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

[MRC01]

... Microsoft has a ton of junk coding to bog down your computer and make it run slow making you think you need to upgrade to a faster and better computer, it's an endless loop of predatory behavior taking your money and running all the way to the bank.

Yep. My daughter is running into that now. She runs Windows 10 on her laptop (a Thinkpad Carbon X1 with core i7) at college. The school gave her a Thinkpad not quite as nice as her personal one. After running Win 10 for a couple of years now, it's gotten so slow that her school machine is faster than her personal machine. We'll have to clean it up when she visits home over break.

I don't know whether Microsoft does that intentionally, or is just incompetent. Generally speaking it's usually Murphy not Machavelli. Either way, Linux can run for years with consistent performance while Windows gradually consumes the computer with cruft both CPU & disk space until you have to wipe the disk & reinstall it.

 

[dc655321]

Do you have the Dell OEM Ubuntu image, or did you install it yourself?
I had an XPS-13 a few years ago. Its Broadcom bluetooth card didn't work with Ubuntu well, so I swapped it for the Intel 7265 which was seamless/flawless.
Ubuntu also runs seamlessly on the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1, among other models. A hassle-free plug and play experience.

I got the XPS without the OEM Linux image - Dell's additions are available via apt-get regardless.
It's wifi card seems fine, though it does report weaker RF rx pwr than other systems in the same vicinity.

Prior to the XPS I had a X1 Yoga (ubuntu again).
I adore Thinkpad keyboards and the little red nirpple .
Those inputs coupled with a gorgeous 14" OLED screen made for the best Linux platform I've ever used.
Until that pretty screen failed after 2.5 yrs...

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have grub for many different versions but mainly use the latest Ubuntu LTS OS due to the long term support aspect and all the updates. There are different advantages to each distro, too much to get into in a simple post but typically it depends on your hardware capabilities and some older computers a lightweight OS will run better vs a more modern OS.

I am totally happy that people still use Microsoft OS's, I have an abundant supply of desktop computers do to people I know just getting frustrated with software related issues and just go out and purchase a new computer. I just wipe the disk and install linux and either give it away to someone that cannot afford a computer or keep for a backup.

Microsoft has a ton of junk coding to bog down your computer and make it run slow making you think you need to upgrade to a faster and better computer, it's an endless loop of predatory behavior taking your money and running all the way to the bank.

I'd say certainly with MS in the past you needed to reinstall the OS every year or so. And that is its own horror as the OS then went and had to do all the updates again. Or at least for most people that is how you went about it. I haven't seen this so much in Windows 10 as prior versions of Windows. Nevertheless, it is much easier to just blast the hard drive and reinstall a Linux distro in a few minutes time. Plus you rarely need to do this with most distros.

 

[Sal1950]

I'd say certainly with MS in the past you needed to reinstall the OS every year or so. And that is its own horror as the OS then went and had to do all the updates again. Or at least for most people that is how you went about it. I haven't seen this so much in Windows 10 as prior versions of Windows. Nevertheless, it is much easier to just blast the hard drive and reinstall a Linux distro in a few minutes time. Plus you rarely need to do this with most distros.

Win 10 does appear to be a bit stronger in it's internet security. Past versions would become so bogged down with virus, malware, and all the other hacker nasties after a short time of being used for normal web surfing as to make an install almost useless after a short time on the net.
My current PCLinuxOS install dates back to mid 2018, and being a rolling distro is still 100% up to date in it's packages, along with being just as fast as the day it was installed.

 

[digitalfrost]

So, I jump around on terminal sessions and shells all day long, and my main program for that is a Quake-style drop-down terminal called Yakuake. You would think I'd be using something like i3 or blackbox/fluxbox but I love KDE. I think it is the best desktop that exists, regardless of operating system. I would use KDE under Windows if I could. And it has been the best desktop for a long time now. If you've been using KDE since version 3 you can just see all the features that were stolen by Windows years later (that said I have Windows 11 on my desktop at home and it's not too bad).

KDE looks great, it is fast, and it just does everything I want and need. I use Arch Linux or Garuda Linux for my Linux needs at home, but for work, I recently discovered KDE Neon. It's Ubuntu LTS but with the latest KDE. For my use-case it is just perfect.

As a distro nothing beats Arch for me, but my company is very much a Debian based establishment so it's just easier for me to use Debian/Ubuntu. On servers I prefer FreeBSD.

 

[Blumlein 88]

So, I jump around on terminal sessions and shells all day long, and my main program for that is a Quake-style drop-down terminal called Yakuake. You would think I'd be using something like i3 or blackbox/fluxbox but I love KDE. I think it is the best desktop that exists, regardless of operating system. I would use KDE under Windows if I could. And it has been the best desktop for a long time now. If you've been using KDE since version 3 you can just see all the features that were stolen by Windows years later (that said I have Windows 11 on my desktop at home and it's not too bad).

KDE looks great, it is fast, and it just does everything I want and need. I use Arch Linux or Garuda Linux for my Linux needs at home, but for work, I recently discovered KDE Neon. It's Ubuntu LTS but with the latest KDE. For my use-case it is just perfect.

As a distro nothing beats Arch for me, but my company is very much a Debian based establishment so it's just easier for me to use Debian/Ubuntu. On servers I prefer FreeBSD.

