Cinnamon is so nice. It's what got me into Linux Mint 14.1 back when that came out.
After 20 years of casual distro-hopping with windows as my main, I finally landed on Mint Cinnamon about one year ago, gave up windows completely and haven't looked back :)
KDE.
Back when everyone was failing horribly trying to come up with a new desktop that nobody wanted KDE was the only one to get it right.
Instead of trying to shovel some bullshit "next generation" interface down your throat they decided to make all of the interface parts modular.
If you want traditional start menu you can have it, want Mac style dock got that covered, want a touch/table type interface it's in there. If you can't make up your mind you can setup activities to flip back and forth.
KDE. I used to use Gnome but switched over to KDE a few years ago.
GNOME. Been using Linux since before GNOME Shell was a thing and when it became a thing it just clicked for me. In my opinion, it's by far the most polished DE and provides the most elegant and intuitive launcher and workspace switcher of any DE or OS I've used. At least they did, until they fucked it up by moving from vertical to horizontal workspaces and made the workspace previews so small you can no longer see what's in them.
Which is the downside of GNOME. Sometimes their developers are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, there are usually extensions to fix the most egregious "enhancements".
GNOME. I love the ecosystem of apps and the great design and simplicity, even if I sacrifice customization and features.
GNOME is designers trying to develop a DE
KDE is developers trying to design a DE.
I like to say that GNOME is a consumer DE, while KDE is a hobbyist DE. I let my wife use GNOME cause of simplicity, but I use KDE Plasma for my desktops.
Lack of customization is a feature for me. I waste too much time fiddling with configuration otherwise trying to get everything set up how I want. Gnome is ready to go out of the box.
KDE Plasma
had to scroll way too much...
Gnome without extensions. It gets out of the way and let's me work. Whenever I have to use something else, it feels like going backwards in time. I used to love tinkering with my system and tried a lot of DE's back in the days. Don't have the time for that anymore.
I did have to adjust though. I think that a lot of the hate gnome gets is because of this. If you espect it to work like a traditional desktop you're going to get frustrated and install too many extensions to make it like one. My advise would be to set aside your presumptions and try it like it's meant to be used. You might be surprised, I know I was...
A while ago I found this video, which explains it in more detail.
I love how minimal and clean Gnome is, I use couple extensions like Blur My Shell, User Themes and couple to show temps and wireless mouse battery. And the search is fast and definitely the best way to open apps or files
Qtile. Full DEs are for rich people.
Qtile is great, finally put an end to my WM hopping (at least until I try out Wayland maybe)
KDE
Kde
For a while I used tiling window managers, no DE really, but for the past year or so I’ve been using KDE and really enjoying it again.
GNOME 44 with a couple extensions. I'm a big fan of its general look and feel
Sway and I love it. A bit of a hassle to configure but once it's set up how I like it's then it's great! I tried hyprland for a bit and it was super shiny but I just haven't had the time to tweak.
KDE, but sometimes I use i3 on my laptop
XFCE. I love how lightweight it is.
GNOME. It doesn't let customization get in the way of me using it, but everything I actually need to change has an extension to do that, even on my Surface.
Gnome. It's minimalistic and extensible.
GNOME is perfect for me, 100% vanilla, I don't even have Tweaks installed.
MATE:
I like traditional desktops.
I absolutely love MATE for that exact reason.
TDE aka Trinity Desktop Environment, a fork of KDE 3.
How is it? I've often thought about trying it out. I'm on Plasma 5, but I've never loved Plasma like I loved KDE 3.6. I felt like KDE 4 was a huge regression and didn't recover for years. Still hasn't, really.
I use Gnome with the pop-os tweaks: shell, launcher, and workspaces. Looking forward to the new COSMIC DE from System76.
Gnome. It just seems simple, elegant and smooth. It does what I need from a DE (not that much, I do a lot in terminal and Emacs). It has good keybindings out of the box and good virtual desktop mechanisms. It was also the first DE with good Wayland support. At first I was unsure if I liked Gnome’s concept and restrictions, but I’ve grown to like it fast.
Cinnamon for a few years now.
KDE, but it doesn't super look like it anymore.
GNOME. However, I use ArcMenu and Dash to Panel to get a KDE/Windows style taskbar UX.
