Spent lots of time with Gnome 2.
In Dec 2024 I got hooked in Hyprland on Arch and have a cool rice for it. But I’ve tried KDE on desktop now with Parrot OS since Plasma is popular. Still need to find some cool dot files or rice it myself.
I’ve noticed SwayFX getting lots of love lately. I might use that as an option with Plasma but am afraid of conflicts. I’m excited about it since Linux has now officially replaced windows on my gaming rig, which is the very last MS computer left in my house.
KDE Plasma because I’m basic and I wanna get stuff done 👍
based
KDE. I don’t even do much to customize it. I think it looks pretty good out of the box.
Niri + Noctalia shell. I find the scrolling tiles to be excellent for my workflow, and the desktop shell feels nice and polished. Plus, Niri supports the Wayland
zwlr_layer_shell, which means I can finally use Wallpaper Engine; there’s even a Noctalia plugin for it.Niri has been great for gaming and streaming, so be sure to check it out if you haven’t.
I would be hesitant to use anything but KWin with Plasma. They were designed together as a set (like Mutter and Gnome), and I suspect replacing the WM would be no small task.
Do you mind elaborating on that Wallpaper Engine thing and also Natalia shell. What are they? I’m familiar with Niri, but never used it myself. (Not sure I like scrolling logic, I use barebones Sway.)
Noctalia is a Quickshell fork that’s preconfigured. It’s pretty solid, lightweight, and with the most Niri integration I’ve seen. Comes default in the Cachyos Niri config.
So Hyprland with Plasma would be no bueno? Honestly, if I can get my dots right, tile some windows, and get the hotkeys set up similarly, it might be just as good.
It might not work, yeah. KDE has integrated KWin and Plasma very purposely that I would be impressed if you could implement the one without the other. Not saying it can’t be done, because this is Linux after all, but KDE didn’t design Plasma to be modular software, so I would imagine you’d experience broken integrations and such that “just work” with KWin.
I use KDE. I like how easy it is to customize pretty much everything. Like, if I want everything to be green, I can make everything green and no one can stop me.
Xfce, specifically because I like the Chicago95 theme.
KDE Plasma all the way, on the desktop, the laptops and the two set top boxes.
Gnome
For me: Gnome + extensions.
The default Gnome feels way too locked down to me, and I don’t like some of the choices. But, with the right extensions “locked down” becomes “simplified enough to get out of your way”.
Yeah, I’ve got a couple extensions as well. I tried out Bazzite and liked some of the changes they made, but wanted something closer to stock Gnome. Ended up just installing Silverblue and adding a few of those extensions back, to taste.
How do you fare with the restrictions of immutable distro? That’s feels scary to me, but I’m a control freak.
I actually like the assurance of immutability. The main downside is that there’s just less documentation on how to do things, since it’s a very non-standard configuration for a distro.
It’s also annoying having to reboot every time I layer a new package into the system image, but I try to avoid that as much as possible and haven’t had to do it recently.
Adjusting to Flatpaks has also presented some challenges. In theory, I really like what Flatpaks offer in terms of app-level isolation, but some things are still rough around the edges. I’ve encountered at least one app that didn’t obey the system’s dark mode theming… Also, they still haven’t quite figured out a good way to handle GPU drivers, so you can run into compatibility issues between the usage driver in the runtime and the kernel driver in the system image.
In my case, I’ve just had to update and restart the application when this happens, but it might cause problems if you try to roll back the OS image after already updating all your runtimes (resulting in a newer userspace driver trying to talk to an outdated kernel driver).
Sway
KDE Plasma. It’s the most feature rich “just works” DE there is. GNOME doesn’t even have fucking maximize and minimize buttons by default without adding them via GNOME Tweaks.
I used to be a Cinnamon/Linux Mint lover, but their slow implementation of Wayland, Window Scaling, and certain other annoyances like their split NetworkManager GUI between GNOME’s UI and the native NetworkManager UI made me switch.
i3
With alacritty, qutebrowser, neovim and LibreWolf. I use my custom dmenu-based utilities for things like launching apps, locking (with slock), controlling (ie. postponing :D) redshift and music player and opening bookmarks, links and searches. Thunar is the most DE-like app I use but being comfortable with Bash i use Thunar just for certain tasks like organizing files like photos. (For quick text edits, I sometimes prefer Mousepad. For screenshots it’s slock+maim.)
I don’t “rice”, I just set some color schemes years ago and use simple wallpaper (which I rarely see.) And keep everything as minimal and out of way as possible.
(I don’t care about Wayland unless I’m somehow forced to. I mean, some of my utils depend on X11 for things like clipboard access but I suppose it could be fixed easily nowadays. However X11 works fine for me so if it ain’t broken…)
KDE Plasma. It’s clean, fast, and just works.
I use Cinnamon, it’s not much, but it just works.
I was on Mate back in the day since I did not have good enough computer to upgrade to Cinnamon. Used it for several years to finish Master’s thesis. It certainly gets the job done.
KDE Plasma, as it’s most Windows-like and it has lots of cool widgets to add to your desktop Windows 7-style.
I’ve also tried Gnome, but I found it confusing and honestly a bit annoying. Not being able to properly minimise like I’m used to just really throws me off. I do think the visual style is well-designed, though.
I’ve tried Cinnamon as well. I thought it looked a bit too cheap for my taste, at least by default on Mint.
Been on i3wm for 3 4 years now I guess. Also work with sway on some systems.
you can actually see and use my config
I wish I could give multiple upvotes for both posting dots and using Codeberg rather than Github.
Looks good!
Haha thanks <3
Niri
