Why I Don't Show Other Desktop Environments ...

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► Chapters:
00:00 - Gnome or KDE Plasma?
00:28 - One word of caution!
00:57 - UI/UX Design and Trends
02:04 - Hotkeys and muscle memory
03:05 - Finding help
03:29 - Wayland support
05:43 - Give them the right things
06:50 - They not better!
08:00 - Conclusion
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► Description Tags:
linux desktop environments, linux desktop environments comparison, linux best desktop environment, best linux desktop environment 2024, most popular linux distros 2024, most popular desktop environment, gnome vs kde plasma, gnome vs cinnamon vs kde, hyprland vs gnome, michael horn
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#linux #opensource #discussion

[@archaichobo6969]

I fell in love with Plasma on the Steam Deck. Now I run Plasma on all my machines.

[@SecretAgentBartFargo]

Plasma is definitely usable. It's got some quirks, but I have no reason to doubt that KDE will eventually fix the bugs like they always do.

[@MrQuay03]

​@@SecretAgentBartFargo What bugs?

[@Fiveward]

I actually had the opposite experience with the Steam Deck. It showed me that I still really dislike KDE lol. I'm glad people like it though. It's really cool to see the Steam Deck affecting Linux desktop users like this.

[@SecretAgentBartFargo]

@@MrQuay03 When scaling the interface, the sides of my screens will display small stripes along the borders of my screen. At increased scaling, fonts are also janky and have visible artifacts and alignment issues.This is noticeable after exiting full screen on a light colored interface. This is not reproduceable in GNOME 46. Both issues go away in KDE Plasma 6 after reverting scaling back to 100%.

[@TheRetroGamerBay]

I have always been a bit of a kde fanboy, at least since plasma 5 hit the scene. Before that I really liked ubuntu's unity

[@Dr-Nonookie]

You have the right idea. I attempted a Linux move back in 2020 and X11 didn't like my multi-monitor setup and Wayland wasn't there yet, which was a dealbreaker, and so I went back to Windows. I spent years waiting, watching Linux videos (including yours) and being in Linux groups and watched it grow. I came back and Wayland is amazing for my use case. Linux has grown so much in those 4 years thanks to Wayland. You also have the right idea with DE, I feel exactly as you said about the other DEs, I feel they look as good as maybe Windows 98 (some even worse) and they were never an interest to me and I have no use case for a TM as cool as Hyprland looks, I feel they are for terminal users. To me, it's a "two man race" between Gnome and Plasma. Gnome is there for people who like the look of Mac and KDE for Windows (yes, you can customize both, but I also mean out of box) I also think Gnome is much better for a laptop user because of touch screen gestures, big icons and better calendar/productivity support, while KDE is better for multi-monitor users who don't need gestures, likes to customize, has better gaming performance and is just a better overall daily driver for desktops. (I am a Plasma guy) So you definitely have the right idea to entice people to come to Linux.

[@AstralPhnx]

Wayland has come an insanely long way in just these past 4 years it's amazing

[@szymonnowak2961]

You encouraged me to install linux on my main PC, Your content is very helping

[@MrQuay03]

Watch ChrisTitusTech, he'll make you use all OSes with Linux being the main

[@horizon4895]

For me, I just love the simplicity of Cinnamon's design mixed with Mint's super user-friendly nature. The only thing stopping me from switching to it is precisely the lack of Wayland support due to my multi-monitor setup as well as the extra things that Wayland offers like variable refresh rate. Having it "look more modern" isn't that relevant to me personally.

[@Bloxomatic]

Been watching you for awhile now. Your videos are VERY insightful and enjoyable! Great job :)

[@MichaelNROH]

Thank you

[@asificam1]

We should laser focus on bringing new users to the new user friendly environments, when they grow, then we show them customization.

[@gotoastal]

At least you showed & acknowledged the color management situation on Wayland.

[@MichaelNROH]

I don't think that it matters that much honestly. This is more of a problem for professionals, as most probably don't even get their monitor icc profile, or even calibrate it at all.

[@Aluminio_siete_tres_siete]

I like cinnamon over both KDE and Gnome, is a middle ground between the two I think, and it can be made to look fresh with ease... I would get to say that cinnamon does quite a few things better than those two, is meant for ease of use yet is customizable. There is also the experimental wayland support that is not 100% daily-driveable yet but supposedly in august, as LM 22 comes out, it will be nicely upgraded.

[@trichomelover4209]

I agree that first impressions matter alot for someone who is looking into this as a non linux user

[@jestyjoshua]

I feel like the cosmic desktop is going to be fantastic

[@nxx99]

Fellow Klonoa fan spotted in the wild!

[@MegaManNeo]

I dunno about Cinnamon, seems like a good middle ground to me. Otherwise I agree that both GNOME and Plasma surely are the once that catch the eye the most.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Once they reach Mint 23 and Cinnamon gets full Wayland support, I think it will be a good middle ground. Right now, it's a bit too old for my liking.

