I’m currently testing Fedora KDE on a VM (windows host) before eventually switching over to Linux completely.
Plasma definitely. Xfce is second.
Any preferences on the distro? I’ve been enjoying Fedora but I’ve also tested Ubuntu and enjoyed that
You should try Arch btw
Not for beginners, that’s just mean
Tbh youre probably better off on something like Linux Mint or something else Debian or Ubuntu based. Fedora is a good distro but rpms are a lot less common than debs are and alien does not entirely fix that issue.
While I would still recommend Ubuntu or Mint or even Debian, I have been using openSUSE for years and have never run into a case where I had to compile software.
I’m not sure why you are bringing Gentoo into it here. I mean that all the software I have tried to install is either available in the repos or available as an appimage/flatpak. Were it not available in binary form I would need to compile it - and I have not run into that scenario.
I’ll probably end up settling on Ubuntu. Thought I’d try a couple before making a final decision.
Install gentoo
But for real, depends on your use case I use arch on my dev machine and you get nearly every package in the AUR
Ubuntu is doing an annoying attempt to generate lock-in and profits by forcing snap on everyone and making it annoyingly difficult to avoid.
Consider one of the ubuntu derivatives (there’s a number of them, Mint, Pop etc) in preference to ubuntu itself, a debian derivative (KDE neon for example) or go with Fedora if you’re a business orientated user.
Fedora Plasma is truly awesome!
Gnome. Feels most polished and least cluttered to me.
Seconded. I used to use Ubuntu, but i switched to Debian + GNOME and I love it.
I agree. I use gnome on nix and it has been great, especially on a touchpad.
Plasma. It’s the most customizable and you can dive in and shape it. It feels much more natural for me to jump into.
I put xfce on older hardware.
Distro wise I tend to go with Ubuntu flavors most because they seem to have better compatibility for various software and stuff I need, but I haven’t really shopped around too hard in years. Work is RHEL (and clones) and they make me sad.
I’m thinking of settling on Ubuntu for the same reason. It’s easy enough to get a VM setup and test other distros if needed
KDE for me. As much as I hate windows, I like the floating windows, task bar and tray. KDE has that out of the box and lets me tweak all the little annoyances away.
Of all the things I hate about Microsoft Windows, the GUI design is not one of them. The content of those windows is janky as all hell. But the floating windows, taskbar, and tray? Those are all great.
I love the minimize all windows button. It is so small and functional, I always use the KDE Widget that copies it, and IMO, KDE should use it by default
KDE is what finally got me to switch from Windows.
Out of the box I found it a better user experience than Windows 10s desktop, but having it be stupid easy to customize and theme on top of that has made me never wanna go back.
Xfce. It’s lightweight and looks great with a little bit of customisation. For me it’s the perfect balance between performance, usability and looks
XFCE. It’s just so easy to click and drag things where I want them and edit icons to be uniform.
Have you tried testing out DE in a virtual machine? It’s a big time saver versus installing it on actual hardware.
I’m doing all my testing on a VM before committing and doing a bare metal install
Ah good to hear. I was not smart enough to do that when I was first getting into Linux and I only had one PC so you can imagine the headache.
You can also boot a live CD. Last time I switched distro I got a bunch of live CDs and picked the one where everything was working out of the box (accessing shares, playing music/video, printing, Bluetooth, hooking up my phone to USB, gaming controller etc.) (Ended up on Manjaro btw.)
Totally. You can typically get CDs at the dollar store these days. I have a few from dealing with older computers now but I also have a sizeable amount of USBs now and several computers.
What made you decide on Manjaro?
Oh it’s only “CD” in the name, you can boot the image from a USB stick. No need to go out and buy actual CDs.
I wanted to move away from Ubuntu and .deb based desktop distros because they don’t do well with long term use.
The way debs work, if you want third party software you have to add repos individually. But each of them tracks dependencies only within their scope. So eventually you end up with combinations of packages that the installer cannot solve anymore and you can’t upgrade your main packages. Which results in an reinstall.
I wanted something Arch-based because I heard it takes “rolling distro” seriously and you can keep upgrading and using it indeterminately. And there’s a single third party repo (AUR) which only breaks its own packages when the main system is updated, but not the main system. Which seems like a reasonable compromise.
But I wanted a more polished desktop experience so no plain Arch. The candidates were Manjaro, Garuda and Endeavour so that’s where the live CD test came in.
Good call, just be aware that while you can (pretty much) install any DE on any distro. Many distros will have a ready prepared install that may feel quite different to you adding the DE later.
