KDE, always
Used it since I switched to the Linux Desktop 25 years ago. Quickly tried gnome, and others, and hated it.
KDE is fast, efficient, looks awesome, is ready to work with, and highly customizable
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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KDE plasma. Coming from 30 years of running exclusively windows it's just the most comfortable and easy for me to use (way more than Gnome). Easily configurable, works. Can't ask for more.
KDE plasma, unless it's on a tablet, then Gnome
KDE Plasma for ease of use if using Nvidia Otherwise Hyprland or exwm
I'm a long time supporter of Xfce, but I have to say Cinnamon these days. It's light on resources while being feature rich. Also it's the default on Mint and it just works.
I use XFCE, but I like Cinnamon too. I use Nemo and Xed instead of Thunar and...whatever.
MATE has been on most of my machines, except the BSD ones.
But past year or so, I have grown a fondness towards ctwm, and gradually migrated my machines to it, Linux and BSD alike.
It is not a DE, but the fact that I have to assemble my suite of software myself on my machines, makes the point of using DEs moot.
Cinnamon for 2 reasons
-
KDE is missing a lot of features which still only works in Gnome. Like the taskbar Calendar app syncing events with services like Google Calendar
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cinnamon is extremely stable and doesn’t move your icons around when you connect to an external display with your laptop and the display has a different resolution.
Switched from i3 to sway to hyland. I like the virtual desktop setup and noiseless facing interaction.
Probably KDE, it's the most 'complete' feeling to me with settings and GUI for most things.
I would say the same & I don’t even use it—but I would trust it being around the longest & is better than GNOME IMO.
i3
best tiling on X
I am absolutely with you about i3. Simply great (there is also dwm or qtile)! But it is a WM, not a DE, what OP asked about.
fair
xfce+i3 i guess
You mean switching between the DE xfce and the WM i3wm, right? Yep, this works and it can indeed make life sometimes easier to have a DE and a WM aside each other.
yeah, basically just running xfce but replacing xfwm4 with i3
i was kinda surprised how well it worked tbh, i had been using i3 on it's own for like a year before i tried it
Oh, I did not know about the possibility of replacing xfwm4 with i3. I too am using i3 for some years and like a lot to have a clean surface which facilitates focussing on my tasks. However, never thought about integrating it in a DE.
KDE the customization is off the charts
KDE. Been upgrading the same environment for 5 years just keeps getting better.
I started around maybe KDE 3?
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True people only use i3 or the-other-i3-for-wayland
/s, of course. But still my personal choice
Probably Plasma because it's familiar and you're able to customize it extensively over time.
XFCE would be my choice too
KDE for sure. The modern versions look exactly like how I want a desktop environment to look out of the box, and they keep the full range of customizability that a desktop should, IMO, allow it's users to have. Which is something Windows just kept slowly getting rid of over the years.
I also prefer to have a taskbar that is ever present with a traditional start menu that's cleanly organized by category rather than the current full screen pop up "activities" search thing gnome does nowadays.
Xfce
This isn't even hard. KDE without a second thought.
I regularly try other desktops, and I regularly come back to the only desktop with any sort of reasonable thought put into it.
The amount of not KDE answers here surprises me. Y'all a bunch of nerds [endearing]
I'm a cog in the machine and use KDE, but xfce is awesome, I would use xfce if I couldn't use KDE.
Sway for a laptop, Plasma for desktop.
Had you have asked me a few weeks ago, I probably would have said Sway for both,.or maybe Gnome for the desktop... But I decided to check out KDE again for the first time in like 20 years, and while it's still kind of a hot mess it has come a long way.
I keep coming back to KDE time and time again. It's so easy to mess with, I can set it up exactly how I like it without much effort, and it always looks good because someone else did all the work making themes and widgets I use.
That said, I love XFCE, I'm just trash with CSS so it takes me forever to get it how I like, and on my Surface I can't get the scaling to work so everything is beyond tiny.
I've been using Mate ever since Gnome-2 transitioned to Gnome-3 and I didn't like the transition. I like a clean screen with simple menus, Plasma is just way too cluttered for me.
That's not too hard a question for me, I've been using the same DE for years: KDE
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KDE.
Definitely Gnome here. Though I have a long list of notes, it mostly just works exactly like I expect with little friction or guessing. I donate $100/year to both Gnome and KDE since they are both good pieces of software, and I love that I get to chose mine. Further, I think KDE is the logical choice for something like the SteamDeck where it's going to have a lot of gamers that expect computers to work like Windows. (even if I don't like it, >_<)
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