[@MichaelNROH]

Cinnamon has a bright future I think. Eventually it will find it's own design, which will look modern, sleek, but still in their classic imagination.

[@MegaManNeo]

@@cameronbosch1213 I couldn't care less about Wayland, honestly. Software I make use of still behaves buggy with it (KeepassXC can't connect to the sshagent, InputLeap doesn't work with Plasma YET) and overall as long as Xorg does the job, I don't a point in switching. Just like Michael said, everyone has to decide for themselves what they make of the whole desktop thing under Linux.

[@rockman9h02m]

@@MegaManNeoSadly everything is moving towards Wayland. It's quite lacking still on some if its protocol standards but hopefully it'll improve just as Xorg did

[@RenderingUser]

i think the best middleground will be cosmic when it finally finished first release

[@ivobrick7401]

I use Cinnamon. It is fast, light - relative to a new computer and mostly - boring. I like it like that. Later we will have cinnamon wayland, on nvidia. Many people will come here and start to fight which is better, the best for you is the one you choose, regardless of what it is.

[@TheZedrem]

I jumped quite a bit when I switched back in 2020. I used a bit Cinammon, Gnome (Vanilla and Pop OS), LXQt and many others, but KDE always felt like the 'right' choice for me, with all the customization I need. Been running Fedora KDE Edition for about 2 years now, and Idon't plan on switching. Maybe I'll give Cosmic a shot if it comes to Fedora or on my Laptop.

[@SirChristoferus]

GNOME has become my favorite desktop environment ever since switching from the Microsoft ecosystem to the open-source ecosystem, it really brings out the uniqueness of Linux when compared to Windows or macOS.

[@OraOraOra]

100% agree! It's not just visuals (but visuals are also important), it's also the underlaying technology that many ppl don't know about, Wayland, VRR, DRM leasing, fractional scaling and so on. + both projects have a big team dev team behind it. I have much respect for XFCE or Cinnamon, but they are not for me, at least not yet. I can't wait for Cosmic, because it seems like the perfect middleground between GNOME and Plasma, lets see! Great Video!

[@AndersHass]

It will also take up a lot of time to test the various desktop environments. Where you might want to spend time on other things as well.

[@cevmantius]

If you are a beginner on linux and gained some confidence dont hesitate to trying other DE's and WM's on some kind of virtual machines etc. Evantually you'll find which one fits you best. Personally, i am a window manager user but my fav DE is xfce. I install all of my systems with xfce so i can use some of the tools that included in xfce on my window manager setup.

[@Spladoinkal]

It's a good idea but remember a lot of beginners may not know how to use a vm. Remember, the goal is to improve Linux support for EVERYONE, including those that know very little about computers but just want an alternative to Windows/Mac.

[@cevmantius]

@@Spladoinkal yeah you are right. I just wanted to say that xfce is my favorite starting point.

[@Dragon_Slayer_Ornstein]

With the Steam Deck using KDE, I would encourage KDE by default as a lot of new users are most likely to encounter it in the future.

[@dfs-comedy]

I use XFCE4 for muscle memory and because I like a lightweight desktop that stays out of my way. Choice of desktop is a very personal thing, I guess. My non-technical sister and *very* non-technical brother-in-law also use XFCE4... because that's what I installed for them. Yes, they run Linux. They know if they want tech support, I won't support Windows. :)

[@soulstenance]

I totally agree with your initial argument - first impressions matter. However I don't think saying Cinnamon is flat or less polished than KDE is entirely fair. I think they're both very polished and pretty straight out of the box. I see Cinnamon as a kind of middle ground between KDE's extreme customizability (I managed to break KDE in my early Linux days) and Gnome's almost non-existent customizability. Cinnamon is the best choice in it's official distro unless you have a low spec PC, but even on other distros, I feel it does its job well. The Mint team did a great job "fixing" Gnome. Just my take, I may be a little biased haha.

[@asadplatypus3940]

as a awesome wm user i cant recommend any tiling window manager to anyone they are hard to learn and adjust for new users but the initial pain is worth it cuz its just so cool

[@MichaelNROH]

I actually tried Hyprland today for a bit. Kinda cool how you configure it, but yeah, I guess it could take a couple or hours or even trial and error to get stuff to ones preference

[@plaintext7288]

I too use AwesomeWM, but wouldn't recommend it or any other tilling wm, bc it just adds on top of complexity from switching OSes the need to learn to use the keyboard No, awesome wm is not awesome for mostly mouse users

[@aodfr]

I've played with every desktop and a few window managers. After that I decided to stick with gnome because I love it's workflow.

[@sfwnsft]

Yeah, same here. Simple and does everything I want.

[@phonemophoneko]

its currently invested in Gnome, i was a long time plasma lover... I am also liking the hyprland wm...

