Xmonad. I prefer tiling window managers, & I tried Sway but I can’t do color work without proper color management… something Wayland doesn’t support. Thus, I moved back to my old Xmonad config awaiting Wayland to get its shit together after years saying color management was around the corner & distros still adopting it despite not being ready.

KDE, because despite my bitterness for the loss of Unity 8, I know it's merely nostalgia for me. I want something I feel like I can make my own without too much difficulty.

Qtile, just because it's Python-based.

My desktop environment of choice would be XFCE. It's simply easy to configure while not giving me choice fatigue like KDE does. Also I don't like Qt for some reason.

GNOME is great but I find their extensions to be super clunky sometimes. Some of them even break in between updates. The main selling point of gnome (for me) is the minimal look and feel, extensions kind of ruin that a little bit.

Don't get me wrong plasma and Gnome are wonderful DEs but XFCE provides a simple and balanced desktop IMO. The only thing that's missing is full Wayland support.

P.S : Anyways most of the time I would be running a window manager instead of a DE, my current favourite Wayland window-manager is Labwc because it gives me openbox vibes.

Used Mint with Cinnamon for a long time, but always wanted to try KDE after distrohopping a bit. Had it on when I switched to Arch, but didn't like how slow it felt on my old laptop so I tried LXQt and then XFCE. I wanted a modern lightweight environment with Wayland support, but I'll have to wait for it to be implemented. In the meantime, I riced my XFCE just how I like it, and I really like how complete and responsive it is.

I love KDE. It's got easy to use power user features and is very robust.

KDE all the way, it's incredible especially since 6

KDE Plasma. It came on my steam deck which was my first intro to it, it blew me away and installed it on my laptop and finally ditched Windows shortly after. Works great for me.

Currently I am on KDE, but I am an xfce lover. I can't wait for the next xfce update and for Cosmic.

I am living KDE almost default. I have the impression that with too much customisation problems come.

Xfce is rock solid and rock solid after customisation too. It is truly amazing.

Gnome needs far too many extension for me to be usable. And so I avoid it.

Cinnamon is great too, but it's in the middle. If I don't want to use Wayland, at that point there is xfce.

I use DWM in place of a window manager because I love the lightweight, minimalist base, and i like to customise my setup very finely. (I use Arch btw)

kde plasma, it's fast, it's pretty, it's handy, it has all the keyboard shortcuts.

Cinammon cuz I didn't knew it doesn't like kde plasma and now I am too lazy to change it fora bit of time.

i3. Superb for keyboard-driven environment. Ultra fast, so responsive and configurable. The best.

I'm currently using Cinnamon because I thought it would be better than Xfce. While I do think that Cinnamon looks better, there were some minor things that I preferred with Xfce. I want to try Mate and maybe some of the other DEs if I can find a good distro that has them but I may go back to Xfce the next time I install Linux Mint.

GNOME, because I started with Red Hat 6 and I'm used to it, on Fedora Silverblue, because I have a long history of fucking up my PC and that makes it harder. For remote machines XFCE because the mouse is cute.

KDE Plasma on all my computers and also as desktop mode on Steam Deck. because it supports the latest technologies especially when it comes to graphics (HDR, VRR) also has best support for Wayland and multi-monitors. It looks great out of the box and it has a lot of features out of the box and I do not need to battle with adding some extensions that break with almost every update. KDE Plasma is also the most flexible desktop and I can set the workflow really to fit my desires and I can actually set many options and settings. And despite all these built-in features and configurability it still uses very few system resources. Oh and the KDE community is one of the most welcoming I have met in FOSS world, and they listen to their users instead of the our way or the high way mentality I have so often encountered in GNOME for example. So yeah TLDR KDE Plasma is the one I like the most of all in the industry, even when compared to proprietary closed alternatives.

XFCE. I also like tiling WMs, but I often have to share computers and they are too unintuitive for the rest of the family.

Gnome, be it PC or Laptop. It just remains out of my way with it's minimalism. Tried KDE for a while, and I seriously can't stand it, personally.

XFCE + Compiz

The unholy combination of accelerated 3D graphics and performance, all without the stupid drawbacks of wayland.

Runs much lighter than KDE even with all the 3D cube and windows stuff enabled.

Extremely customizable as well. XFCE already does a great job of UI/UX, it just lacks a compositor to add flare (xfwm4 has no animations, only some blur effects).

Cosmic, just trying it out because i liked the extensions system76 made for gnome, and cosmic DE is more native experience of that.

Typically I don’t use a DE. I’ll go for dmenu + dwm usually if I only want a WM. I find the default bindings and behaviour for the tiling is the most ergonomic when comparing it to other WMs like i3.

When I do have to get a DE setup then I’ll use XFCE because I like how it stays out of the way and I find it easy to customise.

GNOME