Asklemmy

KDE.

Back when everyone was failing horribly trying to come up with a new desktop that nobody wanted KDE was the only one to get it right.

Instead of trying to shovel some bullshit "next generation" interface down your throat they decided to make all of the interface parts modular.

If you want traditional start menu you can have it, want Mac style dock got that covered, want a touch/table type interface it's in there. If you can't make up your mind you can setup activities to flip back and forth.

GNOME

GNOME. It doesn't let customization get in the way of me using it, but everything I actually need to change has an extension to do that, even on my Surface.

Gnome. It just seems simple, elegant and smooth. It does what I need from a DE (not that much, I do a lot in terminal and Emacs). It has good keybindings out of the box and good virtual desktop mechanisms. It was also the first DE with good Wayland support. At first I was unsure if I liked Gnome’s concept and restrictions, but I’ve grown to like it fast.

Gnome without extensions. It gets out of the way and let's me work. Whenever I have to use something else, it feels like going backwards in time. I used to love tinkering with my system and tried a lot of DE's back in the days. Don't have the time for that anymore.

I did have to adjust though. I think that a lot of the hate gnome gets is because of this. If you espect it to work like a traditional desktop you're going to get frustrated and install too many extensions to make it like one. My advise would be to set aside your presumptions and try it like it's meant to be used. You might be surprised, I know I was...

A while ago I found this video, which explains it in more detail.

KDE plasma

GNOME. Been using Linux since before GNOME Shell was a thing and when it became a thing it just clicked for me. In my opinion, it's by far the most polished DE and provides the most elegant and intuitive launcher and workspace switcher of any DE or OS I've used. At least they did, until they fucked it up by moving from vertical to horizontal workspaces and made the workspace previews so small you can no longer see what's in them.

Which is the downside of GNOME. Sometimes their developers are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, there are usually extensions to fix the most egregious "enhancements".

KDE. I used to use Gnome but switched over to KDE a few years ago.

Gnome + ArcMenu + Dash to Panel = <3

Kde

GNOME 44 with a couple extensions. I'm a big fan of its general look and feel

Plasma.

GNOME. I love the ecosystem of apps and the great design and simplicity, even if I sacrifice customization and features.

GNOME is designers trying to develop a DE

KDE is developers trying to design a DE.

i3

I3, I love the way it’s workspaces work with multiple monitors.

Cinnamon. It's similar to Windows 7 and it just works.

Mate

Cinnamon usually. LXDE if the machine's a potato.

SwayWM which is basically "i3: Wayland Edition."

Sway for going on 2 years I think. I do recommend it, and Wayland/tiling wms in general.

I use my own fork that uses bspwm-style "long-side split by default," and a nearly transparent under-the-hood container-squashing refactor that prevents this behavior from causing the tree to become bloated with invisible nodes and start to lag horribly. The fix won't be accepted in Sway since it's the bug is faithfully reproduced from i3, and I haven't had time to rewrite it for i3. But if you use something like sway-autotiling, you've probably noticed the issue.

Used to be xfce or lxde, but have switched to gone the past 2-3 years.

Gnome. It's minimalistic and extensible.

GNOME. However, I use ArcMenu and Dash to Panel to get a KDE/Windows style taskbar UX.

Why do I use GNOME then, you might ask? Well, I really like the simplicity and aesthetic of GTK/Adwaita. KDE is too noisy - for example, the built in text editor (Kate) can double as an IDE, when all I'm really looking for is a box I can type in.

It’s more like a window manager but my Arch rig uses OpenBox. It’s a bit of a learning curve but it’s really nice, fast and light.

For a more conventional DE I really like Cinnamon and Budgie.

Used to use Gnome and Cinnamon desktop all the time but now I just use the Awesome window manager.

KDE Plasma

I'm usually an XFCE guy but I'm giving Cinnamon a whirl at the moment

Hyprland when felling tiled, Plasma or Cinnamon when I want some floating

Qtile but that's just a WM

I usually daily qtile WM. If I run a full DE it's either KDE or LXQT.

Hyprland for me.

Qtile. Full DEs are for rich people.

I used to distro hop, until I ended up with Arch for many years. But for the last couple of years, I'm very much Team Manjaro.

Gnome with some extentions