Plasma, with the taskbar on the side, and 15 virtual desktops.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
32 points (90.0% liked)
Linux
65636 readers
623 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Arch linux + niti + dms, amazing!
Sway, me like simple.
Stock GNOME. No extensions.
Niri
MangoWM (MangoWC formerly) ... started using it when Hyprland didn't have side scrolling like Niri, and Niri only as a scrolling manager and couldn't do the master stack. Mango being the best of both worlds, I riced it really well and stuck with it.
For fun? Niri + Noctalia.
For actually using the computer efficiently? KDE Plasma.
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.
i grew up with gnome, switched to plasma because i used a steam deck as my main computer for a few years. im just so used to the workflow in plasma, and while i would really love to switch to hyprland, its just too big of a hassle to set it up and learn everything. luckily i found out about krohnkite, so i can at least have some tiling in plasma, but not in the way hyprland does it. i would love it, if it split the focused window
WM: i3, sway, also playing around with dwm
DE: Xfce
I just need basic functionality, and most tiling WMs are fairly similar. i3 vs. Sway is basically the Xorg vs. Wayland question. I like dwm for its absolute minimalism and the fact that you configure it by editing or patching C and recompiling.
GNOME
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.
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.
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.
KDE Plasma all the way, on the desktop, the laptops and the two set top boxes.
Cosmic. It's pretty good now but sometimes it feels a little slow.
Enlightenment DE
Sway
Sway and Gnome
The latter is mostly for other family members. But I like both.
KDE. I don't even do much to customize it. I think it looks pretty good out of the box.
load more comments
(2 replies)
hyprland
Cinnamon. It's like a combination of kde and gnome.
I am sorry if my English is bad.
Cinnamon here too. It seems small and fast.
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 slop+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...)
Cosmic.
Openbox was my favourite, but there's not a really good Wayland alternative yet so I've stuck with KDE for years.
I wanted to try Cosmic so I went to the source with popos and it's really a good time. I haven't used a Deb/Ubuntu base since the Crunchbang days but this is good and it seems there is a Cosmic update pushed through every week.
I’m not using Pop! but I am loving cosmic on both Gentoo and Fedora.
On my potato I’m using sway.
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
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.
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
Steam failing to run sounds more like a distributuion issue than a DE issue to me
KDE Plasma. It's clean, fast, and just works.
Vanilla gnome is pretty peak
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 it looks pretty, though.
I’ve tried Cinnamon as well. I thought it looked a bit too cheap for my taste, at least by default on Mint.
Gnome Vanilla is really not that good. But with Extensions and Gnome Tweaks its usable.
Gnome Tweaks enables the minimize button and Extensions enable pretty much everything one could ask for.
I prefer the simplified UI of Gnome to the thousands of options that KDE offers out of the box. But KDE is a really good DE and i used it without problems over a year.
People tend to dislike this, but I LOVE gnome. It runs a lil heavy, but damn it's clean, smooth, fast, easy & decluttered.
No dot files, no config, and it's intuitive
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.
Sway, it's fast, pretty, easy to customize, and can do headless displays to stream with Sunshine.
What does headless display mean to stream?
It means that the display I stream doesn't show on a physical stream. When the stream start, it can automatically be set to the resolution and framerate of the client.
This is especially useful when the client has a resolution and/or refresh rate not supported by a connected physical screen. For example, I always used to have vertical black bars on my phone because it is so wide, and horizontal ones on my Surface because it is so square, but not anymore.
It also means I coult setup multi-seat stuff and keep using my pc while someone else is streaming.
sway. I tried hyprland, but it was unable to switch between different maximized windows (monocle layout). There was a way, but it triggered a resize on every window switch, which was slow and annoying. I don't know if it's perhaps been fixed since then.
I use mainly StumpWM, a tiling window manager which uses concepts very similar to Emacs. For example, one can define key chords, bind keys to lisp functions, and auto-generate input for a program window.
If it isn't available, I use i3, or occasionally GNOME.
StumpWM? You are a masochistic nerd 😂
No no.
- Manual tiling works far better for me than the automated control in i3/sway. This is because I use some established layouts, for example Emacs Window with Rust code in the right half, in the left either firefox with docs, or a shell running cargo test, or another shell running jiujiutsu commands, or refreshing test files, and so on. And I switch rapidly between these all the time.
- A tiling WM makes much better use of screen estate, especially on my 40 inch 4K screen, but also on the laptop.
- I do most of the time programming, writing or reading, and for this, it is ideal to switch views back and forth with a single keypress.
- I like to focus on one thing at a time, and this is required if I want to work in a nice flow state. For this, StumpWMs ability to switch workspaces fast is great.
- I found it is great to automate frequent actions with wm-generated input from the wm. Say I am in the browser and want to capture the current URL for a project-specific bookmark list. So, I make s function that goes to the address bar, selects all, copies to clipboard, selects or creates an emacsclient window, finds a file called bookmark.org, pastes the URL there and lets me add a description.
What could also work for me is the tiling style like in GNOME PaperWM or Niri. But I haven't tried it extensively due to GNOME breaking on my last Debian stable upgrade and unwillingness to spend more time on it. And I am more than happy with StumpWM.
An inportant general fact is this: Things that you use all the time, do not necessarily have the same shape and UI as things that one uses once every three months. For the first, terminal interfaces with a lot of hotkeys might be suitable, for the latter, perhaps GUIs with menus.
view more: next ›