One Desktop Environment to Rule Them All (Sorta)

[Azuma Hazuki]

So, i'm going to start this by saying that for the longest time I haaaaaaaated KDE. Basically, from 4.0 to 5.8 I hated it (3.5.x was amazing, but at the time I preferred Xfce).

Then 5.9 dropped, and it's nearly flawless. I don't know how to put this. The majority of the programs I use are still GTK, and GTK2 at that, but KDE/Plasma has really gelled in a way I have not experienced since the all-too-short and innocent days 3.5.x and I had together. Does "retroactive nostalgia" make sense? It's like seeing a friend you were certain had died a decade later, and they're...different, but you can tell it's them even though they've changed so much.

I will go further and predict that it will become the most dominant DE outside of RedHat's insistence on pushing God-awful Gnome 3.x on people, at least if it can become default on more distros.

What does everyone think? And, what DE (or WM, i love Fluxbox and Openbox too) do you all use? Screenshots welcome

 

[you2]

You left out gnome2 which will live forever.

 

[whm1974]

I myself loved KDE 3.x.x back when I was using Mandrake/Mandriva, but had a strong dislike of KDE 4 when it came out. I've used Gnome 2.x.x, E17, and a few others, but settled on Xfce.

I had the fewest problems and issues with Xfce then any other DE/WM I've used.

 

[you2]

Yea - to be honest I run 1/2 my computers with xfce and 1/2 with gnome (probably 3 even though i said 2 above). Both have minor glitches with ubuntu - but next release (18.04) will have gnome as the native install so I think i will drop xfce and live with gnome (unless they foobar it). I

 

[lxskllr]

Xfce. I switched to it when gnome went weird, and kept going. It's customizable enough, simple enough, and classically designed. I also like that development on it is glacial. If it isn't being changed, it isn't being screwed up.

edit:
Here's a screenshot of my home machine...

 

[mv2devnull]

What I have now fulfills "I don't care" and "I need something that mostly works already yesterday" criterias. Namely, it is Red Hat's current default: Gnome 3. The road to that (over the decades) was: fvwm, xfce.

Now I remember a third, temporary criteria: "don't mess the (older) Xfce config on other machines that don't have a new install yet" (shared home). Should probably re-evaluate the options now.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I find they each have their perks and downsides. I like KDE for it's vast customizability, but found it could also be glitchy at times. XFCE in general I like, but I find the "explorer" is really lacking especially in search department. Right now I'm using Cinnamon and it's ok but I do run into the odd app that acts funny, and you need to install a bunch of extra packages just for that app to work, why?

I'd like to see all the efforts that go towards all these DE go towards making fewer of them, but make them all much better. This is one of the downsides of Linux, so much fragmentation... but perhaps that is a good thing in another way as it also means more choices.

 

[EXCellR8]

Xfce looks like a cheap Windows XP ripoff or those terrible 'skins' by star dock or something.

Gnome or KDE plasma are much nicer imho

 

[ControlD]

Xfce looks like a cheap Windows XP ripoff or those terrible 'skins' by star dock or something.

Gnome or KDE plasma are much nicer imho

The default XFCE installs are pretty sparse looking. You can however make it look as nice as you want with a little work.

I have tried most of the major desktop environments, and XCFE / Cinnamon are my two favorites. I want to like KDE, but it just feels slow compared to the rest. The menu for example always has a slight delay opening. It isn't the end of the world, but it is easily noticed after using a DE that is a little more responsive.

Cinnamon seems a little more polished, but XFCE is about as solid as it gets stability-wise.

 

[EXCellR8]

cinnamon is definitely more polished than KDE or Gnome, but if I'm going to install an alternative OS and desktop environment I'd rather use something that isn't set up just like a windows PC.

it seems like when a DE is introduced it's quite quirky/unique, but then they all seem to move toward the whole "standard" desktop with start menu and taskbar and whatnot--either due to regular updates or familiarity reasons from user feedback or something i'm not sure. it may just be one of those things where people in general just got used to Windows environment long before they first tried anything built around Linux.

 

[Seba]

From the DE I mainly require to work with as little bugs as possible, to have a reasonable way to launch programs and to switch between opened programs.

I use Unity right now on my Linux PCs. Although I would rather not, I will probably switch to Gnome Shell starting with Ubuntu 18.04, because of the lack of better alternatives once Unity will be abandoned.

Cinnamon, while nice, was always buggy for me when I tried it.

KDE - for some reason that I can not exactly pinpoint, it does not look good. It's like it was designed by a upholsterer.

Mate, Gnome 2, XFCE, LXDE - obsolete.

 

[EXCellR8]

I actually could not get the amdgpu-pro drivers to work with Unity or Gnome, just got a black screen and I ultimately had to root in after boot and uninstall it all. this is with a 7870K with R7 graphics.

KDE Plasma (latest version) is working great with the amd drivers though, and 3d applications actually run well now that the generic packages have been deactivated.

 

[whm1974]

From the DE I mainly require to work with as little bugs as possible, to have a reasonable way to launch programs and to switch between opened programs.

I use Unity right now on my Linux PCs. Although I would rather not, I will probably switch to Gnome Shell starting with Ubuntu 18.04, because of the lack of better alternatives once Unity will be abandoned.

Cinnamon, while nice, was always buggy for me when I tried it.

KDE - for some reason that I can not exactly pinpoint, it does not look good. It's like it was designed by a upholsterer.

Mate, Gnome 2, XFCE, LXDE - obsolete.

I would hardly call Xfce obsolete, it works and works well.

 

[LPCTech]

I picked Gnome, cuz I think of it as the standard. But I like i3 WM. Also kinda like LXDE. LXQt is interesting.

Have tried again and again to like KDE, just cant like it. I feel like xfce is KDE light.

Cinnamon is too windows-y. But is nice.

Not a fan of budgie or enlightenment.

Glad Ubuntu is dropping Unity, I always found unity to be strange.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I tried i3 but could not seem to figure out how to order monitors properly. I want the centre one to be primary. I gave up with multi monitor altogether though as each DE seems to have it's own quircks, such as windows/dialogs and even drop downs not opening on the monitor it was activated from. Drives me nuts.

The thing I did like about i3 is that it did seem to handle that part properly, sorta. Issue is anything that makes a dialog makes a new tile instead, would be nice if windows would be tiles but dialogs/sub windows would be floating and just stay on their tile. Basically a hybrid of floating and tiling I guess.