For me it’s pretty important because I want my computer to feel good to use, so I’ll spend quite a lot of time making sure everything’s set up the way I like it. In terms of GNOME vs KDE, I’m definitely a KDE person. Not that I hate GNOME or think there’s anything wrong with other people using it, I just don’t get along with it personally. For me it feels like there’s too much stuff in GNOME that should be part of the core DE that relies on extensions, which tend to break with updates so there’s always something that’s not quite working.

Gnome get’s up and out of my way. 9/10.

I have seen people already say similar, but felt like chiming in.

The underlying djstro chosen matters less than the desktop environment or lack thereof. Well, sure you want to pick a district that aligns with your ideals and philosophies. However, as a lot of windows users delve into using Linux they see the distro as what decides the look (and feel) of their new OS.

While many learn about different DEs through different distros, I do think that the DE matters more for workflow for average users.

That being said, I jumped from windows to Arch. I didn’t want to be behind on updates. I also am a tinkerer by nature. And I am in the IT industry, have been for more than a decade. So Arch felt right ti me. So I have tried many DE and always go back to KDE. I want war over any being “better.” That’s a personal choice sincerely.

Hyprland was fun to tinker with, and it can be pretty. But I dont care about ricing as much as many of the stereotypical Arch users.

i prefer WMs

DE completely depends on your workflow. The way you do things directly impacts what DEs you’ll like and which ones you won’t.

I’m with you on KDE: I respect it and it clearly seems to be one of the most feature-rich DEs, but I’ve had trouble actually using it regularly.

I have been using Cosmic DE for the last 6 months or so. I love it because it seamlessly blends tiled and non-tiled workspaces in an effective way. Part of me really enjoys the simplicity of things like i3, but part of me just wants floating windows. It fully depends on what I’m working on and sometimes just my mood, so for me, the seamless blending in Cosmic has felt perfect.

But how important is DE? Tbh I think it is the most important part of a setup, because you interact with it more than any other piece of the system.

What DE you like is very much dependant on your work flow and how well you can adjust to changes.

Personally, I love KDE Plasma. It’s the right amount of “bling”, bells, whistles, aestetic and settings for me. Gnome feels way to “simple” and XFCE feels reliable but old.

For me, the DE is often more important than the base underneath, but I do like my rolling release. :)

GNOME and KDE have large philosophical differences and those show when you use them. I really like KDE and the way I can turn it into a tiling window manager.

Comparing a full DE to a WM is a massive difference. DEs have batteries included, you don’t need to worry about which notification daemon to use, which tool can do power management or what renders your task bar. You just get every tool and it works.

I used to use i3, then migrated to sway, but the finding of tools that do X or Y got annoying after a while. In KDE everything just works together with no or minimal configuration and I get more features more easily.

I honestly think DE is one of the main reasons people don’t switch from windows.

They just want to use what’s comfortable. The large majority of people would be fine with Linux alternatives, but they don’t want to deal with the different designs.

I prefer KDE. It works well out of the box and offers a good amount of customization. I tried gnome for a bit and didn’t like it.

What I like about Linux is that it’s easy to switch between DE. Just try out a few ones until you find something you like. I can recommend looking into Cinnamon (the DE of Mint).

My priority is speed. I don’t want a beautiful but slow DE, especially since the PCs I install linux on are usually older. That’s why I usually just run openbox most of the time.

Every decade since 1999 (the year of the Linux desktop—for me) I spend a few weeks trying out all the hot new shit in terms of desktop environments. I’ll switch to Gnome for a few days, get disappointed at how much I miss from KDE, and then try one of the newer ones like Cosmic. Then I’ll play with the latest versions of the classics (xfce) and marvel that they still make you configure everything in a single file or they still lack basic shit that normal people want like a clipboard manager.

All the actually useful or just plain really, really nice/handy stuff is built into KDE Plasma. I’ve been using so many of those features for so long, I can’t fathom having to go back to a world without say, being able to navigate the filesystems on all my other PCs via ssh:// (and other KIO workers).

I remember when KDE 2.0 came out and it added support for kioslaves (now called KIO Workers) and it completely changed how I viewed desktops. That was in the year 2000. How is it that literally nothing else (not other FOSS desktops nor Windows or Macs) has implemented the same feature?

It’s not just the file manager, either. I can access ssh:// (or any other KIO worker) from any file dialog! The closest thing is shared drives in Windows but even that isn’t nearly as flexible or feature rich (or efficient, haha).

Then there’s the clipboard manager (klipper), Activities, and a control panel that lets you customize everything to extreme degrees. It even supports fractional scaling and has supported that since forever. I remember when they introduced that feature over a decade ago and it still blows my mind to this day just how forward thinking the devs were.

Monitors since forever have had a different X DPI than the Y DPI. Yet only the KDE devs bothered to both query the monitor’s DDC info to figure that out and set it correctly when the desktop starts.

There’s other features that drive me nuts when I don’t have them! For example, the ability to disable global shortcuts on specific windows. So if I’ve got a remote desktop open to my work I can send Super-. (Win-.) and that’ll open the Windows emoji picker in the remote desktop instead of the KDE one (locally). And it will remember this setting for that application!

I can make any window I want stay above others temporarily to take notes, enter values into the calculator, or just turn any window into something like a HUD (you can control any window’s transparency on the fly!).

It even supports window tiling! A feature most people aren’t aware of. Like, if you’re already running KDE, why bother with a tiling window manager? You’ve already got it (though the keyboard shortcuts to manage the tiling layout in real time are lacking).

TL;DR: KDE Plasma is the best desktop in existence across all platforms and this is easy to prove with empircal evidence.

Gnome is soooo annoying. You can’t customize anything without “tweaks” that barely work.

I definitely prefer the customization of KDE.

I usually see people discussing distros but I feel like picking the right DE makes much bigger impact.

Yeah I often wonder about this too. I think that the package manager is another major factor. But I think I might be happy with any distro running KDE. I’ve gotta get outside my Debian bubble to see.

I feel like picking the right DE makes much bigger impact.

I made the same point to someone on Reddit who asked earlier today what a good distro is from swapping from macOS.

I’ve only been using Linux for a year or so, so I’m still very much learning how things work, but from my (limited) perspective, whether you use Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch etc… is essentially meaningless to a new user. But how you interact with it isn’t.

Personally, I tried Mint first because that’s the default answer, and while Cinnamon is fine, I find it too restrictive. Which makes GNOME a no-gno for me. I’ve tried GNOME, and I hate it. I’ve landed on Plasma, and I like Plasma.

And crucially, I can use Plasma on my Kubuntu machines, my old MacBook that’s now running Arch(btw), and my M1 Mac mini that’s running Asahi, and the experience is pretty much the same for what I do. The only difference is the command I use to update my software in Konsole.

… I feel like picking the right DE makes much bigger impact

For me too!

I was used to Gnome and Ubuntu style, and since I bought a Tuxedo I use their OS with KDE, and even if I love a lots of things there is often little things like gesture that are different and I sometimes miss.