Linux

KDE and Budgie

Hyprland. Fast, wayland, tiling, animated. Checks off all the boxes and just works(TM).

Well for DE its KDE for me but in general DWM

@governorkeagan Xfce first and then Cinnamon. Xfce is more flexible than Cinnamon, which is solid.

Gnome, which looks so nice, requires too many extensions for my taste. So it is not for me.

I tried Plasma many times. It is a mess with all the options (I don't know if they are going to fix this in the next releases) and whenever I tried it there were always some small annoying little bugs. They are changing the release cycle, so maybe in the future these problems will become more rare.

I found GNOME in my early days, Cinnamon and Budgie after GNOME went "convergence," and KDE ever since. A nice thing about Linux is we have some variety so you can pick something that will let you work/play your way.

There are other great options like XFCE and MATE.

For me, from most to least favorite, it goes:

Cinnamon

Mate

KDE

xfce

Bash-only; no GUI

doing my math homework by counting on my toes

Losing three fingers in a table saw accident

GNOME

Edit to add: I love the "one newline in the editor is no newlines in the published comment." The internet isn't getting worse by the minute at all.

No DE. Just openbox + polybar + rofi

sway - stable and productive. Hyprland - beautiful, but performance is worse. i3 - same as sway, but sometimes better for legacy X11 stuff or applications that are still buggy at Wayland

Gnome. It looks simple and elegant, is easy and intuitive to use, and everything I need is either built in or available as an extension.

The one caveat is that you probably shouldn't update it right on day one of a new version release, because usually some extension devs need a few more days to update their stuff. My distro (Fedora) always releases new versions a few months after Gnome does, so this works out perfectly.

I'm running Plasma with Arch, but I like Gnome to, it's simple and easier to use, but I also think that plasma is more customizable.

That I use? Cinnamon, because lazy. That I prefer? Fluxbox, because fast af.

GNOME. I currently use it without any extensions, but sometimes use “Blur my shell” for the visual effect.

GNOME “just works” and looks extremely polished and consistent. It gives the application the maximum amount of screen real estate. The keyboard shortcuts are great. It’s very power-user friendly IMO.

Cinnamon. It just works and I can make it look how I like. i3 on laptops, because hackor.

I bounce between Xfce and Plasma. I used Xfce for... I don't know, 15 years? And only switched to plasma for a while because of getting a hidpi laptop before Xfce had support for it.

When I switched from Windows definitely Cinnamon but by now it's Gnome, it's a little odd at first but I absolutely love the workflow!

Sway is really impressively stable if you're willing to learn it and set it up. It's a tiling WM.

I've been running the same arch install with roughly the same sway config for 3 years. My computer has never been so boring!

When I first switched from windows I loved KDE. Then I felt frisky and tried Gnome. Now I love them both

I got used to XFCE, but, with my new awesome Tuxedo laptop, I got KDE as a DE for a stock OS, and I could say it feels much more complete. But the performance drops, when opening a terminal, for example.

sway on wayland (the only WM that doesn't crash even though it lacks a lot of features), awesomewm on xorg (fast and very customizable, but has quirks)

Nowadays KDE.

Gnome. On my laptop KDE and cinimon have given me a LOT of issues. I've had a lot of linux problems due to my hardware tho but finally found a fix and don't want to change

Started with GNOME, then once I got more comfortable I jumped ship to hyprland

KDE or cinnamon are probably the closest ones to windows if you're looking for familiarity but I think gnome/tiling wms improve on that

Hyprland and other tiling wms are great but only if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker and fiddle constantly

plasma, xfce and sway/swayfx.

plasma and xfce are DEs, sway is a wlroots-based wayland compositor (tiling window manager).

I’ve been using Debian with Cinnamon desktop for a while. I tried XFCE but it didn’t click and I really disliked how you added an app launcher to the dock. Cinnamon gets out of my and just works for the little that I need.

Switched to GNOME a couple of months ago from KDE. Very much love the function of GNOME, but still prefer the customizability of KDE.

I'm currently using KDE Plasma with i3. I like it fine. I love i3, and KDE works to tie everything together and add consistency for theming. Previously I was using i3 on XFCE, that was easier to set up. Plasma tends to require special configuration to make it play nice with i3, but once you're over that hump it makes for a pretty decent combination.

Ubuntu's GNOME.

I'm now full time on sway

Productivity is through the roof!

@governorkeagan My preferred Desktop environment is Cinnamon. I used to prefer swaywm but it's not a complete DE.

Gnome. But I use 3 extensions (dash to dock, desktop icons and appindicators) and the adw-gtk3 theme so GTK3 apps looks the same as GTK4/libadwaita apps.