Which desktop do you prefer?

Lounge
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I don’t know how well this fits with usage here - Which Desktop Environment Do Arch Linux Users Prefer

Other questions that come to mind:

  1. Does the decline in gnome-shell usage also imply a decline in the development of the underlying libraries, such as GTK?
  2. It’s early days, but will the Cosmic desktop eat in to the desktop market, and if so, will it affect any desktop in particular (it is “Gnome-like”)
  3. How much will Wayland window managers, such as Hyprland, cut in to the usage of the window managers which are part of the desktop environments?
  4. Is a hybrid stack possible, e.g. KDE with Hyprland, or even desirable?
  5. Does this have any impact on the development of applications, should they switch toolkit? Would such a switch be possible without an enormous amount of effort? To shadow another topic that is current, could the conversion be done using AI?
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No, for the contrary. GTK and gnome are being less used due to the direction they took with all their new development. A software that changed recently is easyeffects, they mostly complained about being hard to maintain and not being agile enough when it came to specific UI elements they needed. There’s a lot of discussion on github but you can read the changelog: easyeffects/CHANGELOG.md at master · wwmm/easyeffects · GitHub

Why would it? It finances itself through System76. Gnome has corporate sponsors like Red Hat, KDE also has some corporate sponsors etc, I doubt user donations will change the paradigm much.

I don’t think it’s possible yet, or ever will be. I struggle to see why it would be desirable. Even in X11, replacing the DE compositor lead to strange behaviors and was always hacky. Answers point 3 as well.

EasyEffects did it, but I doubt larger apps like darktable can change easily, it’s a tremendous amount of effort even just upgrading from gtk3 to gtk4. That said, I struggle to see why anyone would pick GTK for a new application. Who remembers the #WONTFIX for thumbnails in the GTK file picker? It only took 15+ years for the devs to change their mind and “fix” it. Does anyone as a developer want to use a framework that treats their users like this? I certainly don’t.

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While this is interesting, I think that Arch users are a very special group. May of them enjoy tweaking their desktop environments (and just about everything else) for its own sake, and are very eager to try out new options.

I am puzzled by hyprland. For me, the purpose of a tiling window manager (like sway, which I am using now, or i3, which I used to use) is to get out of the way as much as possible. I don’t see the purpose of eye candy in this context.

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That is merely the defaults in hyprland and it’s one of the good things about it. You can disable animations and outlines with two config lines, and then you still have a window manager that mostly implements all wayland compositor specs in time(as opposed to sway), is performant, has a lot of layout types including master which sway does not have, etc.

Do not be deceived by arch’s repository statistics. Lots of different distros with sane defaults use them (Endeavour, Cachy, etc), so I’d say a lot of those plasma installs are just the default, because it just works.

Edit: Arch is also not as elite (if it ever was, besides the meme) as it used to be. archinstall exists and lets anyone install arch easily, so it has opened the distro to regular folk as well, who just use things as is.

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My main concern is setting up a configuration and not having to touch it fo a long time. How does hyprland compare in that respect?

I am vaguely interested in new features, but now if I am forced into a tweak session after an innocuous-looking upgrade.

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There are some config breaking changes in the last year, but nothing when it comes to the main settings, mostly niche settings or things that got refactored. AFAIK, besides new compositor specs, the core of hyprland is mainly complete and most of the work is being done on the other ‘ecosystem’ apps, such as hyprlock, hyprcursor, etc.

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Hi,

To answer the question " Which do you prefer"
Manjaro Linux with a near out-of-the-box Kde Plasma.

Why ?
For me it is well balanced between aesthetics and efficiency … and out-of-the-box experience suits my needs.

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Most users don’t run an OS or a DE, they use them to support their applications.

As you have noted, you (and I) want the underlying infrastructure to get out of the way of the tasks we want to carry out.

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I want simplicity and stability. Dont want options, dont want tweaks. Just want it working. So using gnome for a very long time. Dont care for fanboyisms at all.

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But do you want features? Are you prepared to lose some simplicity and stability to get good results?

Assuming you use DT, what version are you currently running?

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I use and develop darktable.

On the os level, no additional gimmicks at all.

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I personally like tiling window managers that I can control with a keyboard mostly, but assuming one wants a stacking window manager, Gnome has had all basic features since years ago.

Yes, some people may prefer KDE. Or Gnome Classic. Or any similar equivalent. But pretty much all of them are feature complete as traditional stacking WMs.

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Let’s be honest with ourselves here: Ubuntu use gnome, so there is no “decline” and gnome usage is way higher than any other desktop because it is ubuntu’s default.

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I use Awesome window manager on Arch Linux, which can be both tiling and floating. I use it as floating and I almost always run one application window per desktop window (there are nine desktop windows by default, and that can be increased or decreased).

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I have barely touched my openbox config in 20 years or more. Its last release was back in 2015 and as far as I’m concerned it’s bug-free.

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Might be tangentially relevant: Screenshots from developers & Unix people (2002)

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I love me some KDE, but with a twist — I use Karousel to get a scrollable tiling WM experience.

For me, classic stacking WMs get messy and tiling WMs… I keep finding myself fighting the placement and the tiling, so for me they certainly don’t get out of my way. Also, I’m too fond of the creature comforts of a KDE/Plasma desktop. Karousel gives me a nice middle ground between windows not getting ridiculously small or buried beneath 10 other windows.

There’s other scrolling WMs like PaperWM and Niri, but again, I miss KDE / Plasma too much when using them.

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I am of the same mind as @Jens-Hanno_Schwalm. I just want an environment that works and may I add is ergonomic enough for the ease of use. As for which I prefer, every one has its pain points, so I often switch so that I do not become over-frustrated with what I am using. I guess that it is not a direct answer to the OP.

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you could checkout niri.

if you combine it with quickshell + noctalia

it is what I run on my laptop now.

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I find myself sticking to KDE. I admire GNOMEs clean look and aesthetic but using a taskbar seems hard-coded into my cerebellum at this point. Also I love Dolphin and Nautilus just doesn’t do it for me (Discover is a disaster though).

I liked the old Pop_OS! for a while but my wife vetoed it out because she couln’t wrap her head around the gnomeish way of doing things. Cosmic doesn’t work for me; its lack of window-shadows makes working with multiple windows disorienting for me.

Gave Linux mint a whirl for a few days on an old laptop - liked the friendly simplicity it provies but still went back to KDE (primarily because Mint ran dead slow on the old Laptop I installed it on, so I came back to bazzite for image based simplicity).

Karousel looks interesting - will look into that @dnzm.

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