[@Prophet6000]

Your Gnome videos turned me from one of the biggest tiling window managers to Gnome fan lol. I've spent time on Gnome on a laptop and it is great.

[@MichaelNROH]

Well, that's an unexpected surprise :)

[@burningwp]

How's battery life?

[@bvd_vlvd]

Gnome on laptops is so perfect that I'll get a touchpad when I move to a desktop computer :D

[@San4itos]

I run Cinnamon on my Arch installation. I like this DE.

[@MicrogamerCz]

I use Plasma and Hyprland both roughly equally. I use Plasma on my PC where I have many windows across a few virtual desktops and Hyprland on my laptop because I don't have to care about window layout as it's done for me.

[@wilddeveloper2021]

for me cinnamon is perfect, it's stable , lightweight, customisable and simple settings(looking at you plasma). onlythings that stopping me to use it are stable wayland support, functional fractional scaling.

[@Drazil100]

For me when introducing a new user to Linux the overall distro is more important than just the DE. While I don’t personally run mint anymore, it is what got me to try Linux. Cinnamon may not follow current design trends, but I don’t think it looks outdated just yet. More importantly though it has an excellent onboarding process, an excellent graphical update tool, it pushes timeshift, and it comes with pretty much all the packages you need to have a functionally complete base system without being bloated. My recommendation may change if cinnamon begins looking too out of date, but for now I haven’t found a distro that is quite as polished as mint.

[@markridlen4380]

I think my big requirement in any OS is an easy way to search for a program. In GNOME or Windows (I think KDE as well?), you can just hit Super (Windows key) and start typing. In MacOS, you hit Super+Space to open the search bar. Some older DEs don't support easy searching like that, but I think LXDE and XFCE both do. My second big selling point is a good desktop switching.

[@swagmuffin9000]

Installed mx with fluxbox on my aunt's 2009 mac laptop. Still going strong

[@Redmage913]

For personal use, KDE Plasma 100%. I do enjoy Cinnamon and Mate, but I reserve them for my absolutely slowest systems. I like Cinnamon for its Vista-looking interface with modernizations, and I love MATE for its easy plugins on its taskbar - CPU/GPU/HDD/Network graphs are quite easy to set up with it, so good for servers where I want a desktop. This is all home-based, I don’t have clients or anything. My dad did get a 2-in-1 laptop with touchscreen recently, and I used GNOME for that machine because of its tablet optimizations. He loves being away from Windows!

[@AstralPhnx]

Wayland is also nigh on essential for multi monitor setups ESPECIALLY if you need different scaling on those two monitors because one is a higher resolution than the other. X11 simply has NO IDEA what it is doing. My gaming experience on GNOME is extremely comfy and I appreciate it a whole lot, even if I had to apply a few patches, it's nice and comfy and works great 99.99% of the time

[@JHSaxa]

Definitely agree first impressions matter! Good reason.

[@hotrodjones74]

I started with Cinnamon, then moved to Gnome and finally ended up on KDE Plasma. However, Wayland more than anything has been the biggest game changer.

[@selvakumarm4382]

Which kde is the best kde

[@matthewsjardine]

I am with you on this.

[@ZephyrCheez]

Not to he a shill for my employer but COSMIC is shaping up to be really good

[@sumabich721]

You work for System 76?

[@bvd_vlvd]

There wasn't really any time to show it off. I think it's going to fit with the "big boys" pretty well

[@ItsJustTeeZA]

Interesting video. The reason I switched to Mint was because I liked how simple it looks, and it being based on Ubuntu means I can install drivers easily. I am looking into trying out Elementary OS since I do like the MacOS inspured Design.

[@MichaelNROH]

Yeah, Linux Mint / Cinnamon does look really nice, even though it doesn't follow recent trends. I could also see myself using it, once it properly supports Wayland

[@ItsJustTeeZA]

@@MichaelNROH Im hoping to give Elementary OS a try once I get a seperate SSD going. Mint 22 is set to switch to PipeWire. Unsure about Wayland.

[@bvd_vlvd]

@@ItsJustTeeZA that was my initial feeling, elementary felt so amazing to me until I tried Zorin's various layouts, just to end up on gnome

[@ItsJustTeeZA]

@@bvd_vlvd I understand your reasoning. I think I want to try MX Linux with the KDE Flavour over Elementary OS. MX Linux looks good to me.

[@bvd_vlvd]

@@ItsJustTeeZA It's all great choices tbh. Some of us fall into the "gnome/plasma bad" meme but that's all it is, a meme. Still, I hope you settle in my "tribe" :D

[@javabeanz8549]

I moved from Fedora to Ubuntu many years ago ( 6.06 LTS ) and was with them through the Gnome 2 and Unity days ( Though I was pretty disgusted with Unity 8. ) I had tried Ubuntu Gnome, before Ubuntu moved to having a Gnome Desktop with a few tweaks, and I really didn't care for it. I went "shopping" for a new Desktop Environment, and landed on Mate` ( both Ubuntu Mate` and Mint Mate`) for a while, but then I tried Mint Cinnamon, and was juggling between then for a couple of years. I finally had enough of the odd quirks with Mate` and just moved to Mint Cinnamon, and I am still there. From what I am hearing about the new Ubuntu releases, I may move to LMDE.