Why do I use GNOME then, you might ask? Well, I really like the simplicity and aesthetic of GTK/Adwaita. KDE is too noisy - for example, the built in text editor (Kate) can double as an IDE, when all I'm really looking for is a box I can type in.
This is the best setup. I recently found "Just Perfection" which has some nice tweaks that I previously had individual extensions for.
i3
Sway for going on 2 years I think. I do recommend it, and Wayland/tiling wms in general.
I use my own fork that uses bspwm-style "long-side split by default," and a nearly transparent under-the-hood container-squashing refactor that prevents this behavior from causing the tree to become bloated with invisible nodes and start to lag horribly. The fix won't be accepted in Sway since it's the bug is faithfully reproduced from i3, and I haven't had time to rewrite it for i3. But if you use something like sway-autotiling, you've probably noticed the issue.
xmonad on my desktop, KDE on my laptop, haven't felt like setting up xmonad on there and KDE last I checked doesn't work correctly on my desktop since I use the Nvidia viewport settings to get my displays to act as 1080p displays.
I3, I love the way it’s workspaces work with multiple monitors.
Cinnamon almost exclusively. But sometimes plasma.
Cinnamon on Manjaro.
Yes, I know using Manjaro is cheating, but I could not be arsed to set up a DE by hand for the upteenth time. Manjaro Cinnamon ISO go *brrrrrrrr*
Using Plasma currently.
Qtile but that's just a WM
SwayWM which is basically "i3: Wayland Edition."
It's a pity it doesn't work with the nvidia drivers. I would've switched by now, otherwise.
Any other recommendations for wayland? I've been through i3, awesome, xmonad.
Used to be xfce or lxde, but have switched to gone the past 2-3 years.
Gnome + ArcMenu + Dash to Panel = <3
Exact same setup! No matter how much I rice, swap DEs, or distro hop, I always come back to this setup. It's just the most polished experience out there.
Oh also a tray icon extension on top of that.
Hyprland when felling tiled, Plasma or Cinnamon when I want some floating
XFCE on my work machine, GNOME on PC and KDE on my notebook. I wish DEs would play together better, so I could DE hop on one machine, but one can dream
Mate desktop with i3 as the window manager. Killer lightweight combo and massive boost to productivity.
XFCE usually. Two years ago it didn't support my weird multi monitor configuration, so I still have one computer with Gnome.
Fedora Silverblue here so, Gnome
KDE on my laptop, XFCE on my media server
I use gnome and plasma. Recently more plasma than gnome but I switch between them when there are new versions to explore. :)
I used GNOME but a bunch of angry Linux fanboys told me my worth as a human was nonexistent since I didn’t have XFCE installed so I installed Mac OSX instead. Loving clippy rn.
I switch back and forth between Gnome, XFCE, and herbstluftwm - there's something about the mental model that works for me.
Windowmaker, I use it in a vnc/x2go setup, I need something fast, stable that doesn't use much of the desktop space. When it was my main OS, I went KDE-gnome-KDE-windowmaker-e17
I usually daily qtile WM. If I run a full DE it's either KDE or LXQT.
Used to use Gnome and Cinnamon desktop all the time but now I just use the Awesome window manager.
Recently switched to hyprland from sway.
Gnome or Sway - it depends on the device and my mood.
KDE Plasma
MATE... Ubuntu MATE. I love its simplicity.
KDE
Mate & kde
I'm running i3 and it's ruined my ability to use Windows or Mac PCs
Absolutely same here, though it's also ruined my ability to use gnome or KDE or really anything else too..
I've probably spent the most time over the years in openbox. Sometimes lxde. Right now flirting with MATE and I don't hate it.
GNOME
Currently on hyprland after using sway for a couple years. I also don’t mind KDE - I just got the Pinetab 2 and I’m running Plasma Mobile on it. Though I’ve been wanting to try hyprland on that as well, maybe with one of the NWG launchers.
dwl (a wayland compositor inspired by dwm)
Wayland is better than xorg, change my mind
I'm usually an XFCE guy but I'm giving Cinnamon a whirl at the moment
Gnome here. Tried KDE and Cinnamon, but just found myself more comfortable on Gnome with extensions.
XFCE for the longest time, and Cinnamon recently.
I used to distro hop, until I ended up with Arch for many years. But for the last couple of years, I'm very much Team Manjaro.
Gnome with some extentions
