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

[Subob]

Long time Cinnamon Mint user here and very happy.

Well soon be switching a small convertible laptop over. Will try Mint again, to see if the touchscreen works, if not, may have to try Fedora on it.

 

[somebodyelse]

I have an old Dell tablet that's 100% functional but almost 100% useless, since it is too old to support any 'modern' Android updates, so it's essentially impossible to install any s/w on it.

Not any old tablet, although if it's x86 rather than ARM more generic distros may support it. The main blocks on support are:

1. Bootloaders with no option to unlock - so unless someone finds an exploit there's no way to boot a custom kernel
2. Lack of pure linux drivers and/or DeviceTree - a lot of the drivers are binary-only (not honouring the GPL) and use Android-specific interfaces rather than mainline linux ones. ARM doesn't have a widely supported autodiscovery mechanism like PC hardware does, so the hardware details need to be explicitly provided to the kernel in the DeviceTree, which also isn't released by most manufacturers (GPL again...) so needs to be reverse engineered.

Community supported Android versions like LineageOS have already been suggested, but their supported devices list doesn't include any Dells. If you're really lucky there might be an unofficial port in the xda-developers forums, but they're often dependent on a single developer releasing a binary as and when they can, with all the risk that entails.

In a middle ground there are some projects that use a glue layer to translate between the Android-specific stuff and the more general linux side - primarily ubports which continues the Ubuntu Touch effort from when they released a phone. No Dell in their device list either.

For a pure linux there's PostmarketOS, but IIRC that relies on having actual linux drivers so has even more limited device support.

 

[Subob]

I've now tried the following distros on my old HP Elite X2 convertible laptop:

Mint Cinnamon = my long time distro of choice on my regular laptop, but not great on the HP convertible.

KDE Neon = Poor touch control. Not great.

Fedora Plasma = Wouldn't even boot.

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS = Fantastic! Touch control is superb and I especially like the onscreen keyboard interaction. The only thing that doesn't work is the physical volume buttons on the side of the screen, but that's not a deal breaker for me. Doesn't seem quite as customisable as Mint so far, but it'll do nicely for the HP Elite X2.

Ubuntu FTW!

 

[fatoldgit]

Due to professional reasons I was always in the Redhat camp: Red Hat Linux/Gnome from 1996, then RHEL/Gnome from around 2004 then Centos at the server level and Fedora KDE on the desktop from around 2007. I was also an early adopter of VMware Workstation which was a revelation when it came out (still is despite the Broadcom crap).

Prior to that (from 1982 till 1996) it was Unix with no GUI, just the warm embrace of a CLI inside telnet/rsh/ssh (which obviously still pursuits to this day even with Linux although I sometimes use the BlueFish editor and not "vi")

And none of this Perl or Python crap... you will have to remove KSH from my cold, dead hands!!!!

I stuck with Fedora KDE as a desktop until I retired in 2019 (but I still program C/C++/KSH four to six hours a day, mainly in winter, because I just love it!!!) and went on a journey trying basically every Linux DE available (even fluxbox with tint2)

I find the menu metaphor very unproductive (too many key clicks) so I discovered Zorin and its mobile "skin".

Some DE's were kinda similar but fell down in many other areas, IMHO. Zorin is very easy to configure...it doesn't throw up lots of configuration "stuff" that gets in the way or is fiddly. It takes literally a minute from a fresh install to get the DE setup.

So now I have my main app icons on the task bar at the top (you can pack in 30+ apps with large icons there) and you are one click away from a full screen secondary panel with the rest of your apps (30 apps per secondary panel, you can scroll through any number of secondary panels).

I group my most used apps on the task bar by function (file browser, email, office apps, web browsers, network connectivity, programming tools, audio tools) and then alphabetically on the secondary panel.

I don't need more than one secondary panel...so for 30 apps I am one click away from the app running and for the other ~30, just two clicks.

Zorin is based on Ubuntu so package management was totally different from Redhat but for my retirement needs I find it better then Redhat as it has better support for say audio packages than Redhat.

But I did love KDE, it has lots of configurabiity that a professional might need plus it's sleek and modern. Many people like stuff like LXDE or MATE or .. but when you look at them, stuff like the icons and the general look and feel seem like they are from the 1990's (which they probably are!!!!).

And of course, with Linux you can use whatever apps you want. So I remove almost every app from Zorin (or any other Linux I might have used) and install my own list of "best of breed" apps like Dolphin, KRDC, Bluefish, Thunderbird, mHwave edit , DIA, K3b, mpv, vidcutter etc. I also use wine for Windows utilities I have come to love like Winscp, Putty **** and some audio tools like Spek. I tend to prefer utilities with a single focus rather than the "kitchen sink" type.

Why use a menu system?....surely you know what apps you have, what they do and what icon is associated with them so why not go "flat". It works for me but maybe not for you.

Peter


**** yes putty is available natively on Linux but I find the Windows version better.

 

[fatoldgit]

My loving wife (who is also a retired IT pro) crocheted me this cover for the cushion on my ikea chair from which I do my programming (via 60" monitor).

One side is a riff on the old DEC Unix number plate and the other side is Tux... I rotate them for even wear.

 

[bravomail]

Linux Mint - last I tried 22.2.
Winning piece was that to connect to shared SAMBA drive I didn't need to sudo. I hate sudoing on a desktop.

 

[ThatM1key]

A few months I tried Ubuntu 24.04.2 (on a side PC). I was curious because AMD GPU Linux performance was the same as Windows. I liked how snappy Ubuntu and most "normal" problems ran great, even the Wine stuff.

