It’s in the eye of the beholder, of course. But it would be great to see some solid recommendations.
The distribution doesn’t to too much, its mostly the desktop environment. I like the look of KDE Plasma the most. But usually I craft my own look after a while.
I like the look of KDE Plasma the most.
GNOME vs KDE gang fight has been summoned.
The look of GNOME isn’t the problem of GNOME. ;-) I’m not a good citizen right now.
Absolutely. GNOME often looks better, but it just doesnt work. Basic things everywhere are removed or not added.
One man’s “basic” things are another man’s clutter …
So you mean…
- editing images (in the viewer, screenshot tool)
- being allowed to customize the UI of any app
- changing the login screen (gdm) background
- creating a textfile from the filemanager
- editing .desktop entries graphically
- …
?
Hahaha, I disagree
Yea, none of those things matter to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of fun customizing DEs but I don’t really need that on my daily driver. I also have more of a terminal based workflow so perhaps shell customization scratches that itch for me.
To each their own :)
This is not about customizing. What app do you use for editing images, or dont you do this at all?
On GNOME either using Gwenview (KDE) or GIMP, Krita, Kolourpaint, Pinta would work. Which are all very big programs.
I have given in to GNOME. Set dark mode, install the extension “Tactile” and never touch the setting again.
Well GNOME has issues but in terms of look it’s 69420x better than KDE.
The thing I’ve learned in the many years of watching this fight is that the things Gnome people (of which I am one, though I have immense respect and appreciation for the KDE project) don’t like about KDE tend to be the things KDE people like about KDE and vice versa.
These projects are almost diametrically opposite. GNOME tries to provide a very simple, solid but not very configurable desktop with good accessibility and stability while KDE tries to make a very configurable and powerful environment that can be customized to anyone’s needs. I don’t like KDE because it’s unstable, way too powerful for my personal needs (their “simple by default; powerful when needed” concept doesn’t really work) and I just don’t like the UI. Though KDE’s better performance is an objective advantage.
I tend to agree. I mean, the gnome workflow is more appealing to me (though I have since moved to a WM), but my dislike of KDE comes down to (a) too many options everywhere and (b) it looks too “sharp”. If KDE had an “I’m done fiddling” mode that hid most of the options and I found a softer theme, I’d probably like it fine.
Absolutely nothing I just said should take away from others’ preference for KDE. I’m glad we can like what we like.
I have to agree. I’m hoping Cosmic will be somewhere in-between!
It seems to still be strongly gnome-adjacent, which fits with the softer, “calmer” aesthetic Pop has, but with functional tweaks that are more aligned with Win11/KDE (absolutely intended as a positive statement, as far as moving the ball forward on UX design). I worry that team KDE won’t like the “sane defaults” simplicity that it appears to have inherited from the gnome days, but that might just be the part of me that experiences terminal choice paralysis every time I fire up KDE. :)
Agreed. I think it’s not about distros we should have pay attention, but desktop environments.
And about “most appealing” DE I think it’s subjective. Surely KDE has the most flexible structure and may be exactly what you want, but Gnome is also appealing for some people (myself included).
Again, there is no right or wrong, just personal preferences
You don’t need much to make something look fancy or modern. Even XFCE can look modern.
edit: made it less offensive.
Good for you that you like your XFCE environment
I would like to see how your desktop is, if you don’t mind
However, again, it’s personal preference
Can’t. feddit.de can’t upload images and in browser i suddenly get a server error(?) with my lemmy.ml account.
Well uh, left bar with virtual desktop overview bottom, window buttons top, autoexpand
right bar with network and systemload bars top, sensor numbers bottom, fixed size
top bar Android style with left hand clock and date, whiskermenu (symbol view) as the empty space in the center (title only and whitespaces as title), right hand systray with mail and connman-gtk, pulseaudio plugin. Bars are on intelligently autohide, theme is Adapta.This is on my notebook with touchscreen.
Nice thing is, XFCE can pin bars to specific displays or main display. Meaning, if i plug my ultrawide in, the top bar stays on notebook while left and right bar switch to the ultrawide, a center bar with Wiskermrmu with list view for desktop usage appears.
☯️
I took it as a question of which distro looks nicest out of the box (like, which distro manager has made real effort to make something particularly nice looking).
Somebody needs to tell me what they’re doing to Plasma to make them like it so much because when I install it with Breeze it just looks like Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 looks nothing alike KDE Plasma with Breeze theme. But besides that point, you don’t have to like what others like. It’s just taste.
I don’t really care how it looks precisely, so long as its semi-professional and consistent in its style.
Like, I change the font to Fira Sans, because Noto Sans gives me depression, but the rest of my customizations are all just to carve out my ideal workflow.
Windows 2000 looked amazing.
Garuda Hyprland edition. All the neon-RGB styling of Garuda gamer on top of Hyprland’s smooth UI.
Upvoted. I forgot about this distro. I don’t like its neon style at all but it’s something different and pleasing for some people.
It’s finally an opinionated distro I agree with. Of course you can get anything to look like anything but I just like how they picked a path and went so far down it to make their own unique out-of-the-box experience.
The new COSMIC desktop by System76 and Pop!_OS is very promising. I’ve been running the pre-alpha, and have been very impressed.
EndeavourOS has a pretty nice colour scheme and wallpaper going by default.
If I was forced to use a default distro look, it would be that or Linux Mint probably.
Linux Mint has a smooth, out-of-your-way look & feel to either MATE or Cinnamon that just makes me feel at home
Pop!_OS
Gnome with a bit of a macOS twist. I really like it. I’m excited for Cosmic!
Distros aren’t going to be visually appealing as they typically and just standard desktops or CLI
LMDE (Mint Cinnamon)
Hmm there is stuff like Archcraft (maybe it has a different name now idk) that is made specifically for visuals. In terms of usable distros I’d say Xero is the best I know. It seems to be discontinued though. CachyOS has some nice WM setups too but the appealing visuals can’t be consistent in that case because they are not full DEs and the unreasonably tiny calendar pop-up window from Xfce always ruins everything.
Hardy Heron
Hardy Heron
Ah, I really liked Ubuntu looks in old (4.04 - 8.04) versions. The brown/orange is so much better than the newer gray/purple/red whatever. Since 10.04 the theme and color scheme has been awful.
Garuda Linux looks very nice
Out of the box, I love Vanilla OS’s color scheme and wallpaper, with Fedora in second place for a default Gnome environment. I like the Pop_OS theme. I use River WM with a gruvbox theme (Vivaldi with no open tabs pictured), which is about as far from out of the box as you can get. Incidentally, I’ve been team light theme forEVER, but I’ve switched with gruvbox.
You mean Desktop?
Distro, I think Lubuntu does LXQt better than Fedora LXQt.
But LXQt is a huge mix of mostly KDE Theming.
Gentoo.
Xerolinux. It’s basically a heavily themed KDE