[@liblevi45s53]

I do agree that Wayland has come a long way, and that its definitely beneficial to use if your hardware can support it. However, those running Nvidia cards(like myself) still run into quite a few problems on Wayland. I was running Fedora 40 /w Gnome and the application windows would occasionally have parts of them flickering. The UI was really sluggish and for some bizarre reason electron apps had an input delay, and often when typing quickly would show ghost characters. Pressing backspace would delete more than one character, and sometimes during input multiple characters would be added despite only pressing the key once. Only one real character was added, the rest weren't even there. Latest available driver or previous one resulted in the same results. Hopefully whenever the next driver rolls out these problems are resolved because they're extremely annoying. I went back to EndeavourOS with Gnome on X11 and everything works fine. Computer at home also has an Nvidia card running Suse on X11 and it also works fine. Both PCs running Nvidia have the exact same issues running Wayland.

[@grantschilb8019]

I would like to note that for laptop users with hybrid GPUs, wayland is a non-issue. X11 is basically a must on dedicated NVIDIA systems.

[@HalfBaked-os1bi]

I have a Nvidia GPU and had no issues with Wayland Plasma.

[@grantschilb8019]

@@HalfBaked-os1bi Awesome!!! It's what we like to see!

[@liblevi45s53]

​@@HalfBaked-os1biI'll have to try KDE with Wayland at some point then. Problem is both machines need to run properly and with the graphical glitches that were in my dev tools it was almost impossible to work with. Media playback was also an issue with the videos constantly freezing while the sound was still playing. I encountered none of these issues running X11.

[@sfwnsft]

My main DE is GNOME. It's perfect for my taste. Although Budgie caught my attention recently, it looks nice as well.

[@ankitpandey8435]

For me xfce 4 is one of best and light weight desktop environment.

[@Furn427]

I had too much lag on KDE, including games. Some even crashed. On XFCE all that disappeared.

[@harshborana]

Well I use hyprland (tiling wm) and it's pretty great , runs on Wayland and , not having any issue (which can't me solved) yet

[@nBp4tB12]

When the Nvidia 555 came out, Wayland became possible for a lot of Nvidia users, but at the moment any game (or any apps that use GPU to render) that uses XWayland simply won't work properly if it doesn't have the fps to match the monitor's refresh rate.

[@dragonwood4562]

I think you said it perfectly. The desktop environment you use should be what works for you.

[@joseoncrack]

KDE is pretty much the only DE that doesn't feel like a toy. It has so many useful features and customization that pretty much everything else pales in comparison. With that said, as a heavy user, I've found Plasma 6 to be generally a bit less stable than Plasma 5 - at least on Wayland. Some of the problems may actually be with Qt6 rather than Plasma itself, but since it's heavily tied to Qt, that doesn't really change a thing.

[@GreedoShot]

cinnamon is literally what won me over to using linux as my daily machine, couldn't fucking stand kd plasma

[@Dilluded]

Same, Cinnamon just feels comfy. KDE is cluttered and doesn't feel like a cohesive experience

[@-envixty]

Your vids made me install linux 5 months ago with Fedora 39 with Gnome 45. I now use Arch with AwesomeWM

[@MichaelNROH]

Plunged straight in I see. I love it

[@MathieuBragard-ry7tm]

High, I use wayland on my relatively recent laptop without any problems. However on a old desktop (intel core 2 quad q9650 & nvidia gtx 660), I simply can not get screen resolution to work correctly, my monitor (1080p) is recognised as 480p. I used every driver under the sun (properitary and open source) nothing works. Just using x11 which let you set any resolution you wants, works perfectly fine.

[@sumabich721]

Every time I give wayland a chance I run into some stupid problem that I have to fix with some wild workarounds. For example, push to talk for applications such as discord is still an issue, and while there's fixes, if you like to use mouse buttons for push to talk you're just out of luck unless you wanna do some crazy workarounds... Or vsync is also still an issue with wayland for some reason. I had the weirdest issues running dark souls. It was a stuttery mess, then I realized it's wayland not playing nice with vsync. And sure I can turn that off and for many games that's completely fine, but when I am locked in 60fps I don't wanna deal with screen tearing. This is just two issues I've ran into using wayland, there's so much more... So for now I stick with x11. It's not worth the headache for me at the moment. I already troubleshoot linux systems as my dayjob, I don't need it in my free time as well.