Everything else was a pain the ass, mainly getting software to talk to hardware. OpenRGB refused to see any devices. NVMe temps can only be seen with terminal. 6000? and newer AMD GPUs require a newer kernel to control the fans. I got so fed up, I didn't even test games. Speaking of games, can't even run anti-cheat games on it (Ex: Newer GTA 5). Chrome had this blurry bug but was easy to fix.

 

[nerdstrike]

Everything else was a pain the ass, mainly getting software to talk to hardware

Nothing new under the Linux sun then. My early foray into Redhat was foiled by a software defined modem.

 

[Drengur]

I've been using Linux from around 1998, on and off (Windows 7 and Windows 10 were good enough at the time). My opinions have changed with age, I used to like having full control and all that jazz. Now I am running Bazzite at my main home computer, to see if the immutable bandwagon is something to take part in. It's only been a few months and I don't really like it that much, but I will try it for a few more months. I find it isn't as stable as other distros I've tried, but the upside is that even though it acts up, it is easy to get it working again. If I decide to abandon Bazzite I will most likely go with Fedora.

I have a few other computers at home that use Fedora with KDE. Which is my favorite distro so far, but I haven't tried all that many modern ones. I used to like Gnome a few years back, but currently it is not a user interface that works for me.

 

[terryforsythe]

I have 5 distributions, each on their own SSD, that I use for testing script code I maintain, https://github.com/C8forT/ScrcpyWiFi. Currently the distributions are Arch, Linux Mint, LMDE, Neon and Fedora. For daily driving, I mostly use Linux Mint - it just works, though I have been on LMDE 7 for the last couple of weeks since its release.

I do use Arch to host my boot menu. Most distributions update grub.cfg everytime there is a kernel update, which messes up my boot menu. Arch doesn't.

 

[Raitsa]

Changed from CachyOS Cosmic to CachyOS Niri.

Niri is a scrollable tiling Wayland compositor. Niri arranges the windows in an infinite horizontal desktop, where you can scroll to the left or to the right (although more advanced layouts are possible).

 

[concorde1]

I've tried many distro's - I am very happy with Fedora + KDE. Works great with Nvidia now. Not really glad that AI code is acceptable in its development though. But then again I'm a basic user on the whole so I don't know.

On the audio side, I recently installed CamillaDSP + GUI - for my semi-advanced EQ needs - it is awesome.

For music creation I'm on W10 for now. I hear VST3 has become Open Source though.

 

[KSTR]

I've tried a variety of distros and desktops/managers over the years (or was forced to use one, at work) but I always come back to Linux Mint XFCE which I can configure closest to what I need for comfort and high UI efficiency.

For example, I'm a keyboard-centric user which means I must always be sure that my keystrokes go to the right application, I need to be able to find out which window currently has the focus within an fraction of a second. With a bit of customizing themes etc I could arrive there, only a handful of programs still don't use the theme settings. With any other distro/desktop (and current Windows) this is way harder if not entirely impossible to have a unified look and feel of "everything" not corrupted by programmers who think they know better what the user needs).

 

[birb]

i run Artix with S6 init myself, and use KDE Plasma for my Desktop Enviroment

no i dont hate systemd, i just dont use it, to be different

i like how confusing S6 is

i use Pipewire for my audio along with EasyEffects for my effects proccessing, along with HRTF via openal

 

[chips666]

Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon
Free, easy and stable, i love it ...

 

[somebodyelse]

no i dont hate systemd, i just dont use it, to be different

I don't hate it either, but it does bring strange and interesting failure modes that need new techniques to debug, rather than old and familiar failure modes with well known fixes. It's especially frustrating when they decide your everyday situation is a corner case they aren't interested in supporting.

 

[SoundsGood64]

Currently using Ubuntu LTS with Gnome desktop which is good. My favorite desktop ever was Ubuntu with Unity Desktop (Canonical discontinued although there is still a distro with it). I reached my highest level of desktop efficiency on Unity. The default keyboard shortcuts were great. It was also very space efficient vertically on the monitor, which was especially helpful on a laptop. Menu items for apps would appear in the top bar of the desktop, which meant that the app window itself did not need to have those menus, freeing up vertical space. In contrast in current Gnome and most other desktops, the menu bar takes up space in the app window, and of course there is still the top bar which in Gnome unfortunately has more than 50% wasted space that is non-functional (at least as far as I can tell).

I started out with Red Hat Linux about 25 years ago with Gnome desktop (menu-based back then, must like Gnome...) and the UNIX command line before that.

 

[KSTR]

Currently using Ubuntu LTS with Gnome desktop which is good. My favorite desktop ever was Ubuntu with Unity Desktop [...]

This is both the strong point and the weak point of Linux. The look and feel can be radically different from one system/distro/manager to the next in a million (and customized) ways. Same applies to what's under the hood. It happens all the time to me that someone else's Linux install is completely unusable for me, literally, even for the simplest tasks.
With Windows, and even more so with MacOS you don't have this kind of luxury problems.

 

[Subob]

I've recently dug out my old Acer laptop that was on Windows Vista when we bought it many years ago. I'd had Linux Mint 18 something on it a while back but it was sat in a drawer, basically just as a music back device that I didn't use.

I decided I'd try it as a completely stripped down ultra light dj mixer with only Mixxx running on it. I've gone with Lubuntu and it's working exactly as intended. Pretty incredibly I think for a machine that's about 20 years old.

Linux never ceases to impress and amaze me.

Here's a screenshot of a brief video I took of it in action...