For Linux users, what is your favorite Desktop environment, and Distro?

[Shadrach]

A very distro dependent comment.
You can chose super minimal ones or ones packed with more base packages than Windoz.
The World Is Yours

You've missunderstood me I think.
If one examines the CPU usage of the linux operating sytems and the traffic and working processes and then compares this to a windows system, there is a noticable difference.

I'm not refering to the distro package size, or the programs packed with it.

 

[Sal1950]

If one examines the CPU usage of the linux operating sytems and the traffic and working processes and then compares this to a windows system, there is a noticable difference.

Oh yes, very true.
Linux writers tend to be very concerned with clean code and not having a bunch of garbage running in the background.

 

[JiiPee]

Linux user since 1995. Currently use KDE as my desktop environment.

 

[Djsedaw]

Zorin 16, very nice

 

[Shadrach]

Zorin 16, very nice

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England, ex EU but still European.
Same here.
Puppy Linux Bionic

 

[Shadrach]

Ubuntu Mate 22.04 LTS

 

[anmpr1]

I started with Mandrake back around 2000. I was then working with Texstar to build the latest packages since Mandrake. Same as Blumlein 88 this was on the old KDE 2.x and we wanted the KDE 3 beta build...

Then I owe you one for all your hard work.

Mandrake was possibly the most user friendly (noob) distro from the early days. There was a lot of snob appeal back then, in the Linux 'community'. If you weren't running Slack from the command line you weren't running...

Mandrake sold what was called a Powerpack... as I remember was about five or six CDs with all the installation stuff, plus most user programs. You got two books in the box, which walked you through installation (with pictures), and explained the most common Bash Shell commands, etc. Very much appreciated.

I found KDE 3 pretty intuitive, and flexible. I liked that environment a lot. The move to KDE 4 was not a happy one. The first implementations of 4 were too buggy, from memory. Simple configuration steps from 3 were convoluted to achieve in 4.

Things went south for Mandrake after the comic book took them to court over the use of the magician's name. Ridiculous. But that's the courts for you. After that, I migrated to Suse, which worked pretty well. I should probably go back to Linux.

 

[avoidwork]

Started by compiling slack in 94; tried debian on desktop, but the 90s. I often to go debian based distros for work or home usage these days; mint is my preference for a quick install or livecd.

 

[Ricardus]

Back in the late 90s there used to be a company called Linux Mall, and if you did an order with them, you could request a few distros on CDROM and they would give those to you for free. A great way to try out various distros. This was before downloading a distro was convenient.

 

[Sal1950]

Mandrake was possibly the most user friendly (noob) distro from the early days.

Agreed, and that was the number one goal when we decided to fork into Mandrake to PCLinuxOS. We wanted a distro that the average Jane or Joe, who was sick of M$ and all their blue screens, etc; to have something he could install and use with little to no knowledge of the command line. IMHO it still leads the pack for a ease of use Linux.
Also IIRC we were the first rolling distro out there, one you could install and then just keep updated with a few clicks of the package manager. A good deal IME..

The move to KDE 4 was not a happy one. The first implementations of 4 were too buggy, from memory.

Also agreed. KDE 3 was a great working environment, completely stable and easy to use.
The switch to KDE 4 was a major headache for all involved. A perfect example of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" to me. Sometimes the problem with open source is that it encourages everyone around the world to show what a better idea they have than the predecessors. LOL

I should probably go back to Linux.

Give PCLOS a try sometime. I love the Synaptic package manager we borrowed from Debian and modified for use with RPM packages. Click, click, click to update, and stay fully updated for years at a time.
.

 

[Blumlein 88]

PCLOS was so very good. I likely would never have used anything else once I tried it. It was the period when Texstar stepped away and there was a few months of turmoil that I once again looked around at other distros. PCLOS, rolling distro, and KDE3 was all a heck of a combination. I still recommend people new to linux give it a try.

 

[somebodyelse]

Also agreed. KDE 3 was a great working environment, completely stable and easy to use.
The switch to KDE 4 was a major headache for all involved. A perfect example of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" to me. Sometimes the problem with open source is that it encourages everyone around the world to show what a better idea they have than the predecessors. LOL

My memory is more of distros going all-in with KDE 4.0 which was intended more for wider developer exposure than end users, rather than waiting for 4.1 when most of the glaring issues were resolved - baloo being a notable exception.

 

[Ilkless]

Arch with Openbox or PekWM with Tint2.

Really like XFCE as well.

Gnome, KDE and Elementary Pantheon are laden with too many features I will never use. But they are very impressive, powerful and refined DEs I respect, testament to the capability for Open Source to develop complex projects.

 

[anmpr1]

I used to use the WindowMaker desktop, a visual adaptation of the NeXTSTEP interface. It was not particularly easy or intuitive to configure, but it was pretty unique. Certainly not for everyone. Everything was sort of out in the open, without taking up too much space.

 

[Deleted member 47224]

I used to use the WindowMaker desktop, a visual adaptation of the NeXTSTEP interface. It was not particularly easy or intuitive to configure, but it was pretty unique. Certainly not for everyone. Everything was sort of out in the open, without taking up too much space.

