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I have tried out Gnome, KDE, Lxqt and Xfce on a regular desktop and all of them feel nice. I haven't tried many DE's on a laptop.
Are there any particular DE's you like on a laptop, because of things like power consumption and efficiency that would not come normally into consideration for a desktop?

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[–] lpslucasps 4 points 1 year ago

I'm a KDE guy and use it myself on my notebook, but GNOME with its multitouch gestures and polished (if a little inflexible) workflow is also an excellent fit.

[–] beard__hunter@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

XFCE minimal but good looking. You could also go for MATE or Cinnamon..

[–] fourstepper@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago
[–] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you haven't tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.

I don't use Gnome, for example. People knock on it a bit BUT a large group of people swear by it for workflow.

KDE Plasma is the dream for anyone who likes to tweak settings. I used it on my laptop for a long time and it is very convenient. It also manages power and monitor settings very well. In terms of memory usage it is now similar to XFCE.

XFCE is perfect for people who don't like change. It is a slow moving DE; tried and true.

Right now I am using LXQt. Not sure why I decided to do that. It looks ok. It is fast and light. That's it's claim to fame. It can be used with different WMs which is nice.

Are there any particular DE’s you like on a laptop, because of things like power consumption and efficiency that would not come normally into consideration for a desktop?

I can't say I've ever looked into it. But, I found that KDE handled things very well. I used my laptop for full workdays, getting 11 hours out of it.

[–] CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I started with ubuntu then mint on desktop and then vm. I hated Gnome in those days, prefering KDE or XFCE (even i3wm). Now that my laptop is on EOS, I tried Gnome again and it's much better for use with a trackpad. So yeah, different DEs for different tastes/uses/systems.

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

i3
the less I need a mouse on a laptop, the better

edit: ok, you specifically asked for a full fledged DE and not just a WM. well, I picked what I needed and with Manjaro i3 as base, I had a nice place to start

[–] 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

full fledged de with tiling ?

spoilerkde with Krohnkite

[–] naeap@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i3 just feels much faster. can't change back to anything more bloated at the moment. It wrecks my nerves waiting for a window to open on other DEs/WMs - although it's often not much of a difference.

I'm very happy with my current setup. would like to try sway, but I think Wayland/sway isn't completely there yet.

haha I was being half serious here, as fun as I have with kronkite on my space heater, its is a layer of bloat on top of a mountain of bloat so not what you want in op's case

[–] unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

KDE

If there was a modern Window Maker, I would use that. I mean with a notification area and when I minimize Firefox or Chrome I don't get five icons in the corner and it works as a Wayland compositor and supports HiDPI scaling.

[–] dlarge6510@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just use Window Maker. It got an update recently. Notifications work out of the box, Firefox and Chrome have never created multiple icons, not seen that.

It is not a Wayland compositor which is fine as I only use X11 and probably won't use Wayland for many more years till it's mature enough. I went back to Window Maker several years ago and it's working just fine. With wmsystemtray I have a system tray so things like NetworkMakager and hplip and blue-z all can latch on and display their icons, I don't need a desktop environment now!

YMMV regarding the HIDPI thing, I have never had a monitor with such a narrow pixel pitch to need anything like that.

[–] MattMist@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm the type of person who gets tired of a DE after using it for too long, so I'm using Budgie right now and I really like it. However XFCE is pretty nice, too, it's what I used to use.

[–] GentooPhysicist@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

sway, the i3 clone for Wayland. I'm really happy with it, even on my Intel iGPU + Nvidia GPU laptop.

[–] FiskFisk33@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

i3 and never looked back!

[–] yossarianuk@mastodon.social 1 points 1 year ago

@aMalayali KDE - desktop or laptop.

[–] LinusWorks4Mo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

xfce since it came default with eos and its pretty lightweight

[–] rise-if-you-would@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On laptops Gnome has a big advantage in the multitouch gestures for the touchpad, and as everyone says it's pretty polished. But lately I've been using KDE since it offers a lot more functionality and customization out of the box. Most of it's apps are like a swiss army knife and I love that. KDE is also catching up in the multitouch gesture department.