If that’s not clear, Ubuntu with cinnamon DE is very different to Mint Cinnamon. Same with Kubuntu (KDE Ubuntu) and KDE Neon (Debian KDE).
All of the differences are of course replicable, they’re themes and tools and configs. But for example it took me literally most of a day to get Arch with cinnamon to feel like Mint cinnamon.
Gnome
KDE. I tried gnome, xfce etc. but theyre either stripped down (xfce) or designed in a way that bothers me. (gnome)
Sway
Sway is a WM not a DE. So you create your own DE? Or, I see Regolith is integrating sway, I think with Gnome Flashback as with i3. Not sure if there are others.
Yeah, I thought about not responding on the basis that Sway wasn’t a DE, but someone else responded CWM, so I figured at least if I bucked the system, I wouldn’t be alone in it.
Plus, not everyone really knows the difference between a DE and a WM. And not everyone knows that a lot of people don’t use a DE. So, often times, people use “DE” and “WM” synonymously, not really knowing there’s a difference.
(Not saying that describes OP or anyone here in particular. But there was definitely a time when that described me. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that described some folks who were browsing this thread.)
Oh, but to answer your question directly, no I don’t use anything that could be considered a DE. I use “dmenu_run” from Suckless to launch applications. That’s about the only thing I “add” to Sway in my setup.
I didn’t realise that people use them interchangeably. I’ve got an idea on what a WM is and what a DE is but nothing super in depth.
A WM is literally just the window manager. It makes windows work and have a border and maximize and stuff but that’s it.
A DE gives you a lot of other stuff: a root window that makes up the “desktop”, panels & widgets, notification area, an application menu, workspaces, window and workspace switchers, global hotkeys, the concept of a session and stuff related to it (things to run on start, or saving your session between reboots), a unified theme and fonts etc. etc.
There are also programs that fall somewhere between these. For example tiling WM tend to fill the whole screen so they don’t care a lot about all the things I mentioned but they can integrate with some other stuff to some extent. Or something like OpenBox which includes a very lightweight desktop, menu and panel so I guess you could call it a DE but it’s all contained in one executable.
I’ve really appreciated running i3 within gnome-flashback. I keep hitting things that just work, that I didn’t even realize I wanted. I hit the pause/mute button on my headphones when watching youtube and it paused… Things like ssh agents, hotplugging monitors and having it remember your preferred config, the main gnome settings GUI, the compose key, etc… I’m just not interested in reinventing all that, even though each individual step is usually not hard.
I’m glad to see Regolith is making a DE with Sway. One day I’ll migrate from i3 and I may let Regolith give me a DE.
No DE. Just openbox + polybar + rofi
Do you think OpenBox is usable with minimal config? I’m looking for a WM which I won’t have to spend too much of time configuring, which is why I’m considering floating WMs
Honestly you can use Openbox right out the bag if you really wanted to. If you need to configuring autostart and hotkeys and the menu is really easy
I’ll configure the theme, hot-keys and maybe install a compositor or something. Thanks for the tip, I’m trying to decide between OpenBox and IceWM right now
KDE and Cinnamon.
Hyprland
Honestly, this is the first I’ve heard of Hyprland, but it looks sick.
xfce. For me, it strikes that perfect balance between lightweight and featureful, looks good but not too fancy, is customizable and usable. I set it up the way I like it and it never changes on me.
Same for me, XFCE is light, stable and efficient. I believe that’s the reason it’s chosen for Debian as default DE
I have to say KDE Plasma, but I look really forward toward Cosmic Rust.
KDE is simply so damn old and has weird quirks everywhere, it has features and basic things like
- functional apps: dolphin, spectacle, kate, kde connect, systemsettings, discover, …
- SSD with hitboxes in the very corner (looking at you GNOME)
- wayland support
- a regular but modular bottom panel
- extensible everywhere
But it also just has too many features. Extensions are not tested or versioned so many simply dont work anymore, often some of the dozens of components has an issue. I cant imagine Cosmic reaching the level of features in like 3 years, but if it would do, this could be great. But in the end its up to the devs, so I have no idea at all.
I dont find GNOME usable really. At least in the default settings. The decorations make no sense on Desktops (they are perfect for tablets), the top bar makes you look down too much, the ubuntu way wastes space too. Everything is too thick, too little GUI settings and the standard apps could be from Android, the little features they have.
Plasma 6 is coming out soon. Not sure if it addressed any of your issues though.
I think they clean up a lot, thats true. I am very excited!
