After trying out Cosmic, Gnome,KDE Plasma, and Hyprland, I feel like plasma is the most usable for me coming from Windows. It solves the gripes I had about lack of customizability while still starting me off with a familiar homebar. I will be going back and forth with gnome for a while.
I really like gnome and the sliding desktops, and all the extensions seem to make it very customizable as well, but not directly like plasma, instead you mix and match (or make) extensions to get the look you want. (correct me if im wrong, I used it for a day)
Hyprland seems very nice for multitasking but the keyboard focus of the presets ive tried doesn’t really appeal to me, I like being able to just use my mouse sometimes.
Cosmic, is definitely an alpha and im interested to see what it becomes, wont be using it now.
CWM, calm window manager. It’s based off Plan 9’s Rio and made for OpenBSD, there is a Linux port. I also admit I use KDE sometimes.
XFCE and well, straightforward usage without endless tweaking and customization. On the other side, I recently(~2 years:)) felt in love with tiling window manager BSPWM and keyboard-driven usage.
Lxqt, with pcmanfm’s desktop ability turned off. I use the terminal for my file management anyway
I usually have several terminal tabs and web browser tabs open plus a tmux session. Neovim for coding and writing, feh and mpv for viewing media, mpd, supysonic, and minidlna for streaming and playing music.
KDE Plasma and it’s configured to have everything in the same places as Windows as much as possible. I have to use Windows for work and gaming and like it when I don’t have to think much about which computer I’m using right now.
I went cold turkey to gnome and I use KDE on my laptop. Both configured to use super + type in what I want to open. I quit windows since I got used to it and they stopped providing it. I like both but gnome is way more finished while kde feels a bit janky at times. I really love the customization ability of KDE and I find once I messed up and had to reinstall once, I got over my urges to needlessly rice. I don’t know if it is distro specific but I am pretty upset fedora gnome does not have create new file under right click but you have to use terminal (goes completely against gnome philosophy) or to go edit hidden folders and use terminal to create a template (goes very against gnome philosophy).
Yeah I dont think hyprland will become a mainstay for me, but I will be copying that super plus shortcut way of working over to the other DEs, im just not productive 24/7 (nor do I want to be) so fully commiting to a tiling manager doesnt make sense
Id like to see what all the buzz about hyperland is one day. When it’s not buggy and comes with a distro.
After a lot of jumping around I settled for Plasma, with just the default dark theme plus a few minor tweaks and that’s it. It’s super easy to use and it runs pretty smoothly now unlike 5+ years ago. I was into the whole tiling wm rabbithole for a while but got bored of it and I mostly just want everything fullscreen so I wasn’t even making use of the tiling.
SwayWM
ive used many de’s and wm’s over the last 15+ years and ended using gnome the most. most familiar with it now so, its fine for me.
Tried i3 a few years back. Never went back. Fucking love it. Would like to ditch X for Wayland soon though. Need to move to Sway but a bunch of scripts depend on X… Probably wouldn’t be too much of a nightmare to transition, but for some reason I’ve been putting it off for years.
KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything “extra” to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).
GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it’s “simpler” but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).
I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.
Trying cinnamon and it might be the superior parent rec, its basically older windows, very straightforward ui, not flashy, Gnome (at least the default i had) didn’t have a start bar and required clicking the windows button to see clickable stuff that weren’t icons. With extensions it can be basically windows or mac tho. (so if you directly setitup for them or guide them its more modern feeling/superior)
Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they’re very hard to break.
Universal BlueAurora KDE, or bluefin gnome are what id prob reccomend to any non gamers trying to use Linux after looking around, bazzite for gamers who dont want to tinker, cachyos for those who do. Seems like a straightforward way to get up and running, cachyos was hella easy to dualboot tho, universal blue doesnt seem to let me load a live os from my usb with a graphical installer, that was super helpful with cachy.
KDE has given me the desktop I need for the past few years. Hyprland isn’t a desktop environment, as far as I know.
Before KDE I used Cinnamon on Linux Mint. It was functional, but after many years I wanted a change.
Use whatever suits your needs. In my experience, KDE and Cinnamon are the most complete desktop environments without having to install extensions or extra software. Both are mature, have large communities behind them, and release incremental updates frequently. Those are my criteria for a good desktop environment.
Trying cinnamon right now, Its definitely functional, closer to windows back when I liked it. Feels boring, but in a good for productivity way.
I really like the gnome workflow plus a couple of extensions. Notably I ran across a tiling extension called “grid” that scratched my tiling window needs on my desktop, and gnome is amazing on my laptop trackpad. I zing through desktops quick! Anything it can’t do out of the box, you can find an extension for.
I like the feel of something different than windows.
I started using Windows as a young lad, but when I tried using Linux I easily transitioned to KDE. Then I tried Gnome and loved it, used it for a few years before moving over to Hyprland a couple of months ago and I can confidently say that I won’t be going back.
EDIT:
Forgot to mention that the main reason I love Hyprland is because of the crazy level of customization. I use it primarily on my laptop and can navigate easily with keyboard shortcuts, clicking, and even trackpad gestures.Don’t let somebody else’s idea of how to use a DE limit you, just configure whatever you want!
Looks like we went the same way through the Linux world. Hyprland is both, it could be good looking like KDE and Gnome and it is keybind tiling like sway and i3.
I never realised before how much useless time we spend for mouse movings and clicks.
I do like hyprland, I think itll take some time to get a config right but it feels fun to use and thats why I swapped to linux, windows felt boring with its ui and on top of that had constant random so it wasnt the good type of boring. Most shocking part has been having 100s of tabs open and swapping without issue, on windows it did not matter which browser I used my computer would tweak after 20 tabs
Wow trackpad gestures? I’m on gnome and their gestures are really good, if hyperland’s is just as good I might try it out.
GNOME on my laptop, using the trackpad. Three-finger swipe up to switch tasks/search. Two-finger tap for context menus. Three-finger tap for things like opening in a new tab, or closing a tab. Simple, intuitive, efficient, comfortable.
My preference is the opposite of yours. I just recently set up Hyprland and I love it for the focus on keyboard and the ease of customizing the keybinds.
The other thing I love is the tiling. I almost always have two windows side by side and in every other DE I’ve used (haven’t used cosmic), I always had to faff about to get my windows half and half or into the quarters. So pair that with the keyboard focus and hyprland is the winner for me.
I often dont use my keyboard when casually browsing, reaching for it constantly is annoying in those cases, I’m assuming yall that use linux more are more used to the opposite and not using a graphical interface.
plasmas had no issues going half and half or quarters, better than windows at least, but yeah my monitors are relatively small compared to what other ppl have, so i never want to divide by more than 4
