Not a DE, but I've been using sway for around 5 years now, and I have no intention of moving away from it unless something really bad happens. I love using it, and it's been behaving perfectly all tgis time.
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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Flip a coin between cinnamon and plasma
Probably Plasma because it's familiar and you're able to customize it extensively over time.
I'll stay on XFCE until I die ... or until my Hyprland config is finished. Whichever comes first.
Well, it's gotta be a tiling system. And a good one. At this point I can't function in a non-tiling environment. Specifically a manual tiler with an auto-tile a la i3 w/ i3-alternating-layout or a dynamic tiler that still let's you break stuff (doesn't really exist).
It's just a better way to use a computer, and I can't go back. It's so much nicer. I would stop using a computer before I go back to dragging windows around.
And that rules out most DEs. It rules out Mac OS and Windows, as well, but at least on Windows I can almost get by with Fancy WM. It's "okay."
And speaking of just getting by, that's Polonium with KDE. KDE is pretty good as an "environment," but it doesn't have a tiler that meets my needs, or at least I thought it didn't until recently. Then I discovered Polonium. It works pretty well. Used it for several months (and still do on one machine). It's very bare bones tho, and is hard to configure the handful of floating windows I do want like popups. So KDE is just scraping by.
GNOME on the other hand has the excellent Pop Shell 2. But well, GNOME is GNOME. It's buggy when you try to use it a different way than intended. God forbid I want Qt, Gtk2, Gtk3, Gtk4, and libadwaita apps to all look nice on my system! It's clunky, but the tiling is excellent at least.
Now you mention XFCE. So what about that? You could use i3 as the WM for Xfce. I used i3 for years and years and years as my WM and know how to build a DE around it. Why not use Xfce + i3?
Well, the thing is X11 is as good as dead, and while XFCE now supports Wayland, you can't use a tiling system with the Wayland version of XFCE.
So what does that leave me?
Nothing. At least for a full on DE, which is what you asked.
There is not a single (pre-made) Desktop Environment that suits my needs. Not a one. Either it doesn't support good tiling, is too rigid, or hasn't switched to Wayland.
My only options are:
- Roll my own DE built around Hyprland/Sway, and since I'm on nvidia, those aren't fantastic options (albeit Hyprland works a lot better on Nvidia these days), and that's what I'm using.
- Deal with the slight annoyance of the under-implemented Polonium in KDE
Right now I'm on Hyprland. May go back to KDE bc multi monitor is being weird on Hyprland rn.
My one hope is that COSMIC polishes itself up and gets to its first real release.
I've been using Mate ever since Gnome-2 transitioned to Gnome-3 and I didn't like the transition. I like a clean screen with simple menus, Plasma is just way too cluttered for me.
Gnome but thats because im a big time laptop user. The way i use my laptops works really well on gnome. I hide the top bar, and have whatever im doing taking up the entire screen, and then just use gestures to navigate it. Side to side 3 finger swipe switches desktops, 3 finger swipe up takes you to task view, and with the small screen id hate to have some sort of taskbar.
If i was using a mouse i would probably want something more windows-esque in its design which i think KDE does better. So for a desktop id probably go with that.
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fvwm :)
I’d probably pick KDE. I use Gnome on almost every machine, but Gnome makes weird decisions, and I assume one day I won’t like one of them. KDE always seems to get better and add more options. I can make KDE work like practically any other DE, including Gnome.
Cinnamon, that's what I'm used to
Ran KDE then Gnome a long time ago. Now it's openbox wm.
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.