GNOME

Gnome on Nixos I like how standard it is I know what to expect

KDE on my main gaming PC, or if I want something that looks really modern and sleek without tons of setup/tweaking on another PC.

Mint with Cinnamon if I want a #justworks setup that is rock stable and I don't need to look sexy.

My side business laptop uses LMDE with Cinnamon for that reason. I need that thing to be rock stable and dependable at all times.

Cinnamon has been more stable for me than any other DE, and in my experience, is just as performant as other low-spec favorites like XFCE. My fresh install of LMDE with Cinnamon right after boot uses about 850MB of memory. My testing with XFCE was about the same, maybe 50-75MB less, which for my use case is effectively identical.

Not crapping on XFCE though, I like playing with it on one of my old thinkpads. Not a fan at all of Gnome, I've tried to like it for years, but I just don't care for it, and I experience quite a few bugs.

I plan on trying the new Cosmic DE soon, it seems like Gnome done better, and I could see myself liking it from the reviews I've watched.

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 and is very fast and smooth. 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.

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I'm just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that's okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn't use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it's a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I'm wrong, you aren't going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it's going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn't true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that's good enough for me. 🙂
• I'm unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don't remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You'll note I don't claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren't bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I'm sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven't even looked at any alternatives. If there's ever a time that I don't find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team's approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I'll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

these days Hyprland but previously i3.

i basically live in the terminal unless i'm playing games or in the browser. these days i use most apps full screen and switch between desktops, and i launch apps using wofi/rofi. this has all become very specialized over the past decade, and it almost has a “security by obscurity” effect where it’s not obvious how to do anything on my machines unless you have my muscle memory.

not that i necessarily recommend this approach generally, but i find value in mostly using a keyboard to control my machines and minimizing visual clutter. i don’t even have desktop icons or a wallpaper.

GNOME. Eagerly waiting for cosmic.

xfce, i dont need that other bloat.

XFCE.

I recently switched to it after a year or so with KDE. Deff see some improvement in terms of battery life with my laptop, but I'm still not used to the lack of WinKey+Num shortcuts (I'm aware of docklike, but I need labels for open windows).

MATE (prn: MAH-Tay)

because it comes with standard Trisquel and is a smooth DE experience.

I use i3. Pretty bare bones, so it took me a while to get productive with it. But it's all exactly how I want it, it's all mine.

OK so I have used several DEs but right now I'm on Plasma 6 because frankly, it's the best out there. It's easy to use, customizable, intuitive and looks nice. Is it on the heavier side? Yes, but that's okay. Also it helps that I have learnt the keyboard shortcuts on this.

I have used XFCE, Mate and Cinnamon in the past. If KDE somehow vanished off the face of the planet, I would likely switch to XFCE because it's light, customizable and fully functional.

I'm running KDE Plasma with the revived Krohnkite for auto tiling. Plasma 6.2 seems to have fixed most of the bugs from 6.0 and 6.1, at least the ones I've noticed.

I was using Sway/SwayFX for a few months but was missing some KDE Gear apps like Dolphin and Okular which I couldn't get to display correctly. KDE is afaik the only desktop with a working Qt theming engine right now, so I can't really see myself switching (unless maybe if they break Krohnkite again).

Xfce... Because I donno, been using it for many years

Gnome. It just works out of the box and I can fly through it using the keyboard and touchpad without having to configure it first.
I've done the whole song and dance with tiling WMs, or going through all of KDE's settings until it was perfect, but I just can't be bothered anymore.

KDE, because it has all the features I need and also because I love theming and while QT apps can be themed pretty easily, GTK theming is somewhere between being absolutely horrible and non-existance.

Cinnamon. Desktop environment peaked in the Windows XP/Gnome 2 days and everything else is just change for the shake of change. :C

My only annoyance is lack of Wayland support. Tried out cosmic, but it doesn't have the Windows XP/Gnome 2 style window list.

Screenshot for anyone interested:

Sway. Very customiseable and extremely snappy

I am extremely basic and I'm using the XFCE that came with Linux mint. I don't need anything fancy.

xfce4. Stable as hell. X11. Can move windows around using just some keypresses.

What broke with tracker3 ?

KDE for my main PC. Pretty with floating panels, KDE Connect, QT apps are often the best apps in their class and are perfectly integrated (FreeCAD, krita, okular, kdenlive, vlc, dolphin, etc...) And konsole is also very full featured.

I don't know what KiCAD uses, but it also seems very well integrated into the KDE desktop unlike most gnome apps.

XFCE on MX Linux for an old Intel Compute Stick to keep it very usable.

Xmonad with XFCE in no-desktop mode.

I can use the xfce tools to configure things like mouse and screen settings, but visually it's just xmonad.

I'm on Hyprland mostly because of all the tiling window managers out there these days, it feels like the most usable default config and the ecosystem (e.g. hyprlock etc) feels pretty complete.

I use KDE, no bugs for me (I found one but it's already fixed in the latest update) and it's feels like my second home

Traditionally I've been running lighter desktops like opebox, xfce, or lmde. Last couple of years I've been using MATE with good results.

OpenBox but that's a window manager, not a DE.