Linux

I have been using cinnamon for many years. For the last 2 y it is xfce for me.

Simple, reliable and stable, low in resources, does the work well.

sway + bemenu for building my own utilities

btw what distro are my fellow sway users on? i'm loving the control i get over what i install with gentoo

how is everyone interacting with audio, networking, bluetooth?

KDE. It's pretty good these days. I used it in 1999 when it was new. I used it in 2009 when it was messy. I didn't use it for about a decade, opting instead for tiling window managers and plain cwm(1) on OpenBSD.

I finally installed it again in 2021 and it's been fine. Solid desktop, does what I need it to, but requires a lot of configuration up front to not be annoying. I want simple and consistent, with double click to open things and single click to highlight, and I don't want a popup dialog box in the corner every time my Konsole bell rings. I want animations and transparency, but I don't want to wait a half a second for my window to minimize. I don't want workspaces, just like I didn't want a cashew in the corner of my screen 15 years ago. If I tell my dock to be floating, it needs to stay floating and not change its shape and size when I maximize my window.

KDE requires some tweaking out of the box so that it stays out of the way. But once set up, it's nice.

3.5.10 was the best KDE ever, but I'm on 5.27 and I don't have any complaints.

Hyprland + bemenu. Minimalistic, very little overhead, but still a pretty boi.

KDE for my main and XFCE for my lower powered systems or VM's

My very first WM was Blackbox, back in 2000, and I imprinted on it like a baby duck, so today I still mostly use Fluxbox. It's abandoned and unmaintained, but still works (for now). It's very minimalist and lightweight. When it finally dies completely I guess I'll finally learn how to use a tiling WM.

(I use Gnome on a laptop with a HiDPI screen, because that was too annoying to configure correctly on Fluxbox. It's... fine. I added a bunch of customisations and it mostly stays out of my way, which is what I want in an environment.)

No matter what WM/DE I use, I always add a dropdown / "quakelike" terminal application -- I previously used Yakuake, but switched to Guake. It uses a hotkey to show / hide a terminal (and you can use multiple tabs, and multiplexers inside the tabs). I can't live without this, and I highly recommend it if you often find yourself hunting around for your terminal window.

I have a hard time recommending it, but I ran Deepin on Arch a few years and was blown away by it. There were some weird limitations to how much you can customize, and I prefer window managers in general, so I eventually stopped using it. But that was the best time I had with a DE in Linux overall.

The best I can actually recommend is KDE.

A while back I was into KDE Plasma but for whatever reason had this bug that would cause my system to run at 100 percent at all times. When I looked into it, many stated it was a bug that related to how kde searches for stuff on the system. Dont remember much else but that had me look elsewhere.

Been on gnome for awhile now and havent had any issues.

bspwm + sxhkd, for years. Based on the Manjaro config at first, today it's my own setup. Even convinced may family. The best!

dwm, I got too much used to "it just works" and never ever breaks afrer an update.

For me it was Enlightenment DR16 (discontinued). you could make themes with shaped borders (transparent regions, buttons and titles anywhere, even overlapping into the window a bit), have it remember window positions, change border style for a window (e.g. drawer, so it can be collapsed sideways) and it would not steal focus. it had really good effects and features. I miss it a lot in Wayland. Check the web for some screenshots, if you want to be inspired.

i3 on my laptop, gnome on my gaming rig (cuz wayland)

@fugepe I use a mostly vanilla Gnome, with the exception of the Blur My Shell and Vitals extensions

@fugepe Wow, not a lot of replies are saying Gnome, but there's a lot more XFCE than I thought I'd see

I am on pop is for my home desktop. I like the built in tiling manager. Ubuntu for work. Might give nix or kde a go next.

I cannot but mention xmonad wm with my own configurations

I like Gnome a little more than KDE.

@fugepe XFCE is the best in my opinion. It's lightweight, full customizable & easy to set up....

I've used gnome for years, about a month ago I decided to give KDE a try on my old spare laptop. Two days later it was on my desktop and work laptop. I am loving KDE.

Mine is a combination of Sway + i3bar. Stick with it since I downlosded Pop!_OS

Xfce on work desktop, gnome works well with gestures at home on my laptop. Will be changing to kde when I get a new machine at work!

EXWM (Emacs X windows manager)

all it lacks is a good editor

(j/k, I've settled on Cosmic on Pop for the last few years, and now I'm so lazy, I barely update it)

I really like KDE, but I’ve been daily driving Gnome since version 40. Insanely polished and I really like the workflow of everything. I do wish they were faster in implementing stuff like VRR though.

@fugepe I use Ubuntu but, is KDE easy to pick up? Just getting into Linux my self.

is anyone used herbsluftwm for low powered CPU here?

TDE (for those who haven't encountered it before, the Trinity Desktop Environment forked from KDE3 more than a decade ago). It might not be the flashiest or the newest, but it has a decent selection of features and applications, and presents a traditional desktop environment whose interface doesn't get changed for the sake of change. In other words, it stays out of the way and lets me get things done.

(If I'd liked Gnome 2 better than KDE 3 rather than vice-versa, I probably would have gone for MATE instead.)