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This remind of Haiku OS I mentioned :

But to be fair, it's based on BeOs, not Linux.

 

[storing]

I have tried quite a lot of distros in the past 2-3 decades. When I was young I didn't care how much tweaking it took to get something working so when you're like that there are a lot of possibilities. Did stuff like 'linux from scratch' which was quite the time sink So was Gentoo. Debian was better already in that regard. Eventually settled for Ubuntu. I do hear good stuff about other distros like Arch but honestly cannot be bothered anymore: for what I do I don't think it's going to be any better.

Likewise for DE's. Most visually enjoyable was probably Enlightenment (the ripple effect!). Out of the box KDE/Gnome/Xfce all do fairly ok (but usually not OSX/Windows 'just works' ok). But I mostly settled for Xfce because that's what most machines on the job have. I don't interact with the DE much though apart from launching a terminal and like 4 applications I need most so that helps i.e. I just take it as it comes without configuration and it's not too annoying.

 

[anmpr1]

This remind of Haiku OS I mentioned : But to be fair, it's based on BeOs, not Linux.

Yeah... BeOS had a minimal (or truncated) top 'menu bar'. I always thought that was a good idea, because in most designs the menu bar just takes up space, showing the 'file' through 'help' options, but then nothing but a vast expanse of more nothing. Also, with BeOS (and most Linux windows), you can 'shade' the menu bar, giving you more desktop space. That allows for more 'running' windows on the desktop, yet they don't take up a lot o space, and are readily available.

For ergonomics, I never understood the Windows 'my way or the highway' desktop lockdown situation. To spread my criticism, that was also my big complaint against the Gnome desktop (Gnome might have changed with newer releases, I don't know). And for sure the MacOS desktop.

I get that in a corporate environment you don't want users mucking with the formula, and causing potential IT problems if they have to send a help desk jockey to an employee cube in order to recover something the user has 'disappeared'. You don't want that. But for a home user options are nice, and useful.

Something as simple as moving the taskbar to the left side of the screen, vertical orientation, which I did on every 'modern' version of Windows--until someone at MS decided I didn't need to do that anymore, and removed that option in 11. Also, it used to be that when you minimized a Windows window, each instance would show on the taskbar. Making recovery easy. Now they are grouped, making it just a wee bit more frustrating to get things done. It used to be click. Now it's hover and click. Thanks for that, MS.

 

[somebodyelse]

For ergonomics, I never understood the Windows 'my way or the highway' desktop lockdown situation. To spread my criticism, that was also my big complaint against the Gnome desktop (Gnome might have changed with newer releases, I don't know). And for sure the MacOS desktop.

If that was your complaint about Gnome you probably won't like the recent direction of travel with gtk4 and libadwaita. I'm not sure whether it, still WIP, people not having got to grips with a new way of doing things that has broken the old way, or a lasting change that will drive those that don't like it to a different desktop environment.

 

[anmpr1]

If that was your complaint about Gnome you probably won't like the recent direction of travel with gtk4 and libadwaita. I'm not sure whether it, still WIP, people not having got to grips with a new way of doing things that has broken the old way, or a lasting change that will drive those that don't like it to a different desktop environment.

I'm doing this from memory, and it's been some years, but I recall a GUI app called Gnome Edit (or something similar) that allowed users to make more modifications to their desktop layout (and overall functionality) than whatever was officially approved by the Gnome designers.

With Windows, the Stardock company made add-ons that let you customize the desktop in ways that Bill Gates didn't intend. You could even make your windows look like OS/2 Presentation Manager/Motif. How cool was that?

And no one can forget MS's messing with the Start thing (which they pretty much got right with Win 95, but then couldn't resist screwing up in later versions). How that allowed third party operations to fix what MS officially broke. A few fixes were free; others only asked a few dollars in return. There was even a company that for a small fee would give you back your drop down context menus in Office, allowing you to ditch the Ribbon.

With some Win 11 third party apps I know that it is possible to mod the Start menu, but nothing major in the desktop's overall configuration seems to be possible. Certainly nothing like whatever went before. My understanding (which could be totally wrong) is that as long as there is a Registry work around--a switch or a numeric value you can change, then reversions back to what came before are possible.

But evidently with 11, MS locked out the ability to fix a lot of the stuff they broke, and no corresponding Registry hacks are available that can bring the goodness back. Does anyone really know what's going on over there? I certainly don't. Maybe no one is in charge. Maybe they just make it up as they go, on some low-level manager's whim. Maybe they flip a coin. Anyone's guess is as good as mine.

At least with Linux, someone capable can open up the code and make their own changes. That's certainly not possible with anything like Windows or MacOS. With those you get whatever they give you, and that's that.

 

[somebodyelse]

At least with Linux, someone capable can open up the code and make their own changes. That's certainly not possible with anything like Windows or MacOS. With those you get whatever they give you, and that's that.

That's probably key to why I find linux less frustrating than Windows or MacOS - I know that if I'm sufficiently annoyed by something I can do something about it. The flip side is that if I haven't done anything about it then I'm as much to blame as anyone, and it can't really be that bad. It defuses the annoyance that would just build with unfixed MS or Apple issues. The same pretty much applies for arbitrary/capricious limitations in anything containing embedded software.