I've seen Garuda moving up the list at Distrowatch. Never tried it, but might next time I'm in the mood for something new on a spare laptop or such.

Like Sal I prefer rolling releases to those that come out every six months. I did prefer the LTS releases when I was using Mint. As I'm sure you know Manjaro is based upon Arch. Seems like those based upon Arch are all pretty good distros. I've not used FreeBSD in probably 10 years, but I did give it a try at least once.

 

[mrbungle]

Started with Debian Potato in 2000 but moved to Mac sometime around 2008, I have to admit. Recently DietPi for my Raspberry Pis. At work always a Red Hat or CentOS since I can remember. I never cared much for alternative desktop environments and just used the Gnome default. And vim of course.

 

[theREALdotnet]

I’m using Red Hat based distros (RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Rocky) on all of my servers. Back in the day (nineties and noughties) I went around in circles between Gnome, Enlightenment and KDE, but I’ve given up on desktop Linux. My desktop Unix has been macOS for a long time now.

 

[raif71]

Currently, at work using Centos 7 and at home Ubuntu 20.04. Started out with slackware back in mid 90s and over the years been using ubuntu, sometimes fedora. It was last 5 years that I settled with centos and ubuntu. I have dabbled with codeweavers crossover to get msoft office usage in linux but now quite happy with LibreOffice. At home I have to use a windows 10 as host for the family and I installed vmware for linux usage.

 

[jae]

arch + sway

 

[Tom C]

My 10-yr-old Apple hardware hasn’t been able to run the latest macOS for a couple of years. But it runs the latest Ubuntu lickity split.

 

[somebodyelse]

Or on-the-fly editing a file inside a nested zipped .tar archive. On windows, with 7-zip easy as cake, on Linux I haven't found a tool that does it but maybe I just haven't searched enough.

That seems like something KIO should handle, but lo and behold the tar:/// one doesn't support saves.

 

[Deleted member 47224]

Another Linux user here, and kind of a distro hopper, mostly Debian/Ubuntu based. I started with Ubuntu which is still my default when not jumping, and and I was kind of sad when they dropped Unity. I also have used Neon KDE for a long time and more recently Elementary. I find the simplicity of the Pantheon desktop quite appealing, despite the sluggish development. I might stay a while with this one.

Despite several attempt with XFCE (Xubuntu, MX Linux), I just do not like. If I want a fast & light environment, I'll always go with LXDE/LXQt, or even the minimalistic Openbox. I also always wanted to try Enlightenment but didn't as of yet for some reason.

I've been following Haiku for a while and might try it sooner or later. I rather like the old fashioned desktop.

I have installed Mint/Cinnamon on a relatives computer some 8 years ago, and it is still rock solid. When asked, I recommend this one or Ubuntu/Gnome.

 

[xor]

My desktop is Linux for many years, I settled with Cinnamon environment, so mostly Mint, less Fedora and Ubuntu. I recommend Cinnamon/Mint to friends and a few of them have used it for years. I administer a few servers to keep myself "in", core is Redhat/Centos and the rest is Debian, which makes me happy.

I sent this post from a notebook in the living room, it came with Windows 10.

 

[jackocleebrown]

First time I used Linux it was SUSE with KDE 2 and I really didn't get on with it. Ubuntu got me hooked and I used it as my main OS from 5.10 until 11.10. Over that time I tried a few other desktop environments but kept coming back to Gnome 2, and Ubuntu was the most polished, easy to use and had great community support. I had to jump ship when Gnome 2 was replaced with Unity. Unity was such a disappointment and almost unusable as a serious professional tool. I tried a few options and used Xubuntu for a while but eventually missed some of the features of the heavyweight desktop environments. I reluctantly tried Kubuntu and was very pleasantly surprised that KDE plasma was absolutely nothing like KDE2. Fast, polished, things in logical places, configurable. KRunner is awesome too. I've been using it ever since.

 

[nemanja_t]

Mint, Debian based.

 

[AlephAlpha001]

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Gnome. Boring but gets the job done. I live in browsers, PyCharm, JupyterLab, terminals, vim so am pretty distro agnostic. Just want the thing to be stable and keep on trucking. Tempted to have another go with Fedora on one of my ThinkPads sometime.

 

[quorzar]

Manjaro KDE, since 5 years rolling release. Not a single Problem. Love it!

 

[Shadrach]

Linux user since Ubuntu 8 something or other.
I still have Ubuntu 11.04 on a laptop.
Around 11.04 Ubuntu chose to go with Unity which I didn't like much so I looked at other distributions.
I'm a Puppy Linux fan. Compared to some of the heavier weight distributions it is limited in what one can do with it easily. On the plus side, it's fast and lightweight.
I've tried a few over the years. More recently I've gone for Ubuntu Mate primarily due to it's stability. It's a bit dull but it does provide access to the vast Ubuntu resources which Puppy Linux does not.
For Windows users thinking of trying Linux the most important thing to realise is Windows does lots of stuff out of the box which if you don't want you have to find ways to shut down, while Linux does very little out of the box and the user has to work out how to make stuff work.

 

[Sal1950]

For Windows users thinking of trying Linux the most important thing to realise is Windows does lots of stuff out of the box which if you don't want you have to find ways to shut down, while Linux does very little out of the box and the user has to work out how to make stuff work.

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