this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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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.

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[–] megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

I have KDE Plasma, Hyprland, and Mango (WM) installed.

Of the three, I use Mango most of the time, and KDE Plasma sometimes. Hyprland, I've kept because most of my config was for it, and I'm still currently porting them to Mango. Most of the dotfiles are in their own areas, though I've mostly piggybacked on Plasma components. One area that I've got some trouble with is program theming. KDE Plasma has its own, Qt has its own (which is different from the KDE Plasma one), and GTK is yet another. I've decided that the best way to deal with it is to make them look as similar as I can, so that whether I'm on Mango, Hyprland, or KDE Plasma, my programs will look the same--except for the presence of window titlebars, which Mango doesn't show, Hyprland shows via a plugin, but KDE Plasma does show.

I used Ubuntu's implementation of Gnome back when I started dabbling with Linux some time ago. I didn't bother theming it. And then I moved to XFCE when that underpowered machine I was using couldn't handle Ubuntu's Gnome without feeling like it's swimming in molasses. XFCE is nice and configurable in contrast, and I didn't have much to complain about. However, I found its configuration back then to be quite troublesome, especially as I tried tweaking my own bars and panels.

I then moved to KDE Plasma when I got my current machine. It was pretty okay out of the box, but coming from a tweaked XFCE, I couldn't stop myself from theming it to my liking. Hyprland was introduced to me mid-2024, and I was thrust head-first into configuring it from scratch, no dotfiles to copy from, or pre-made shells to make my experience easier.

At present, Mango won me over by having a decent vertical scrolling layout, as well as the flexibilty of using other layouts on the fly. While I like Hyprland's level of polish and customizability, and recently have implemented scrolling (both vertical and horizontal), I am staying with Mango if only because I've already done the work porting most of my stuff there.

[–] WellTheresYourCobbler@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Vanilla gnome is pretty peak

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I loved Gnome 2. Still have it one a machine.

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[–] fatur0000new@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Cinnamon. It's like a combination of kde and gnome.

I am sorry if my English is bad.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

Cinnamon here too. It seems small and fast.

[–] juipeltje@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

If i have to pick one i'd say River. I have a bunch of tiling compositors configured but find myself coming back to River the most. It feels stable, it's minimal, but still supports the wayland protocols you'd want to be there, and is fairly simple to configure with its shell script config file.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hyprland, specifically with the end4 illogical impulse desktop.

It's pretty and I really like how functional it is, but some recent updates have changed how some of the config files work requiring changes. It's an inconvenience I'm willing to put up with though.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I had to fix my hypr.config or whatever to use new the windows rules format. That was a pain in the ass.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago
[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Using kde rn because its easy to use.

I will spend some time to get a tiling wm eventually. Minimal resource efficiency as well as brain efficiency is very apealing to me.

[–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For fun? Niri + Noctalia.

For actually using the computer efficiently? KDE Plasma.

[–] skai@piefed.ca 3 points 1 month ago

I've actually gotten so used to the workflow I think I'm more productive on Niri+Nocalia now (especially on my laptop with a smaller screen). That said, when I'm using programs which assume I'm using a traditional window manager (usually games tbh, but sometimes electron apps as well), I do consider that it may be easier to just give in an use Plasma.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Cinnamon. Desktop UI peaked in the Gnome 2/Windows XP era and anything after that is bloat for the sake of bloat.

Might try kde plasma though, if I can make it behave the same.

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[–] BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)
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[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Vanilla KDE on desktop, Niri WM+Noctalia shell on laptop. Firstly, because for some reason I cannot get any touchpad gestures to work on KDE, and secondly because the niri paradigm of horizontal tiling is just perfect for a laptop. I tried to use Gnome for a while before landing on Niri, but the lack of configurability and the reliance on extensions for basic functionality drove me nuts.

[–] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago

KDE like a real grown up

KDE on Arch, aesthetically pleasing and mostly functional out of the box. There are some startup quirks, but that's likely due to my LUKS setup which I will change with the next re-install. Already tried to fix multiple times, it's too much of a hassle to keep trying to fix an <5 minutes per day issue.

[–] ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hyprland, trying to go back to sway.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I wanted to try Sway and couldn't get super+q to open a terminal window. I just installed.something else since no time to learn it that day.

So what's the sway hotkey combo for new terminal? I figured they would be the same.

[–] ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sway's default keybind for opening a terminal is super+return (line 68)

    # Start a terminal
    bindsym $mod+Return exec $term

note also that sway uses the foot terminal by default. (line 17)

# Your preferred terminal emulator
set $term foot

You can change these in the config.

It's a good idea to read a bit about a WM from a wiki before use:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sway
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Sway

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Fair enough. I was just in a hurry and figured the default key binds would be similar to Hyprland and maybe they would all mostly default the same way. I was very wrong.

[–] BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I’m a simple man. Default Gnome on my desktop, i3 on my low end laptop. I don’t even really use the DE-ness of Gnome, I’m just too lazy to bother switching. On my laptop I also don’t even really need i3. kmscon + tmux would probably be fine except for those few times when I have to use a full browser for some stupid logon permissions or QR code jank.

[–] dewritoninja@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Currently using gnome with lots of extensions. Ive tried many DEs but gnome always feels like home. I also like kde a lot but there something about qt that feels so amateur and unpolished, and I can't get steam to run on kde out of the box, with gnome it just works. Also the times I've used kde I always end up replicating the gnome layout so I just decided to stick with gnome in the long run

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[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Still on Openbox/Xorg. Inevitable is the switch to wayland, what is the closest equivalent? And if you use it, how is it?

edit: for me, OB's greates strength is having tons of options for manual tiling while still being a stacking window manager. Plus tons of keyboard shortcuts and inbuilt menus.

[–] First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I hear that river wants to try to sort of become the Xorg of wayland (in the sense of providing a simpler interface to build a window manager upon, without needing the whole compositor)

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[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

KDE Plasma but mainly I use sway.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

XFCE with Compiz with all the 3D effects enabled lol.

If you want wayland then wayfire is supposed to be the spiritual successor, but it's still technically beta software.

[–] cdzero@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Cinnamon. I tried KDE but I didn't like it. I saw a video where someone customised Cinnamon through settings and extensions so I've done a bit of that.

[–] TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago

I use the pop!_os customized version of GNOME currently. I used hyprland for a while until I lost my dots for it due to some PC issues, and I didn't bother setting it back up. I do plan to switch to COSMIC which I quite enjoy, but it's also still missing a lot of stuff I need, so im waiting for that to be fully rolled out

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