Linux

GNOME because of PaperWM

XFCE. it's dumb, simple, it gives you a panel to access your programs, your desktop icons, and nothing else. I just want my computer to let me do my things, not have a built-in 'brew a cup of coffee' button

Gaming PC: GNOME (it works fine and I don't care about much else there)

Laptop: dwl (dwm for Wayland) and suckless tools. Ultra lightweight and comfy for browsing and watching videos. Usually at the same time.

GNOME. Love the simplicity!

XFCE. Because I'm an idiot, and all my computers are old.

Hyprland on my desktop

GNOME on my laptop

I'm an XFCE guy. I find XFCE to be nice and fast. It's decently light - not the absolute lightest, but most of its installation size is from dependencies you were going to install anyway like GTK.

For now, it's still on xorg, but I think they're working on it.

Xfce

I'm on Hyprland mostly because of all the tiling window managers out there these days, it feels like the most usable default config and the ecosystem (e.g. hyprlock etc) feels pretty complete.

After trying mostly everything, I always come back to my "custom desktop": (openbox + xfce4-panel + thunar + xfce4-terminal + dunst) .. for the last 15 years or so. It doesn't get in the way, is fast AF, it takes very very little ram/cpu (4.5 Mb !!) and it has everything I need (even tiling via keyboard). It's VERY customizable and it does as I tell. No crashes, no weirdeness. It just works. I will probably move to labwc in a future, just because.. wayland. And now I'm about to use it on a steam deck... it's gonna be fun.

xfce, i dont need that other bloat.

KDE, it does what I want it to do.

I stopped usin em myself cus my laptop aint nun too fancy and i hated watching my system use 1.5+ while not doing jack, so i tried window managers a couple times until it stuck :3 i3 btw

I use KDE, no bugs for me (I found one but it's already fixed in the latest update) and it's feels like my second home

XFCE as I like the look of the classic Windows layout. Might eventually try out KDE for Wayland support but there's something about the simplicity of XFCE which I love.

On my main laptop I use KDE, it's smooth and gets the job done. On my tablet, I use GNOME. It runs well, and is touch-optimized. On my other laptop, I use gnome for no particular reason.

I'm old, I come from old X11R4 time, motif, mwm, twm, fvwm, things from previous century. In modern Linux I used mostly gnome, and Cinnamon for a few years and tried to love it but cannot, I finally went back to Xfce because it works, it's simple, neat, nice, I have no icon on my desktop, I have a kind of windows 3 setup: a startup menu (and some quick launches), the window bar, the notification area with time etc

I'm using MX Linux for maybe 8 years now with Xfce

updated screenshot:

OK so I have used several DEs but right now I'm on Plasma 6 because frankly, it's the best out there. It's easy to use, customizable, intuitive and looks nice. Is it on the heavier side? Yes, but that's okay. Also it helps that I have learnt the keyboard shortcuts on this.

I have used XFCE, Mate and Cinnamon in the past. If KDE somehow vanished off the face of the planet, I would likely switch to XFCE because it's light, customizable and fully functional.

Sway, will try the new cosmic once its in beta

Am I the only one on here using Budgie. I just feel more comfortable with the workflow using Budgie.

I'm running KDE Plasma with the revived Krohnkite for auto tiling. Plasma 6.2 seems to have fixed most of the bugs from 6.0 and 6.1, at least the ones I've noticed.

I was using Sway/SwayFX for a few months but was missing some KDE Gear apps like Dolphin and Okular which I couldn't get to display correctly. KDE is afaik the only desktop with a working Qt theming engine right now, so I can't really see myself switching (unless maybe if they break Krohnkite again).

I use Mate. When I first started using a Desktop in addition to terminals, it was with Redhat 6.1, Redhat came with Gnome-2, I got used to it. I didn't like the changes made in Gnome-3, so I switched to Mate which retained, or at least had the option to be configured to look as I was used to it, save for more refined graphics. It also works well remotely so that's another reason I use it as much of my work involves remote acess.

KDE for its Wayland performance and features and occasionally I switch to hyprland if I need a more focused work environment.
In the past I used Cinnamon but it became ever more buggier on Arch and due to lack of Wayland support still it was a dead end anyway.

TDE. Functional, stays out of my way, but still reasonably full-featured. The development team is dedicated to adding useful features while keeping the original look and feel, so I don't have to go hunting for settings that have inexplicably moved or changed defaults every time I update. It doesn't support Wayland, but I'm Wayland-neutral (that is, I have nothing against it, but I have nothing against X either).

KDE Plasma

It was what came on the steam deck lol

KDE for my main PC. Pretty with floating panels, KDE Connect, QT apps are often the best apps in their class and are perfectly integrated (FreeCAD, krita, okular, kdenlive, vlc, dolphin, etc...) And konsole is also very full featured.

I don't know what KiCAD uses, but it also seems very well integrated into the KDE desktop unlike most gnome apps.

XFCE on MX Linux for an old Intel Compute Stick to keep it very usable.

Traditionally I've been running lighter desktops like opebox, xfce, or lmde. Last couple of years I've been using MATE with good results.

GNOME, because I started with Red Hat 6 and I'm used to it, on Fedora Silverblue, because I have a long history of fucking up my PC and that makes it harder. For remote machines XFCE because the mouse is cute.

I use hyprland with KDE as my fall back.

My hyprland config is 95% stable but some apps give me a hard time, so I'll just run them in KDE.

I find KDE just works. With a baby, things need to work more often than not.

None. Openbox WM with Tint2 as a rudimentary system bar, Rofi as launcher.

My favourite that I use lots of places is Gnome. Love using it. Use it completely stock.

I also use KDE, which is fine, but I don’t much care for it, I always find it to be buggy and unreliable. Could well be pebkac errors, but I’ve seen it across multiple machines over the years. With this said I still use kde on one machine.

I also use sway. Which is a wayland window manager. I find it very good. I’ve heard that hyprland is also good, but I’m not looking to mess with a window manager, I just like it to be simple, so I’ve not really tried it.