KDE and I keep it mostly stock. I usually get a compact desktop pager widget and add a kwin plugin to dynamically add/remove virtual desktops.
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Lxqt, with pcmanfm's desktop ability turned off. I use the terminal for my file management anyway
I usually have several terminal tabs and web browser tabs open plus a tmux session. Neovim for coding and writing, feh and mpv for viewing media, mpd, supysonic, and minidlna for streaming and playing music.
I like Cinnamon, stacked on the right (vertical bar) with the third party cinnamenu start menu. Simple, and it works.
I keep hearing good things, ill try it out, when I first looked it up it didnt seem as customizable based off screenshots but im seeing posts about how its more customizable than gnome
Started with Gnome, then i3, Hyprland and now Sway. Gnome not being designed around customisability made me switch to i3. Hyprland has had some stability issues and regressions that annoyed me and so I switched to Sway. Thinking of trying out river at some point.
I think if I reccomend linux kde to anyone new itll be gnome with a few extensions, since plasma is easy to break imo. A lot of default plasma configs are basically cleaner/customizable windows clones tho so it might be an easier transition, it immediatelt felt familiar when I was setting up cachyos. Feed like gnome couldve scared me off, especially since I didnt know about the extensions and how easy it was to get proper menu. Once I had like 3 extensions, it felt good, was using the computer like normal and forgot I had swapped to gnome to temporarily test it.
I really like gnomes look with a few extensions tho, with plasma I feel the constant need to tinker just because I can and its two clicks away, with gnome I just use my computer and the extensions just work, not as much customization, even for placement, but definitely a lot more useful extensions that just work.
I have been liking river lately after switching to it from hyprland. River is much more similar to my previous one which was xmonad.
I've used several over the years, but right now I'm enjoying Hyprland. UWSM is also working well for session management.
Here's mine, simple and functional
I overcomplicated mine before going back to the simple look, even abusively adding stuff it feels less crowded than windows
Cinnamon is a long time favorite of mine; it has a certain practical mindedness that I like. Gnome irritates the absolute shit out of me and Cinnamon inherits just a little too much from Gnome. I'm using KDE on my main computer at the moment, which I still think is my second choice. Doesn't really help that my move to KDE also came with a move to Wayland, which killed a few tools I still miss.
Cinnamon. I feel like it's a nice middle ground between the minimalism of Gnome and the maximalism of KDE Plasma
After trying cinnamon, i think gnome reaches that middleground better with extensions than cinnamon, it feels more off to the side with older windows. Definitely was missing some of the settings tho, im liking cinnamon a bit more after messing with applets, not sure why it feels so corporate in comparison.
DWM
I use Mate on my laptop; before that I used Cinnamon.
To be honest, DEs are basically terminal window managers for me. If I didn't need a graphical web browser for everything I do (because that's basically what software is these days - shit you log into from a web browser) I'd probably be using GNU Screen or possibly Twin to manage multiple shells instead.
If the drag-and-drop functionality of modern DEs wasn't so helpful I'd probably still be using twm because I like stuff that does what I need, and otherwise stays out of my way.