[@burningwp]

Agreed, there are too many issues with Wayland still. For me, not saving window positions is so annoying. Also screen waking with nvidia cards is broken.

[@BrianMcKee]

XFCE will be getting wayland support in 4.20.

[@oida10000]

I switched from Waveland to X11 because Teamviewer would only show one montior at a time not all 3. Is this short come fixed yet? Because in time I will upgrade my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to 24.04 LTS which I think will reset this change and the last time I thinkered with it I accidently gave it an XUbuntu look. I managed to turn the look back to normal but XUbuntu is still somewhere on top of the system, it reminds me everytime I boot it up.

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

great video

[@MichaelNROH]

Thanks

[@rohithkumarbandari]

gnome looks nice by default where as kde looks okay after customizations.

[@mrcomment6035]

GNOME and KDE Plasma provide some of the best accessibility options on a Linux desktop.

[@thieftheodore]

Been using xfce on wayland by replacing xfwm with mutter. Sure it's more like "gnome" with xfce4 panel but 1gb ram use on idle is just that tempting

[@lorduggae]

I agree, we get into Linux because we want choices.....then many of us ask the community to choose for us. Choose the distro, DE, WM, and setup YOU like and forget everyone else's opinion on it.

[@mariniack]

Because linux start to evolve and before there was Microsoft monopoly and now people (thx to Valve) we have a choice to run from w11 annoying ads and this discrimination thing like yor PC not good enough for our system (and now your ai doesnt good for our system)

[@user-jm6qf9hd9j]

I am partially agree. Currently the Unity, LXQt, Budgie and Cosmic (currently present only on Linux POP!_OS) desktop enviroinments are still pretty obscure and not well known. However, the Cinnamon desktop seems now becoming more mainstream now (mainly because of Ubuntu and Linux Mint), also the XFCE desktop is still best for the older or weaker PCs (with the exclusion of XFCE's variant of MX Linux where it isn't their lightest distro variant, which is being their FluxBox variant instead).

[@michnl1772]

Love Hyperland with Dotfiles from Stephan-Raabe (on Arch BTW)

[@ArefinKarim]

For me, KDE plasma is better for touch screen support. With high dpi, gnome xwayland looks blurry. But on KDE, they fixed this in 5.25. Plasma, would be kinda like windows with touch scree, i prefer usability. Would be nice, if you make a DE video especially for touch screen.

[@Just_Areki]

I simply use Wayland DE's because they are supporting touchpad gestures. And it's already my 3rd year with wayland

[@MichaelNROH]

That's a big advantage for many distros, as only a handful actually implemented X11 gestures, yes

[@SecretAgentBartFargo]

I know you can share your screen under Wayland because I do it every week in WebEx in my Red Hat Academy classes. At least with WebEx under KDE Plasma 6, screen sharing is natively supported and doesn't require any additional configuration.

[@kodata1021]

I am honored to have my post shown in the video!

[@leejenshakya8524]

everyone talks so good about wayland but when i use wayland my text looks blurry in fractional scaling and cant change the mouse scrolling speed...anyone plz help me out..how to fix these 2 issue

[@dukerex1285]

why is wayland bad if u have nvidia? i recently installed kde neon with plasma 6 (im new to linux) and it seems to be fine and i have a nvidia. the only weird thing i been having is steam glitches out and goes black and that i cant install things themes/plugin related and stuff as i get an error code

[@MichaelNROH]

The Steam bug is just a Steam bug and it happens to me to. Going into your library fixes it. As for the rest, I actually believe that many are just basing their opinions off of old posts and experiences. The NVIDIA Wayland experience has been solid for a while now, even though some stuff was not accelerated or as responsive as AMD

[@Subh8081]

Default Xfce has the crappiest default look. But it can be customised to look like KDE or Cinnamon or Pantheon.

[@SSquirrel1976]

Yeah XFCE doesn’t look good to me and I really hate the package manager. Tried a few different times but always nope out.

[@JHSaxa]

Interesting that you've had no issues in Wayland. Wayland was working for me until I opened blender. For whatever reason, it hobbles my Nvidia gpus and Blender viewport stutters. Not an issue on X11. Apparently this has been an issue for a long time.

[@CFWhitman]

If your multiple monitors match, then X11 usually works fine. However, if they don't, especially the refresh rate, you will likely run into problems.

[@Ness_and_Sonic]

I tried Wayland on my Raspberry pi 4 in a Manjaro Cinnamon environment. It does not like me changing my TV's inputs between two HDMI inputs as switching it back and forth between my two devices causes it to go to a black screen. It's just not ready for prime time.

[@sascha1461]

I like to switch my desktop environment relatively often and right now I'm only switching between Gnome, KDE and Hyprland because I'm so used to using Wayland that it feels like a step back going to a X11 based desktop environment

[@ironfist7789]

Yeah, only reason I use X11 on my tablet is when I need to screen share on skype, though wayland is better on everything else on there. On my desktop I still use X11 for games/nvidia, but I'll see how it works once I upgrade to 24.04 after the first patch arrives.