[–] noodlejetski@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Plasma on Wayland has got multitouch gestures as well.

[–] Sentau@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

The gestures are not as polished as gnome on wayland

[–] bellsDoSing@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Tried many, but Xfce won for me:

  • great keyboard support (tiling windows, virtual desktops, etc.)
  • doesn't get in the way
  • compact re UI (don't like modern GNOME look with lots of whitespace)
  • lightweight

And even though I use terminals a lot (neovim, git, etc.), I never stuck with tiling window managers in the end (e.g. i3). Rather I'm heavily relying on:

  • virtual desktops (8 or so)
  • manual window tiling via shortcuts
  • tmux
[–] dlarge6510@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Like you I never latched onto tiling wm's. I did think they were fun to play with but unless they use Emacs keybindings I don't think my brain will like learning a whole set of new ones.

I love virtual desktops however. Used them from the start!

[–] RandomVanGloboii@feddit.it 1 points 1 year ago

GNOME, despite the critiques it receives it's the most polished one and the one that gives me less problems

[–] Fryboyter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

If I want to use a graphical user interface, I generally use KDE Plasma.

[–] BaumGeist@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I went with i3 (i3wm) instead of a full DE on my debian laptop. I wanted to minimize trackpad use without requiring peripherals (like a mouse).

On one hand it's highly performant and easily configurable; on the other hand, it does lead to problems that I wouldn't have known about with a DE—for example, I had screen tearing for months until I learned I needed a compositor, which doesn't come included.

In other words: it is a very barebones OOBE, and requires a lot of setup and RTFM (it's probably in the user guide that i need a compositor), but the reward of higher performance/lower power draw, easily configuring the hell out of it, smoothly navigating everywhere with the keyboard alone, and reclaiming screenspace from taskbars and titlebars has made it my preferred setup (even on desktop).

Tangential to the question, but my "no mouse" ethic has taken considerable effort to learn the cli way of dealing with configuration that is trivialized by GUIs (e.g. volume and wifi, i'm still struggling with bluetooth and rtorrent), but it's made the experience of working on a laptop 500% more enjoyable and less of an uphill struggle against the trackpad, and it doesn't require a flat surface for a mouse.

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Gnome hands down has the best laptop experience. If you follow the intended workflow of using tiled windows and many workspaces. You can get to a very large number of windows, without getting lost, even with just the laptop screen.

Additionally the paradigm does translate well to a desktop for the times you are docked.

[–] fruitywelsh@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

KDE customize to how ever you like to use it!

[–] dlarge6510@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't tried Gnome since they trashed the UI ;) and I wasn't ever much of a KDE fan so the only desktop I have ever used since the demise of Gnome 2 is XFCE.

However I've switched back to Window Maker (a window manager) on my main PC and on my VM's and I may do so on my laptops too. I don't really need a desktop so to speak, I just use wmsystray to add a system tray and things like NetworkManager, bluez etc all end up there giving me what I actually do use of a desktop.

[–] konodas@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Tiling window managers like i3 are imho nice for laptops, since they do not waste any space and can be easily controlled via keyboard. Takes a while to get used to them, however.

[–] Lemmyin@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

I agree with this! I run i3 for all my builds and it’s great!

[–] randomwords@midwest.social 0 points 1 year ago

I'm really liking Budgie, can't wait for version 11 when they ditch the gnome libs/apps.

[–] Mnmalst@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I recently switched to xfce.
I used KDE exclusively since 2004. That's a very long time but KDE Plasma in combination with nvidia got worse, what felt like, every single day over the last years, so it finally came to the point where I had no choice to look for something that works better.
Super happy with xfce after I set it up almost exactly like my KDE setup. Sure there are some thing that are not as "well rounded" than some of the excellent Plasma features but over all it works great!

[–] 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

xfce is the least buggy de I ever used, never seen anything not work as intended on it even on very low en hardware

[–] Mnmalst@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

That was the main reason I choose it over the others. Having a stable DE that doesn't change much which works great with nvidia and xorg.