What's your desktop environment of choice?

[ferfykins]

So atm i'm using gnome 3, but i'm not sure i like it....
What do you guys use?




^Debian desktop environments, that is......

[bw123]

there are a couple of polls check them out.
search.php?keywords=poll+desktop

[GarryRicketson]

I don't use a Desktop environment, they all kind of fail miserably these days. A window manager is much more efficient.
I like Openbox myself, and can even copy paste files, and directories to the Desktop directory, or any other dir , without any special tweaks, plugins, etc,...
Gnome is for those that don't know any better , (just my opinion) , I used to like Gnome, years ago, but it has changed, and no longer is of any use to me.
==== edited ==========
I never made or make my decisions based on what others like, or their favourites, in fact don't really care what is the most popular,nor what others use, I did my own testing (tried various DE's,etc) and research, and found that I like Openbox the best, TWM, CWM, and there are more, all are great WM s as well, ...just saying.

[golinux]

Anything but gnome.

[GarryRicketson]

Stumbled on to this, https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8etezq/after_running_gnome_for_18_years_ive_quit_heres/

[Bulkley]

Openbox with Tint2 panel. I can configure them just about any way I want.

[Hallvor]

KDE.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

bspwm & xfce4-panel

[Bloom]

I use XFCE on all of my desktop systems. On my servers, I use no desktop, just a text terminal. In fact, servers run headless so I connect to them via ssh.

Why XFCE for all of my desktops? I started out with Gnome, looked at KDE and Unity and migrated towards MATE when Gnome 3 proved to be incompatible with Gnome 2. Found it (at that time) too buggy, so I tried XFCE and I have never looked back. XFCE has, in my opinion, the perfect marriage between compact and features. Every visual aspect of the desktop can be changed via the GUI, and Debian with XFCE can run in as little as 80 MB of RAM: just don't start any applications then.
And most importantly: every new main version of XFCE was backwards compatible with previous versions. That's how it should be done.

What does it look like?

(<click for bigger picture)

[Zjho]

So atm i'm using gnome 3, but i'm not sure i like it....
What do you guys use?

At risk of alienating those whose help i may need have found gnome 3 better designed than gnome 2 style Desktops for a fairly fast consumer desktop box. Would never use it on slower than a dual core 2.5Ghz cpu as things currently stand.
If new to gnome 3 check out extensions for it as they make a significant difference. Some can be found in Debian repo such as gnome-shell-extension-caffeine and gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock and some at https://extensions.gnome.org/ such as Hide top bar, No topleft hot corner and Workspaces to dock.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

gnome 3 better designed than gnome 2 style Desktops

+1

Once the user adapts to the paradigm and stops fighting it the workflow is beautiful, better than any other desktop, IMO.

Shame about the bloat though

EDIT: also, GNOME uses hardware acceleration so it can be faster than plain openbox on a machine with a half-decent GPU.

[None1975]

also it can be faster than plain openbox

Oh no...how about JavaScript for GNOME Shell?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

how about JavaScript for GNOME Shell?

Well, if you know js then you can make GNOME dance like a chained bear

[Head_on_a_Stick]

No, gone back to dwm, I can't stand all those extra processes to read the battery, control the volume and all that domestic stuff that I can cover with a POSIX one-liner in dwm.

[piperdan]

Ask 10 people, will likely get 10 different answers. But since you asked.....KDE-Plasma for me.


Update:
It seems I usually read negative comments about Gnome 3, but just to see for myself and maybe expand my horizons a bit, I've tried using Gnome 3 over the past few weeks..........and I must say, the new/different pattern of interfacing with my desktop is growing on me, especially when working with multiple applications or windows. I've grown to like just hitting the super key to see or go where I want, as opposed to constantly alt-tabbing, clicking on the panel tray icon, or minimizing windows. Really don't have a use to minimize anymore, which was really different for me.

I had to add a couple of extensions to Gnome get the eye-candy effects I wanted, but I also had to add extra themes to my plasma to get it to look the way I wanted. I understand KDE uses less resources, but they both feel equally quick on my laptop (16 GB Ram with SSD). KDE has awesome applications, except for two that I just could not get to work well for me, and finally just gave up on: Kontact and Korganizer. Gnome's equivalent, Evolution, just works without a hitch for me.

Lesson for me was, don't just go by other's opinions.......try them yourself and see what YOU like.