[@SussyBaka-nx4ge]

@@ironfist7789 try xwaylandvideobridge.

[@NukeZoned]

id love to use wayland but when I boot into a wayland session on manjaro both my monitors are just black

[@mihairomulus2488]

Cinammon is my favorite but if I had to use anything else I would use KDE tbh

[@chadyways8750]

Everyone: Usable desktop environments that (sometimes) mimic windows that we're all relatively used to Me: Haha ricing with hyprland go brr

[@bvd_vlvd]

First impressions are so ridiculously important that Linux adoption is a joke compared to what it would have been if wine, lutris and all dependencies came with every single distribution and most windows programmes worked out of the box But headless gentoo nerds that hate convenience will scream at you for including bloat in their precious distro that should not take up more than 20 megabytes of your storage by default

[@spooders8943]

having tried converting to linux x11 a huge reason i struggled besides some games not working was discord screen share and dual monitor setup. wayland has fixed most stuff for me

[@themadoneplays7842]

I say show off XFCE at least as it is the "ol reliable" of linux DE's Sure it still uses xorg and some versions of it look old-fashioned but it would be a way to show off XFCE's amazing customization capability.

[@ameknite]

I hope you can try Cosmic when is ready

[@MichaelNROH]

I'm sure gonna check it out

[@DDracee]

no DE is for everyone though, especially gnome considering how controversial it is in the linux space and if your goal is to appeal to windows users, UKUI was literally made for that, and ukui-kwin has wayland support personally i find KDE looks pretty dated, everythings cramped and boxy and gives off bloated vibes in the default configurations, win11 and the latest macOS moves towards more minimalist designs, KDE feels like taking windows xp and slapping transparency on it and lastly when it comes to attracting new users, you get more success showing them stuff they can't do in windows rather than "look it can pretend to be windows decently enough", cuz the latter isn't a reason to swap, there's a lot of windows users trying out linux specifically because they want to try something like hyprland

[@grantschilb8019]

Here's to hoping Cosmic DE fixes this for the masses...I'm still using GNOME, mostly because it has that minimal macOS inspired UI and has better Window management than macOS. Even GNOME though, has sacrifices, like poor fractional scaling support. Most of the Linux DE's really look like win9x, which is why I ultimately use GNOME. I've not tried UKUI, can it use x11 in VMs? (I don't do wayland for virtual machines), only hosts.

[@DDracee]

@@grantschilb8019 yeah cosmic seems like itll tick all the boxes, and yes ukui does both x11 and wayland

[@grantschilb8019]

@@DDracee cool, I've been experimenting with XFCE these days since it has better high DPI than GNOME as of now. Biggest thing is miss from GNOME is touchpad gestures. Does the wayland session for UKUI support touchpad, or will that be a future implementation?

[@DDracee]

@@grantschilb8019 not sure about gestures, i dont use touch, i know it supports custom touch mapping and has it's own touch input library so worst case scenario gestures are just a script away i've only shortly played around with ukui since it was offered on cachyOS and i was curious, so im no expert on it, personally i mostly use tiling WMs, currently on awesomeWM

[@jktolford8272]

Very informative. I prefer Mint Cinnamon *because* I find modern design trends distracting & often ugly. I actually modify the interface to bland single color or 2 color gradient back grounds. I'd rather look *away* from the screen for an engaging visual environment. (Physically better for the eyes, more choice.) Wayland support *may* become an issue, but by then it will likely be improved & supported & better supported in Cinnamon & elsewhere.

[@ianoconnor1515]

100 % Linux mint, I love the win 9X user experience

[@Arch-Propagandist-Sage]

Xfce is my favourite but xorg causes screen glitches on my machine so i was using kde for 2yrs and was waiting for xfce wayland. Now i m on windows.

[@Bixmy]

well gnome did convince me to use linux just cos how simple and fluid it looks out of the box. which what I need a desktop that work and looks good. mind u its way less customizable than other alternative. but I don't need customizable. i just want it to feel nice with no tinkering.

