KDE all the way.

Once I touched kde, It's always kde.

I'm not even sure.

Whatever comes with mint? I had a hard drive die, and my buddy hooked me up when I realized I couldn't read the windows key on the sticker any more. He was going to do some kind of fuckery to let me keep 7 despite that, but he'd been talking about Linux for a few years, so I asked what he thought about that.

He asked me a few questions, about what kind of programs I need to use, and when none of them were a pain in the ass for an idiot like me to deal with, he set it up for me. Told me it was mint, helped me set things up where they look nice and made sure I have what I need. Haven't fucked with anything since, and that was about two years ago.

KDE because I want a setup that just works.

KDE. It doesn't get in the way.

No DE just swaywm, I think you can benefit from window managers like i3 or sway for low resource utilization

No DE, but i3-gaps as WM. Been working great for 5+ years.

I use XFCE mainly because I'm running older hardware. But I really do like it. I have been wanting to try out window managers but have just been too lazy... 😂

KDE currently. Modern GNOME drives me somewhat insane - too “streamlined”. I used WindowMaker for a long time and somewhat miss it, but I’ve had problems with compatibility with some software (Steam).

Sway mixed with KDE,
games don't really like it and Pipewire doesn't work for video recording for some reason (it has to do with the KDE xdg-desktop-portal) but it's a small price to pay for salvation I guess.

I know Sway is a window manager, not a DE - but KDE applications and services seem to fill the gaps.
They're not necessary, but you won't catch me dead with a GTK file chooser popup open, and I haven't figured out how to set up Ranger to replace Dolphin (nor do I really want to).

not a de, i use hyprland.

i3wm for me, no DE. I do like KDE when I run a DE though.

Xfce of course!

I use mostly KDE plasma, especially for gaming, but sometimes switch to Hyprland for online Pen and Paper, since i prefer the automated tiling when opening tons of documents

No DE. dwm

I was on Xfce until they adopted Gtk 3. Now it's KDE Plasma.

xfce! I don't Hardcore Game or anything but I find it easy to customize without being overwhelming or clunky at all, so there's that.

KDE Plasma xorg. I use discord streaming quite a bit with friends so Wayland isn't an option and I'm not using a third party discord client since that's against discord ToS.

KDE and XFCE (different computers)

Tried XFCE, KDE and GNOME but settled on GNOME.

XFCE struggled with window management especially when gaming. KDE is too messy and inconsistent. GNOME is just easy, and my wife can use it without asking questions.

@sambeastie@lemmy.world Hyprland, but technically it's a tiling window manager and Wayland compositor.

Gnome Wayland mainly.

I’ve been flirting with Hyprland wick seems really nice. I’d fully switch to it if gaming performance was on par with what I get on Gnome.

No DE. Currently on DWL, but I've used Hyprland, River, Sway, Qtile, SperctWM, BSPWM, XMonad and Awesome (from most recently configured, to the first one I ever used) . I have used both GNOME and KDE at times where I didn't have anything else on the system yet, I've used Cinnamon full time in the beginning, and I use a lot of XFCE apps as a part of my setup, notable examples being Thunar and Ristretto (and I used to use xfce4-screenshooter).

Gnome on my desktop and laptop. I use xfce when working in a vm, because it's a bit lighter (I usually just need a terminal + text editor). I prefer gnome for regular use.

KDE on my desktop, GNOME on my laptop. I like both, but I like to tinker more on my desktop, where I have good internet and can do a bunch of downloading and customization comfortably at my desk. With my laptop I want it to just work (and I hate KDE's defaults) so I use a mostly vanilla GNOME. Also has good trackpad integration so that's a bonus as well.

I did have a heavily kitted out XFCE on my laptop before, but I reinstalled my OS because something broke and it wouldn't boot and I couldn't be bothered to troubleshoot and just wanted a working laptop lol so I installed GNOME and have been happy

Nobara Official. I wanted a KDE look but I did not want KDE itself. If Nobara official didn't exist I'd just be going with GNOME.

I switched to just using a window manager two years ago, and I haven't looked back since. Currently using qtile (WM written and configured in python) and it was pretty straight forward to install/configure. This is the video that made me want to try it out.

maybe something like xfce or a tiling window manager would have the lowest recurce cost

Until two months ago I was using gnome Xorg to play my games. Then I bought a second monitor for my games station and I had to switch to plasma Wayland to still use the freesync. So now I'm using kde plasma to play , but I still prefer gnome, and probably switch over again after they implement the vrr patch for wayland.

My laptop is a basic spec potato, so xfce on xubuntu.

Gnome with Hot Edge

Trinity Desktop?

good old KDE 3 vibes

Hyprland it is really clean and "easy" to use for a Windows compositor

sway

No desktop environment. suckless dwm. xmonad breaks all the time, i3wm is a nightmare with its config and status bar that sucks. dwm has problems, it's not the easiest to customise and stuff.

It's fast though, dmenu is the best launcher objectively, the status bar is something you literally just pass a string to via a script in xprofile.

I keep going back and forth between KDE and Gnome. KDE is great on my desktop where I always have a mouse plugged in, but on my laptop I really like the workflow and gestures that Gnome on Wayland has.

Hyprland + waybar and bemenu. Not truly a DE, but I love the look and the minimalism and I like to do things in the CLI anyway.

Plasma. Though on one Thinkpad I’m trying Pop!_OS’s take on Gnome (usable launcher/grid/menu and automatic window tiling).

I just stick to Gnome to avoid problems in gaming specifically, but obviously Plasma works great as well on Steam Deck.

You could give LXQT a shot, which should be QT-compatible, and maybe require less fussing with if you do run into an issue. Xfce or Mate might be options as well, but not as lightweight.