Favorite Desktop Environment

[Jason]

Pick one choice and after two weeks see the final result. Hope everyone participates in this one. Would love to see what people use.


Reply and let us know why the DE is your favorite.

   
• What do you like about it?
• Are there any downsides that you care to share?
• How fast do you find it compares to the others?
• What kind of hardware do you use it on?

[fox]

For me, it's Gnome. I started with it, got used to it, switched to Unity for a few years when Ubuntu had it as a default, and then back when Gnome became the Ubuntu default. I don't like vanilla Gnome, but the customized version that Ubuntu uses is nice. It's attractive, puts the dock on the left where I like it, and has a nice icon theme. I can find apps easily with it. I like the menubar as well, though the one in other DEs is just as good.

The biggest downside is that the clipboard isn't working properly, with the cut/copy command moving text to the clipboard only half the time (every other copy). I never experienced this in Ubuntu before version 19.10 and I don't know if it affects any other distro. Hopefully it will go away in the upcoming 20.04 LTS.

Speedwise, any DE I've ever used feels about the same as this one. My computers aren't new, but they're fast enough and I have SSD's in all of them.

Hardware: 2011 and 2015 iMacs, Dell xps 13 2 in 1 laptop, 2012 Mac mini.

My second favourite DE is Cinnamon; I use it in Mint as my main distro on my office (2015) iMac. It can be set up more or less the same as Gnome, and works similarly except it provides a proper menu. (Gnome doesn't really have a menu, but the combination of favourites on the dock plus quick search by pressing the command key actually seems faster than a menu.)

Generally I prefer the DE that comes with the distro (thus Gnome on Ubuntu and Cinnamon on Mint). When I was trying out Manjaro, I liked the way that XFCE worked on it. I think that this is because the devs put the most effort into their default DE, making it work best. The 'buntus is a bit of an exemption in that each 'buntu is maintained by a different group.

[Jason]

Thanks for your comments, Fox. When I'm feeling a bit better, I'll get around to writing why I like Plasma. Btw, it looks liked you wrote your comment but didn't vote in the poll? I think the option is still there if you want to do it.

[fox]

Didn't see the poll, but I voted.

[ssfc72]

I haven't really done much testing of DE.  I have been using the Cinnamon DE in Mint and it is fine.
My one must for a DE, is a one click shut down icon/button.  Mint takes 3 clicks but I found a hack that gives me a one click shutdown button.

I also run Lubuntu on another notebook computer, with the default DE and it has a 2 click shutdown  icon.

[buster]

Have an equal affinity for Mint CINNAMON, and Kubuntu's PLASMA.

I suppose I could vote as buster and BusterE to get both in. Now becuse this is about Linux, I will refrain from saying I like Win10. To do so would be very rude.

[Jason]

Have an equal affinity for Mint CINNAMON, and Kubuntu's PLASMA.

I suppose I could vote as buster and BusterE to get both in. Now becuse this is about Linux, I will refrain from saying I like Win10. To do so would be very rude.

Sure, I'll allow the other login to have a vote too, if you remember your password for it.


As for the comment about Windows 10, it's not a desktop environment. It has one, but it's not one. So it'd be not only rude but false! And that's the worst crime!

[fox]

If he did that, I would offset him with MacOS, just for spite. 

[Jason]

If he did that, I would offset him with MacOS, just for spite. 

[Jason]

It's probably no surprise here but Plasma is my favourite desktop environment (DE):

I like it because it has choices, so many choices. In previous version of KDE's DE the DE options were confusing because of so many choices and lack of organization. They've done much better since Plasma 5 came out so it's easy to find things. It's so customizable. I may not use many of them but I like that the power is there.

I like the classic menu system in bottom left with a menu that pops up and category menus that pop out. You don't have to click on them to open. However, there are other choices to this menu, including sliding menus to choose what's under them It's really easy on a dual monitor system to have a pane on each side with a full menu, task tray, time and its own application menu. And you can use a launcher similar to Gnome's. And there's a menu that is kind of a cross between the regular menu and Gnome's launcher. You pick the category on the right and programs for that category show on the left as giant icons.

You can also choose to have apps that run in one window to only show on the task panel for that window. I find this quite handy as it means I'm not moving around so much as I switch and reminds me of what program is where when I'm switching between them.

It's cool for me that you right-click on the launcher button and edit the program menu directly.

What I don't like about it is that sometimes when you open an application, even Plasma applications, the window is too small and you have drag the window so you can see the buttons and such. Once you've done so, it remembers the geometry and doesn't do it again. But I still don't understand why that happens. It definitely seems like something they should fix. I'm not sure if this only happens to Plasma apps in general or just the ones they include by default.

I haven't compared it too much to others but before Kubuntu I think I was using LM (Linux Mint) Cinnamon. It performed just as well on Plasma as it did under LM as far as I can tell. When I start Kubuntu up with no programs running it uses about 700 MB. Back when it was called KDE, it was heftier but we had less RAM back then, too. On my 12 GB system, it's hard for me to run out of RAM. I've only come close with running a VM guest with 4 GB RAM and an Android Emulator. I was at about 10 GB at that time. If I did video or photo editing, I'd op for more, potentially much much more.