Linux

LXQt or XFCE if I have to pick a DE. Fluxbox or openbox if I can get away with just a WM. ;)

KDE plasma. Coming from 30 years of running exclusively windows it's just the most comfortable and easy for me to use (way more than Gnome). Easily configurable, works. Can't ask for more.

If it has to be a de, I'd pick gnome. Otherwise it's hyprland.

KDE Plasma, I can't go back to SDR

Until my laptop dies or cannot support it, I'm sticking with KDE Plasma. Love how MX configured it (because I'm lazy) and absolutely will keep using it for as long as my laptop survived or can hold it.

Might try other ones in VMs (like ratpoison) in the future for other machines I might set up in the future, but for now KDE Plasma is my go-to that I'll probably be using for a long time.

XFCE would be my choice too

LXQT. Why? Because: It is lightweight, consumes little resources, is quite customizable, and has full Ukrainian localization.

Maybe I'll switch to XFCE/MATE, but not if there are a lot of things not translated, or if the translation is worse than even Google Translate.

There is nothing better than Xfce, if you dont like the desktop, at least Xfce allows you to customize. KDE seems interesting, but the last time i tried it, 10 years ago more or less, it was a bit buggy.

Gnome

Difficult. Paperwm/ Niri has the best workflow.

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

Xfce, ol' reliable.

LXQT or KDE I just like the QT look and feel.

GNOME is great in general but not for me, it is too much MacOS alike and too limited for my liking.

KDE.

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

I'm a cog in the machine and use KDE, but xfce is awesome, I would use xfce if I couldn't use KDE.

The one I'm using right now of course!

XFCE. It's lightweight, easy to tweak and looks great. I run it on my 6 y.o. potato laptop

I've been using spectrwm for over a decade https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm and have no plans to change

KDE Plasma for ease of use if using Nvidia Otherwise Hyprland or exwm

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.

KDE plasma, unless it's on a tablet, then Gnome

MATE has been on most of my machines, except the BSD ones.

But past year or so, I have grown a fondness towards ctwm, and gradually migrated my machines to it, Linux and BSD alike.

It is not a DE, but the fact that I have to assemble my suite of software myself on my machines, makes the point of using DEs moot.

I'm in either terminal or browser most of the time, DE is not an issue for me... KDE has an easy battery life optimization feature for laptops, so I guess I'll go KDE

I used Ratpoison for well over a decade, and only replaced it with sway once I had a new machine and figured it was time to try Wayland. Apparently that's some 4-5 years ago already.

till

\sigh

i'm already doing this with gnome lol.

if my computer was older, probably xfce.

I use XFCE. If their Wayland support isn't ready when openSUSE Tumbleweed eliminates support for x11, I'm not sure what I'll go to.

Cinnamon for 2 reasons

1. KDE is missing a lot of features which still only works in Gnome. Like the taskbar Calendar app syncing events with services like Google Calendar

2. cinnamon is extremely stable and doesn’t move your icons around when you connect to an external display with your laptop and the display has a different resolution.

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.

I'm using PopOS Cosmic alpha (not based on Gnome) on my new laptop and like it a lot so far. It has a few rough edges, but nothing I'd switch to something else over. (In fact, I did use the Gnome version of Cosmic until my previous laptop broke.)

Xfce, and Cinnamon. You can't force me to choose just one.

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.

I thought KDE was the popular choice to be honest. I feel like all the toolp newish OS are using KDE and the top old OS are using Gnome.

Probably either KDE or NsCDE, I always seem to come back to those

Call me basic, but mint xfce. It’s light, customizable, and so damn stable. That’s all I really want. I love messing with other distros but this one is my baby