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Topic: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use (Read 9284 times) previous topic - next topic
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Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

I wanted to know which Window Manager or Desktop Environment do you use as your daily driver? This is just to get a gist of the most favored DE in use. 

  • KDE Plasma
  • GNOME
  • XFCe
  • LXQT/LXDE
  • MATE
  • Cinnamon
  • Others

Please do give your responses and if possible a few pointers on benefits that you accrue on using it. For example XFCe one of the point can be its low system usage or light system usage. For KDE plasma it can be for its features, massive application libraries, etc. And so on. 

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #1
Mainly XFCE. It's light but has almost everything I want. Thunar is excellent and it's a very mature suite and getting better all the time. Otherwise it's icewm, fluxbox or openbox.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #2
XFCE: stable, lightweight, practical and beautifully configurable.

But since I manage a lot of photos, often mixed with other types of files, I add the Dolphin file manager.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #3
XFCE for its simplicity.  8)

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #4
XFCE or Openbox mainly for my machines, always try and keep as light as possible.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #5
dwm as daily driver because I don't want to spend time on arranging windows.
Fully set hyprland as backup in case something goes terribly wrong with X. I don't use it but it is ready, practically replica of my dwm setup.

Tiling WM is not for everybody but I am using this or that one for 10+ years back.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #6
dwm for daily while from time to time I still boot into my original i3 config
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #7
I use herbstluftwm almost exclusively, though occasionally a dynamic tiling WM like FrankenWM

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #8
Currently, XFCE4/XFWM4. XFCE4 was my first ever Desktop Environment so I have a bit of an attachment to it.

I was dicking around with suckless software before migrating from runit to openrc, ended up creating a cozy gui driven environment that's superior to out-of-the-box Manjaro. I felt like I was missing EndeavourOS and Linux Mint (NOT SYSTEMD) for the most superficial reasons and decided to somewhat recreate their desktop flow, minus flatpaks. Pamac runs better on an Arch Linux derivative that doesn't miss the point of Arch Linux, whodathunkit.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #9
i3wm, but configured as tabbed workflow instead of the default tiling + lxqt portals, because that's like the only sane filepicker on linux desktop.
It's just comfy scrolling (with mouse) through the windows.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #10
Awesome. I need a tiling wm to place out the windows for me. Otherwise it just becomes a mess with all windows open on top of each other and I can't find anything in that mess, and I open new windows all the time and soon I have 15 terminals and 10 windows of thunar, and a browser in the background, and hm, a text editor also, somewhere, if I could just find it, and...
I haven't tried any other tiling wm yet.

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #11
i3wm, but configured as tabbed workflow instead of the default tiling + lxqt portals, because that's like the only sane filepicker on linux desktop.
It's just comfy scrolling (with mouse) through the windows.

I use i3wm as well, but no desktop portals, actually when under wayland, it was required for screen sharing as well as pipewire and dbus of course, and I never really liked the idea.

So for a combo, i3wm (tabbed layout), polybar, rofi, dunst, picom, udiskie, udiskie-dmenu, bemenu-x11, pinentry-bemenu, ... , and I don't miss a DE.  Actually never had, I used years back plain fluxbox without it's menu and without its toolbar, with similar environment, but after finding sway and therefore i3wm support tabbed layout I started using them and found the experience even better than with stacking WMs.  I remove the titlebar from apps if they come with them (for me CSD all the way or no side decorations).

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #12
dwm as daily driver because I don't want to spend time on arranging windows.
Fully set hyprland as backup in case something goes terribly wrong with X. I don't use it but it is ready, practically replica of my dwm setup.

Tiling WM is not for everybody but I am using this or that one for 10+ years back.
Why is Tiling WM not for everybody? And are you using dwm on Artix? 

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #13
So not many are using Cinnamon, MATE and KDE Plasma. Interesting. 

 

Re: Which Desktop Environment (DE) or Window manager (WM) do you use

Reply #14
So not many are using Cinnamon, MATE and KDE Plasma. Interesting.
Frankly, you’re asking people on forums, which are mostly powerusers. Powerusers that have aversion to the current status quo of linux desktop as a whole, mainly the way leading toolkits (ugh, gtk...) and DEs (well, GNOME...) are going... GNOME was mentioned, because even if it's dying and users are fleeing, it's still has a say in most of the FD things and also maintains a lot of useless frameworks that most of use don't need, but those are forced upon.

Keep in mind that the normie doesn’t really care about what they run, they just consume. If you’re trying to gauge the userbase, it would be much better to ask the devs directly for the download statistics, i.e., how many people downloaded each ISO. That way, we’d know which one is the most popular.