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        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)_/¯

        • Photuris@lemmy.ml
          0·
          11 days ago

          Ok.

          But, in Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, all three of which I work in regularly, I open up a terminal and type stuff in it, open up applications in windows and work in them, and copy and paste between them.

          Really, any DE can handle this stuff. Not sure what all the fuss is about otherwise. But it’s all good.

        • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          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.

      • desentizised@lemm.ee
        0·
        10 days ago

        I was team Gnome before Gnome 3 came out. Nowadays I don’t mind it for auxiliary computers that I don’t interact with regularly. It has a huge community behind it and that is a quality in its own right. But since MATE never really managed to become a worthy successor to Gnome 2 I guess I’m team Plasma now. I got it “forced” on me by my beloved Steam Deck and I can definitely see why Valve went for it.

        Currently I’m experimenting with Hyprland but that is definitely too early to call it my forever pick, so Plasma it is.

      • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

          • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            10 days ago

            I miss old Gnome. I wish they’d stuck with the old Gnome 2 design philosophy but breathed new modern design principals into it, instead of trying to go the Ubuntu Unity route. Maybe something like Cinnamon but even more flexible and feature-rich.

              • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                10 days ago

                I was waiting for someone to say that.

                I like that Mate is a thing, but like I said, I’m looking for something thats based on it but as if its had the same 20 years of enhancements everything else got.

                The closest thing to that I’ve found is quite literally KDE. So I use KDE.

        • lastweakness@lemm.ee
          0·
          10 days ago

          There is so much missing from Gnome that is present in most other DEs and even custom WM setups.

          There are also plenty of features that gnome has that kde and other desktops and wms don’t have. It’s all about tradeoffs and what’s acceptable or necessary for you.

      • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        Honestly, that defaulting to the Search field in the Save dialog when I’m trying to save something just gets me wild. It beggars the imagination why the developers think that’s a reasonable thing to do and it colors my whole perception of the DE.

        • Ohh@lemmy.ml
          0·
          10 days ago

          This and shortcut for creating a subfolder doeesnt work in save dialogue.

          • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            10 days ago

            I haven’t lasted long enough after the Search piss-off to notice the tomfoolery of that. Well, you probably shouldn’t be creating new folders from there, don’t you understand how the workflow-as-handed-down-by-Jehosaphat is supposed to be used?

      • Domi@lemmy.secnd.me
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

      • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

      • piefood@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        I’ve looked at i3wm, but I never used it, so I don’t know. If I had to move to another wm, i3wm seems like the first one that I’d look at, since they seem so similar

        • double_quack@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          I have a whole system around it, different machines sharing their config files (over a git repo), so if I tweak one, the others catch-up.

          Also, you can “build the config file” (I am cat-ing several dynamic blocks depending on the machine I am sitting on) and then init the DE.

          • piefood@piefed.socialEnglish
            0·
            10 days ago

            Ah, nice. I have a similar setup, I have a repo, and for each rc-file, I do:
            cat shared/${general_config} ${machine_name}/${machine_specific_config} > ${rc_file_name}

            So for spectrwm it does: cat shared/spectrewm.conf laptop/spectrewm.conf > ~/.spectrewm.conf

            • double_quack@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              10 days ago

              Hahahah, same! I use a folders named as the hostname to build that machine’s config on the fly. And all my config files are in one repo that then I stow

  • enemenemu@lemm.ee
    0·
    11 days ago

    Difficult. Paperwm/ Niri has the best workflow.

    I am looking forward to set niri as compositor on cosmic.

  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.