I went with GNOME just because I’m used to it and want stability as my main focus but I was wondering if using one DE over another can affect security or privacy at all? Or is that all dependant on the distro you are using?

  • As far as I know, none of the major DEs have Windows-style telemetry turned on by default. So ignoring security issues and apps themselves, DEs should roughly be the same on the privacy front.