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.
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).
I’ve used several over the years, but right now I’m enjoying Hyprland. UWSM is also working well for session management.
SwayWM
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.
After a lot of jumping around I settled for Plasma, with just use 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.
My memory is foggy but ive used xfce for a long while, then switched to i3gaps with void linux. stopped using linux cuz they couldn’t locate the developer or something( like we didn’t get updates for half a year 0_o)
… I ended up forgetting how to use i3. I dont know what the community uses nowadays but my god i3 was AMAZING. It felt like a caveman that just learned how to make fire- and it was a big fucking fire.
I reaaaaally want to use i3 again but do not want to spend the time relearning everything. Highly recommend it though.
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.
Started with Gnome, then i3, Hyprland and now Sway. Gnome not being designed around customisability made me switch to i3. Hyprland has had some stability issues and regressions that annoyed me and so I switched to Sway. Thinking of trying out river at some point.
I think if I reccomend linux kde to anyone new itll be gnome with a few extensions, since plasma is easy to break imo. A lot of default plasma configs are basically cleaner/customizable windows clones tho so it might be an easier transition, it immediatelt felt familiar when I was setting up cachyos. Feed like gnome couldve scared me off, especially since I didnt know about the extensions and how easy it was to get proper menu. Once I had like 3 extensions, it felt good, was using the computer like normal and forgot I had swapped to gnome to temporarily test it.
I really like gnomes look with a few extensions tho, with plasma I feel the constant need to tinker just because I can and its two clicks away, with gnome I just use my computer and the extensions just work, not as much customization, even for placement, but definitely a lot more useful extensions that just work.
Here’s mine, simple and functional
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.
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 use Cosmic and really like it- have used i3, Awesome and Gnome in the past for a while too, I really likes them.
The most time I spent with a set up was Awesome + rofi, which I really enjoyed. I customised literally everything and spent hours tweaking stuff.
That was super fun, but in all honesty my workflow is more or less:
- Open up a terminal (alacritty, tmux + fish shell + helix editor)
- Open up a browser (Firefox, have played with others but there’s always some quirk where I give up)
- That’s it.
Honestly, all the tweaking is fun for me, but with my workflow I have like 0 requirements for anything fancy. Daily driving cosmic is going nicely for now, and seems to mostly get out of my way.
Never used hyprland but Sway you can use the mouse to move stuff around, resize windows, etc. just hold down you mod key, usually super/windows key. If you have a bar setup correctly you can even click between workspaces or have a task list like on windows that you can click on. Alt Tab needs some re-imagining as its now three dimensional, but that’s easy to tweak to how you want it with something like swayr. You can even add a start button equivalent if you wish.
I use Sway on Tumbleweed, before that Sway on Ubuntu. I have six main workspaces defined, odd numbered workspaces on my left monitor and evens on my right monitor. Both monitors are 32"@4k so a ton of real estate, I can easy fit in four large tiles per monitor, eight is a stretch but if you use the option to make windows full screen then you can run stuff in the background and then flip between things that are running in the background.
I use the layman add on to predefined layouts for my different workspaces, then bind apps on start up using my config to a particular workspace. I can still move them around, but automating as much as possible with a tiling windows manager is the secret IMO. Having everything just work and appear where I want with zero faffing around speeds up my workflow enormously. On Windows I use power-toys to provide a noddy version of tiling, but everything has to be done manually and its a complete PITA over a work day where I am opening and closing stuff.
As an example, I have my third workspace as my main coding workspace. Its divided into 3/4 and 1/4. The larger part I lock VS Code to it, the smaller part is usually a Firefox tab for reviewing documentation. My second workspace is my social workspace, that’s divided into four long quarters, one for music, one for discord, one for signal, one for mail. All of this, including binding the apps to the workspace, are fully automatic.
I use the keyboard for most things. I use QMK based keyboards (configured using Vial), so I can bind multi modifier shortcuts to just two keys either on a separate layer (activating the layer is one of the two keys) or a chord. Reducing the number of keys you press really helps the ergonomics of activating them, especially if you move them to the home row and away from the pinky finger hell hole that is where the modifiers are on most standard keyboards.
I think the biggest problem is that it requires work to get the right add ons and make it work the way you want to work, but get it right and the WM becomes transparent to how you work.
Sway is it. I tried originally building it all up from scratch. It was fun, and taught me how all the pieces fit together, but now I just grab the EOS community dotfiles and make a few minor tweaks.
For me, it’s not a “workflow” that is sped up, it really just helps me remember where stuff “belongs”. Workspace 1 always has my Spotify, audio mixer, and discord/signal. Workspace 5 is gaming, etc.
Resizing and swapping window locations around is so simple with just super+mouse click/drag.
I should take another crack at sway. I didn’t know about EOS. I started with nwg-shell.
I love EOS. I have both sway and plasma installed. I prefer sway, but sometimes I get frustrated with troubleshooting and I can use plasma as a safety net. I’ve only had to do it once, but it’s nice knowing it’s there.
The EOS files look a great place to start.
Do you default your apps to start on a particular workspace?
I tried to do that when I started, but now it’s just habit. Super+Shift+# does most of the work.
My only complaint with the EOS configuration is the lack of Bluetooth on the bar. And the sound/screen brightness buttons don’t give any visual/audio feedback. I have some notifications imbedded, but they look and feel kinda janky compared to how nice and clean they are in Plasma.
Yeah I added bluetooth in mine, it’ll show me whats connected on hover and just launch the gnome app for bluetooth if I click it, super lazy implementation. I don’t need brightness controls so never looked at them.
EOS seems to use mako for notifications? I have never tried it.
I use swaync, which once themed and the rights bits you want, added, is ok. I wanted something more like the Gnome notification drop down that had do not disturb, media player controls, extensible menus, etc. in it.
Yeah, I just have one that launches blueman-manager. Not elegant, but works well. I only ever use BT on my laptop. So my desktop doesn’t even have it.
For music control I added a custom Spotify element to my waybar that shows now-playing, and lets me play/pause/skip/etc without having to go back to workspace 1. That’s all I need.
Tiling is just so nice once you get used to it. No more fiddling around with window placement.
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.