[@SSquirrel1976]

Used Linux back in 2001-3 my second round of being in college and I remember hating Gnome back then and thinking I enjoyed KDE more. Plus tried out early Fedora Core, but I was mostly messing w my old machine bc I had replaced it and didn’t want to try and futz w Linux to run things like Star Wars Galaxies. I’ve checked in here and there over the years and the last year or so played in a lot of distros in Virtual ox on my Mac. Still can’t stand Gnome and I think the “Launchpad as main way to start apps” is taking the worst part of MacOS and putting it front and center. I do really like where Cinnamon sits and installed LMDE 6 on my MIL 12 yr old Dell after I made a couple of upgrades to it. I still play in several different distros, but at this point most of them are running KDE in Wayland. Mac has t had NVidia in ages so no worries on that front, but Virtualbox is so outdated I’m exploring UTM now. If I eventually grab a copy of Parallels I may dive deeper into things, but really it’s just something fun to explore more than anything else. I do feel MacOS just gets out of my way vs Windows,and Linux is capable of that, although some distros do really feel like are a million updates. Arch based for example, of which I have enjoyed EndeavourOS the most. Generally Fedora, OpenSUSE, EndeavourOS have been where I’m settling in more. Mint seems like they are quickly coming to a point where they will have. To make a decision regarding Ubuntu, bc Ubuntu’s baseline feels like it’s at odds with what the project wants for itself. While Debian’s r3cent update last summer made LMDE6 a more up to date option for my MIL computer vs regular Mint, Ubuntu sticking w/5.27 KDE is deflating if still understandable. Enjoyed the video and frankly there are plenty of folks talking about all those other DEs. Focus on the ones you want to talk about and the videos will feel better to make.

[@Dampferfrosch]

I can also live without any DE .....a window manager like fluxbox or openbox is just enough for me

[@danielton9577]

It seems like the expectation is that anyone who uses Linux for more than a couple of years is supposed to "graduate" to a tiling window manager/compositor. I've been using Linux since 2004 and have always used a full desktop environment, and I am currently on KDE. Not sure when I'm supposed to want to switch to a tiling wm, but I still don't like them.

[@MichaelNROH]

The question is if you are willing to configure them. I recently tried Hyprland and first impressions are good, but there is just so much that you need to do. Especially on multi monitor setups

[@danielton9577]

@@MichaelNROH I sometimes get the impression that most people who switch to Linux seem to think the only way to use a computer is to make it as hard as possible, hence the expectation to graduate to a tiling window manager. I used to have to compile the kernel to get my sound working. I'm sticking with KDE!

[@jonathang1499]

what distro are you using michael

[@MichaelNROH]

Fedora currently

[@davemeech]

Multimonitor setup has been a painpoint with linux as a whole so far. I've spent the most with KDE, and being able to apply panel and taskbar changes uniformly to all monitors just isn't a thing, and it drove me up the wall. I'm going to see soon hopefully if plasma 6 has improved in that realm at all.

[@MichaelNROH]

Implementing this is a bit challenging. For my monitor setup for example, the top bar would have to be rendered at a smaller height than my main one, so that it matches the resolution between 1440p and 1080p. Otherwise the same panel would look bigger on once screen than the other.

[@jasonsnell708]

Wayland: No screen tearing while playing games (Fedora 39 and 40) X11: Definite screen tearing on fast moving scenes. Wayland: No support for Rust Desk Remote Desktop. X11: Rust Desk works fine.

[@VenRoot]

Wayland always had more issues for me, especially with the XWayland bridge and other applications trying to use more than 60Hz. So I'm still using X11 Just two problems with X here ^^ Primary mon is 2560x1440@240 and my secondary is 1920x1080@60 Dragging a window from one screen to the other may cause a freeze for 1-2 seconds. Just sharing my screen through discord with audio is currently not really possible (it is through a modded client tho) Alsp whenever a Telegram notification pops up, or when I'm changing the volume, so whenever another graphic pops up over the game, it suddenly feels choppy and laggy until the popup is gone

[@Tenferenzu]

I'd go one step further and just show Gnome. KDE is nice and everything but every time I tried it I found at least one bug that was breaking my UX. The most recent one was with a 7840HS machine where the KDE version of Debian would not work with my dock but the normal Gnome version had absolutely no problems. Gnome might be a bit limited sometimes but at least it does what it is supposed to do. I first installed Debian KDE because it has proper fractional scaling and wayland support which isn't unimportent when a 14" laptop has a resolution of 2560x1600@120Hz and installed everything I needed only to then realize the next day that the dock doesn't work. I then tried the Live ISO with Gnome and had no problems so I just installed that instead. Not having fractional scaling doesn't bother me that much because everything looks decent at 200% scaling anyways. I'd have liked 150-175% but tbh, 200% is still ok and wayyy better than 100% on a screen that size. Grüße aus Wien ;)

[@cameronbosch1213]

If you're a Windows user, GNOME with no extensions is a good way to keep them from using Linux. The UI and UX paradigm is just way too different to be a good fit coming from Windows.

[@Tenferenzu]

I don't know about you but if something looks different and works in a different way than Windows is a positive in my book if you are seraching for Windows alternatives. If your goal is to have a Windows replacement then KDE also doesn't help because even if the UI is similar, the rest ist not. If you don't expect it to work like Windows, you are wayyy more likely to search for other solutions and new approaches. (Unless you just need an internet machine then it literally doesn't matter what you run as long as it has an up to date browser...)

