I’m currently testing Fedora KDE on a VM (windows host) before eventually switching over to Linux completely.
- nachtigall ( @nachtigall@feddit.de ) English53•1 year ago
Gnome. Feels most polished and least cluttered to me.
- IrritableOcelot ( @IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org ) 12•1 year ago
Seconded. I used to use Ubuntu, but I switched to Debian + GNOME and I love it.
- narwhalperson ( @narwhalperson@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English9•1 year ago
I agree. I use gnome on nix and it has been great, especially on a touchpad.
- MyNameIsRichard ( @MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml ) 52•1 year ago
Plasma definitely. Xfce is second.
Any preferences on the distro? I’ve been enjoying Fedora but I’ve also tested Ubuntu and enjoyed that
- MyNameIsRichard ( @MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml ) 3•1 year ago
I landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed about five years ago and still don’t see myself hopping to another one
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.
- Joliflower ( @imgel@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
Opensuse TW or Fedora
- FarLine99 ( @FarLine99@lemm.ee ) English2•1 year ago
Fedora Plasma is truly awesome!
- HouseWolf ( @HouseWolf@lemm.ee ) English30•1 year ago
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.
- nottheengineer ( @nottheengineer@feddit.de ) 27•1 year ago
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.
- Dandroid ( @dandroid@dandroid.app ) 14•1 year ago
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.
- ChristianWS ( @ChristianWS@lemmy.eco.br ) 7•1 year ago
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
- Miku Luna \ she/it ( @backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 17•1 year ago
Plasma, but only on Wayland (which is better anyway unbiased opinion).
- corship ( @corship@feddit.de ) 5•1 year ago
Man i didnt realize how much better Wayland is until I had to use a provided setup for a few weeks.
The fact that I can’t swipe to switch virtual desktops on xorg was enough to make me question why xorg doesn’t offer such basic things after all the years
- Miku Luna \ she/it ( @backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 3•1 year ago
The swiping thing is apparently a deliberate decision by KDE for whatever reason.
- Knusper ( @Knusper@feddit.de ) 3•1 year ago
Well, yeah, but they made that decision, because X11 is a pain to implement and debug this stuff on.
- Miku Luna \ she/it ( @backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 2•1 year ago
That sounds like a pretty good reason yeah
- lemmyvore ( @lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) English1•1 year ago
How are you swiping, out of curiosity? I have windows occupying the whole screen.
I switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut or by clicking buttons on the panel.
- Knusper ( @Knusper@feddit.de ) 1•1 year ago
It’s with three fingers on a touchpad.
There’s some short clips of it here: https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.25.0/
- lemmyvore ( @lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) English1•1 year ago
Oh I see. But I thought such gestures were available a long time ago, I remember apps like Fusuma, and there was talk of adding them to libinput so that every DE could let the user assign actions to gestures.
- Knusper ( @Knusper@feddit.de ) 1•1 year ago
Yeah, this is now using the libinput gestures. It’s mainly exciting, because it’s available out-of-the-box, even for non-techies and lazy people (me).
With general technological advances and I believe Windows having similar gestures, it’s now also rarely the case that touchpad hardware doesn’t support multi-touch input…
- WinterAir ( @WinterAir@lemmings.world ) 16•1 year ago
I use Debian with XFCE.Really lightweight and stable
- qyron ( @qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 7•1 year ago
Back to Debian after a long hiatus and XFCE was my choice for the exact same reasons.
- Drew ( @crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz ) 6•1 year ago
me as well
- hottari ( @hottari@lemmy.ml ) 15•1 year ago
Gnome 44. Simple, familiar and all my extensions work!
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English13•1 year ago
Gnome
- Corroded ( @CorrodedCranium@leminal.space ) English13•1 year ago
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
- Corroded ( @CorrodedCranium@leminal.space ) English3•1 year ago
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.
- lemmyvore ( @lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) English2•1 year ago
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.)
- Corroded ( @CorrodedCranium@leminal.space ) English2•1 year ago
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?
- lemmyvore ( @lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) English2•1 year ago
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.
- Corroded ( @CorrodedCranium@leminal.space ) English1•1 year ago
Yeah I know I’ve used them for years but I keep some on hand for older devices.
Fair enough. I used Manjaro for a while, maybe a year, and it kept breaking my system. I’ve been using EndeavourOS and Fedora ever since and haven’t had an issue.
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.
- Xenanthropy ( @Xenanthropy@beehaw.org ) 13•1 year ago
I love cinnamon a lot
- UraniumBlazer ( @UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ) English13•1 year ago
In my (and my friend’s) experience, KDE has been notoriously unreliable. We faced issues like the wifi icon just disappearing randomly, the time thingy disappearing, etc.
I have been using GNOME for around five years now (I temporarily switched to KDE 2 yrs back and reswitched to GNOME 3 months later). Till now, GNOME has been extremely stable for me. The only issue that I experienced was a memory (although that was fixed in subsequent updates).
Hence, based on this experience, if you’re looking for stability, I would highly recommend GNOME. However, if u’r looking for more customization at the cost of less stability, KDE ain’t bad.
- dukatos ( @dukatos@lemm.ee ) 2•1 year ago
KDE is very stable. You are using some bad, 2 years old version because Ubuntu LTS cycle.
- UraniumBlazer ( @UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee ) English2•1 year ago
I don’t think so. I was using Garuda at the time, which is based on Arch.
- java ( @java@beehaw.org ) 11•1 year ago
KDE, I enjoy the whole ecosystem both visually and functionally.
- GenBlob ( @GenBlob@lemm.ee ) 11•1 year ago
GNOME
- kudzu 🌈 ( @kudzu@tilde.zone ) 9•1 year ago
I like Xfce and Plasma, it’s pretty hard to decide between the two
- atetulo ( @atetulo@lemm.ee ) 9•1 year ago
KDE
It’s like a swiss-army knife of DEs.
I try to make it look like Windows 7.