[@techofebd]

Nome is loved

[@Kamion008]

Fedora: x11 fallback? What's that? Btw I use a Hyperland configuration which is almost perfect but I'll change a few things later on. I still use KDE and Gnome sometimes (I still have them installed)

[@c.n.crowther438]

I just love the flexibility of plasma. The endless flexibility is just perfect.

[@kidgoku1984]

Imo Cinnamon is by far the best desktop. It's more stable and easier to use than KDE, more customizable than Gnome, better battery life than both.

[@MichaelNROH]

I'm not quite sure how big the impact actually is. Cinnamon is a bit lighter, but battery tuning is usually not being affected much by the Desktop Environment, but rather drivers, schedulers, and kernel tweaks

[@kidgoku1984]

@@MichaelNROH there are probably a bunch of things affecting it for sure. In my experience, Linux Mint Cinnamon gives about 4 hours battery while Fedora KDE gives 2.5.

[@kidgoku1984]

@@MichaelNROH your comment inspired me to test the battery life of all 3 desktops on the same distribution on my PC. With Fedora 40 I got 2.5 hrs battery on KDE, 3 hrs on Gnome, 4 on Cinnamon. No hate on any desktop, I'm sure KDE and Gnome have their own benefits too.

[@TransSwissCat]

I have no issues between wayland or x11, but sadly recently I got a new nvme and now that I dual boot endeavourOs-kde I ended up having a black screen after login, x11 worked fine dough, I still sadly don't know what is wrong and I have no energy to look into it =/

[@solidandshade]

I have 180 degrees opposite experience of what you are saying half of this video. I listened to you with my mouth half open actually... Using Wayland with my Nvidia has been the worst experience I have ever had in my 40 years (yes) of using computers. It tears the desktop, flickers windows and mouse cursor, also stutters the cursor, have multiple issues with my dual monitor setup. It is a house of horrors no matter the distro and both on Kde and Gnome. And I have none of the above problems while using Mint + Cinnamon x11 and I didn't need to do anything at all. Wayland and Gnome developers know this crap and they promised to solve it in mid May with new drivers. Stuff you say are contradictory to reality (for nvidia at least).

[@Kirathian1234]

For whatever reason, for me, Wayland (with Nvidia) everything just feels smoother on the desktop vs X11. Like moving around app windows, the way things animate, or scrolling text in a web browser. Everything is finally smooth. I'm assuming X11 is acting weird for me because I have multiple monitors at different refresh rates? I've tested this on quite a few distros and desktop environments too. On X11 everything works properly but it feels like everything is running at 1/3rd of the framerate. It's weird. My biggest test for Wayland is whether or not I can play Factorio without reducing my monitor's refresh rate down to 60 (Factorio runs locked at 60fps and it's tied to the game's logic). If I leave the refresh rate at 144hz (or higher) the game flickers like crazy. It's a native Linux game too. A lot of steam proton/wine stuff actually works fine. Some still have random elements flickering, but it's rare. I feel so annoyed with having an Nvidia card because I really like what I've tried out of Linux. It's just this dumb flickering nonsense! It happens in Chromium too. Almost exclusively on Twitter for some random reason. As if it's a flickering sign from God to stop using Twitter. And again, I have tried to get used to X11 but when it feels so weird and low framerate it just pushes me back to windows. X11 is also screen tearing quite a bit too. I know that explicit sync thing is coming soon right? Please let that finally fix this cursed flickering wayland issue.

[@jorge86rodriguez]

I do not think there is any value in recommending to new users any desktop environment besides the most common: kde, gnome and xfce (for old computers), maybe cinnamon if they are installing linux mint. If they become advance users and want to experiment later, fine but not at the beginning

[@lolff1566]

Bro which Linux distro should i use for good performance, looks and it should be able to run in my old laptop with 2 gigabyte's of ram

[@davguev]

Puppy Linux.

[@MichaelNROH]

Some distros like ZorinOS or Fedora offer a Lite Version or IoT Spin of their Distros, but with 2 Gigabytes of RAM, your main concern are applications like browsers which are nowadays made for more memory machines unfortunately

[@lolff1566]

Bro which OS do you use it looks attractive

[@iplyrunescape305]

yeah it gets tough when it comes to web browsing concerning RAM. I have some REALLY old laptops that I tested running Linux on, and majority of somewhat light distros will work very well. Where issues run is running a browser. KZbin and very script heavy websites will use up not only a lot RAM, but also CPU which if you have a really old and slow CPU, it's gonna struggle. No matter how light the distro. the best you can do is use Konqueror to browse websites that aren't that heavy. that being said, I've used AntiX Linux and Puppy Linux for these tests. Occasionally Debian.

[@GnuChanOS]

I tried Manjaro Wayland a week ago because I use an old Nvidia laptop. However, when I tried to open Plasma Wayland, it only showed a cursor and a black screen. CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2350M (4) @ 2,30 GHz GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M GPU 2: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller