I thought I'd do one here, since it's been a while since I made something (and actually Linux related too I think).

I'm curious as to what your window manager or desktop environment of choice is. Everyone's preferences will be different, but that's fine by me.

For my pick, I have two of them: i3wm and BSPWM (this one I started using recently). I personally love using window managers that are easy to configure, and these two are pretty easy once set up properly (BSPWM is a little involved, but worth it). i3 because that's fantastic for beginners (despite needing a plugin or two), and BSPWM because of its unique tiling capabilities (also despite needing some tweaking). Those are my two picks.

For me I prefer to go oldschool and use Sawfish because it's so lightweight (16mb right now lol), fast, and written in Lisp (so I can modify its code as it's running if I want). I also greatly prefer a skeuomorphic look to the flat look that's popular these days, and it has some themes that fit that nicely, so...

Then I add two instances of fbpanel to vaguely resemble the layout of an AmigaOS 3.x/4.x desktop, bind a terminal (Terminology) to meta+f1, Emacs to meta+f3, bind Xfce's Application Finder to super+space... and that's basically it. I don't enable any sort of compositing/desktop effects since I don't really like them and they just end up eating up resources.

whatever ubutnu comes installed with

MistressRemilia wrote:

For me I prefer to go oldschool and use Sawfish because it's so lightweight (16mb right now lol), fast, and written in Lisp (so I can modify its code as it's running if I want). I also greatly prefer a skeuomorphic look to the flat look that's popular these days, and it has some themes that fit that nicely, so...

I've never heard of SawfishWM. How old is it?

Neigdoig wrote:

MistressRemilia wrote:

For me I prefer to go oldschool and use Sawfish because it's so lightweight (16mb right now lol), fast, and written in Lisp (so I can modify its code as it's running if I want). I also greatly prefer a skeuomorphic look to the flat look that's popular these days, and it has some themes that fit that nicely, so...

Then I add two instances of fbpanel to vaguely resemble the layout of an AmigaOS 3.x/4.x desktop, bind a terminal (Terminology) to meta+f1, Emacs to meta+f3, bind Xfce's Application Finder to super+space... and that's basically it. I don't enable any sort of compositing/desktop effects since I don't really like them and they just end up eating up resources.

Outdated screenshot from my desktop, it now has a lewd anime wallpaper instead of this

I've never heard of SawfishWM. How old is it?

Initial release was January 1st, 2000 according to Wikipedia, most recent stable was in 2021.

Back when I was new to Linux I settled on Debian and KDE Plasma, since it resembled the Windows look and experience I was used to at the time. Have used Plasma as my DE ever since, switching distros along the way.
I rarely do visual customisation and focus more on the usability.

Recently I also experiment with running osu!lazer directly hooked up to an X server with no compositor or window manager with the goal of reducing visual latency to a minimum.

sineplusx wrote:

Recently I also experiment with running osu!lazer directly hooked up to an X server with no compositor or window manager with the goal of reducing visual latency to a minimum.

That I find interesting. Any progress thus far?

Neigdoig wrote:

That I find interesting. Any progress thus far?

osu!lazer running exclusively on the X server feels about the same as on Plasma (Wayland). The difference in latency is probably so small that I might have to get measuring equipment to see it. One of my hopes is that Adaptive Sync / VRR will improve things, but I havent been able to get it to work properly with my display yet.

i used to use awesome, until i tried awesome and i used that for around a year. a friend suggested xmonad to me and i switched to it recently and i think im in love

redleader20056 wrote:

i used to use awesome, until i tried awesome and i used that for around a year. a friend suggested xmonad to me and i switched to it recently and i think im in love

I was thinking of getting into Xmonad and learning Haskell this way. Granted, it may be a bit difficult to get into, but it might be worth a shot.

GNOME. I like that it's consistent across different hardware; 1080p laptop, Phosh on phones, 4K displays needing 200% scaling, 2-in-1s, GNOME does it all well and even Wayland.

I used to distro hop a lot, and found GNOME to be well-implemented in all distros. I primarily use Fedora Workstation.

I have 2 PCs, one with only Linux (Zorin), and one that I plan to dual boot Windows with Kali (to code)

Zorin (my old PC): GNOME, because I can't choose
Kali (VM): Plasma
Kali (Dual boot when I can): Xfce, good but can't choose because of WSL

BluePyTheDeer_ wrote:

I have 2 PCs, one with only Linux (Zorin), and one that I plan to dual boot Windows with Kali (to code)

Zorin (my old PC): GNOME, because I can't choose
Kali (VM): Plasma
Kali (Dual boot when I can): Xfce, good but can't choose because of WSL

I have Cinnamon on Mint 21.3, but installed i3 and BSPWM on top of that. You should be able to do that too for your Zorin machine, though the software will be much older.

Thanks! I will try it later an update this ASAP

I have Arch Linux with KDE Plasma. Not a fond with tilling window managers.

KDE Plasma. Dead simple, great looking by default, customizable, works well, it's reliable. Before Plasma, it was XFCE. Both are great, but I like Plasma more nowadays.

WMs aren't my thing, at all. If I want tilling on my system, there are ways to add that to Plasma

Winnyace wrote:

WMs aren't my thing, at all.

That's why I said WM/DE in the title. You're all good.

Doom Mood wrote:

I have Arch Linux with KDE Plasma. Not a fond with tilling window managers.

That's completely fair. WM's can be a bit scary, but I like them (Heck, I use two of them, switching sometimes).

Zorin: GNOME
Kali (finally installed): Plasma (found a way lol)

Neigdoig wrote:

I thought I'd do one here, since it's been a while since I made something (and actually Linux related too I think).

I'm curious as to what your window manager or desktop environment of choice is. Everyone's preferences will be different, but that's fine by me.

For my pick, I have two of them: i3wm and BSPWM (this one I started using recently). I personally love using window managers that are easy to configure, and these two are pretty easy once set up properly (BSPWM is a little involved, but worth it). i3 because that's fantastic for beginners (despite needing a plugin or two), and BSPWM because of its unique tiling capabilities (also despite needing some tweaking). Those are my two picks.

I've been looking at desktop environments to be more comfortable with. I moved from kde plasma wayland to cinnamon bc wayland on kde makes the compositor enable and you cant turn it off bc its always on. I wanna wait for wayland on cinnamon or xfce because I just want smth light weight. I used window managers but im just kinda done ricing and getting everything to work correctly.

granoladotwad wrote:

I've been looking at desktop environments to be more comfortable with. I moved from kde plasma wayland to cinnamon bc wayland on kde makes the compositor enable and you cant turn it off bc its always on. I wanna wait for wayland on cinnamon or xfce because I just want smth light weight. I used window managers but im just kinda done ricing and getting everything to work correctly.

On Plasma, the compositor will turn itself off when an application is in full screen. The delay is mostly introduced because of XWayland for things like osu! stable, however, a patch has been implemented to correctly turn off the compositor on Wine applications too. I've tried playing stable on Plasma Wayland with no issues. I've moved to Lazer mostly because I like the new features it offers and the fact it is native on Linux.

After messing around with AntiX, the idea of installing bare-bone Debian and JWM sounds very tempting to me...

Anyways, I've tried quite a few WM/DE over the past few years or so (my main os is still windows but whatever). I'd pick cinnamon as my DE of choice due to its practicality. Followed by XFCE I guess. These two never let gave me up, let me down nor run around and desert me. Never let me cry, never say goodbye nor tell a lie and hurt me.

Anyways here's my review of all DE/WM I've tried

Unity

It was 2015 and my then-school bought a new set of PC, which came pre-installed with Ubuntu. It was my first exposure to the Linux operating system. And it was solid I guess? I remember my classmate trying to install Minecraft on it (they failed) and my teacher struggling with LibreOffice lol.

Cinnamon

I've dual-boot windows and Linux Mint Cinnamon on multiple occasions. The UI/UX may seems old and boring. But it's very reliable and never breaks. And you also don't get overwhelmed with gazillions of settings unlike a certain desktop environment. I'd probably migrate to Linux Mint Cinnamon after windows 10 EOL cuz it's the most practical of all I suppose.

KDE

I've messed around Kubuntu earlier this year. Although it's still on the latest release of KDE 5, things break left, right and centre. KDE somehow set my mouse speed randomly everytime I boot into my PC. The settings app is also somewhat buggy. And despite having gazillions of customization options, I can't find a way to theme it natively without relying on third-party tools like Kvantum and qt5ct (or it could be that I haven't find the right docs lol) The UI is also overwhelming, giving user thousands of options at once without telling which setting does what.

XFCE

I installed Mint XFCE to school PC when I was in high school btw cuz the machine is so old it can barely runs Windows 7 (I mean, Core 2 Duo with onboard graphics 2 GB of RAM......in 2020!!! It can barely load web browser, let alone watching any YouTube video (which the teachers often use it for)). It's lightweight and stable. Altough things could break if you messed around too much. Good for lower-end PCs I guess. I also like the fact that it's modular (I've set up i3 with XFCE panel lol). But if you have somewhat of a modern machine I'd suggest using cinnamon instead.

MATE

It is what it is. A modernised Gnome 2. And I cannot launch Caja (the file manager) from terminal for some reason. So use XFCE instead I guess.

Gnome

It has the best touchpad support I guess. But I don't like their design philosophy. It feels like using a tablet rather than a PC. And it feels like they wasted a lot of spaces in the UI especially in Gnome 40 onwards.

Enlightenment

I've tried it using Bodhi Linux. The UX looks straight out of the 90s/early 2000s. Although very lightweight at around 350MB idle (booting from a Live ISO image from my USB stick), I think I'd be better off using XFCE or bare-bone WM without DE.

LXQt

The most lightweight of them all (theoretically speaking). The fact that you can change WM on-the-go means that you'd get the basic functionalities and GUI settings for your WM without having to configure the scary non-WM-related config files (like xrandr etc.) Which seems good to me, but I've never dive that deep into this DE.

speaking of WM.......

Openbox

Remember the Mint XFCE school PC I mentioned earlier? well, before installing that I used to run NomadBSD (yes technically not linux but whatever) off of an USB stick in order to get YouTube and web browser somewhat working. If I remember correctly, NomadBSD uses Openbox. It has all the basic functionalities of what you'd expected from a windows manager and also very lightweight. Other than that, idk.

JWM

Same with Openbox but it's SO F*CKIN SNAPPY. AntiX + JWM uses only 200-300 MEGABYTES of RAM, while running from a USB stick.

IceWM and Fluxbox

Also came pre-installed within AntiX ISO. Does the same stuffs as Openbox and JWM and also have very minimal footprints. But I think those two looks better.

i3

Ah yes... Tiling Windows Manager. I like the idea of it but you've to set everything... and I mean EVERY GOD DAMN THING manually. You could argue that Openbox, JWM, IceWM and Fluxbox are equally hard to set up, but there're lots of distros, like MX linux fluxbox, AntiX, NomadBSD and a lot more, offering those bare-bone WM without a full DE which came fully pre-configured and 99% of the functionalities you'd expect from a working PC...works. Things like closing the laptop lid and the screen locks automatically etc and ALL multimedia keys working by default, as well as some GUI settings apps. i3, on the other hand, only came with like 50% of stuffs working and without any GUI. Yes, I've spent some time and configured it. But in the end, when I wipe off the Linux partition cuz I need more disk space, I was still using sudo reboot now and sudo shutdown now to reboot and shutdown while in the i3 session. (I mentioned about using XFCE panel earlier, but in the end that's too wonky I reverted to the default panel which, you know, sucks).

Qtile

mostly the same with i3 except this thing is an auto tiler. It appears to have solid documentation. But unlike i3, I don't even know where to start configuring this thing. (even if I mainly do programming in Python). AND installing a whole ass Windows Manager from pip.... YES, pip, the Python package manager. seems quite funny and cute to me.

That's all of my rant I guess.

When I was using XFCE Mint I used muffin (yeah, I know, im a complete Linux n00b) but I'll be going back tomorrow

Jangsoodlor wrote:

a long post about DEs and WMs on Linux

After messing around with AntiX, the idea of installing bare-bone Debian and JWM sounds very tempting to me...

Anyways, I've tried quite a few WM/DE over the past few years or so (my main os is still windows but whatever). I'd pick cinnamon as my DE of choice due to its practicality. Followed by XFCE I guess. These two never let gave me up, let me down nor run around and desert me. Never let me cry, never say goodbye nor tell a lie and hurt me.

Anyways here's my review of all DE/WM I've tried

Unity

It was 2015 and my then-school bought a new set of PC, which came pre-installed with Ubuntu. It was my first exposure to the Linux operating system. And it was solid I guess? I remember my classmate trying to install Minecraft on it (they failed) and my teacher struggling with LibreOffice lol.

Cinnamon

I've dual-boot windows and Linux Mint Cinnamon on multiple occasions. The UI/UX may seems old and boring. But it's very reliable and never breaks. And you also don't get overwhelmed with gazillions of settings unlike a certain desktop environment. I'd probably migrate to Linux Mint Cinnamon after windows 10 EOL cuz it's the most practical of all I suppose.

KDE

I've messed around Kubuntu earlier this year. Although it's still on the latest release of KDE 5, things break left, right and centre. KDE somehow set my mouse speed randomly everytime I boot into my PC. The settings app is also somewhat buggy. And despite having gazillions of customization options, I can't find a way to theme it natively without relying on third-party tools like Kvantum and qt5ct (or it could be that I haven't find the right docs lol) The UI is also overwhelming, giving user thousands of options at once without telling which setting does what.

XFCE

I installed Mint XFCE to school PC when I was in high school btw cuz the machine is so old it can barely runs Windows 7 (I mean, Core 2 Duo with onboard graphics 2 GB of RAM......in 2020!!! It can barely load web browser, let alone watching any YouTube video (which the teachers often use it for)). It's lightweight and stable. Altough things could break if you messed around too much. Good for lower-end PCs I guess. I also like the fact that it's modular (I've set up i3 with XFCE panel lol). But if you have somewhat of a modern machine I'd suggest using cinnamon instead.

MATE

It is what it is. A modernised Gnome 2. And I cannot launch Caja (the file manager) from terminal for some reason. So use XFCE instead I guess.

Gnome

It has the best touchpad support I guess. But I don't like their design philosophy. It feels like using a tablet rather than a PC. And it feels like they wasted a lot of spaces in the UI especially in Gnome 40 onwards.

Enlightenment

I've tried it using Bodhi Linux. The UX looks straight out of the 90s/early 2000s. Although very lightweight at around 350MB idle (booting from a Live ISO image from my USB stick), I think I'd be better off using XFCE or bare-bone WM without DE.

LXQt

The most lightweight of them all (theoretically speaking). The fact that you can change WM on-the-go means that you'd get the basic functionalities and GUI settings for your WM without having to configure the scary non-WM-related config files (like xrandr etc.) Which seems good to me, but I've never dive that deep into this DE.

speaking of WM.......

Openbox

Remember the Mint XFCE school PC I mentioned earlier? well, before installing that I used to run NomadBSD (yes technically not linux but whatever) off of an USB stick in order to get YouTube and web browser somewhat working. If I remember correctly, NomadBSD uses Openbox. It has all the basic functionalities of what you'd expected from a windows manager and also very lightweight. Other than that, idk.

JWM

Same with Openbox but it's SO F*CKIN SNAPPY. AntiX + JWM uses only 200-300 MEGABYTES of RAM, while running from a USB stick.

IceWM and Fluxbox

Also came pre-installed within AntiX ISO. Does the same stuffs as Openbox and JWM and also have very minimal footprints. But I think those two looks better.

i3

Ah yes... Tiling Windows Manager. I like the idea of it but you've to set everything... and I mean EVERY GOD DAMN THING manually. You could argue that Openbox, JWM, IceWM and Fluxbox are equally hard to set up, but there're lots of distros, like MX linux fluxbox, AntiX, NomadBSD and a lot more, offering those bare-bone WM without a full DE which came fully pre-configured and 99% of the functionalities you'd expect from a working PC...works. Things like closing the laptop lid and the screen locks automatically etc and ALL multimedia keys working by default, as well as some GUI settings apps. i3, on the other hand, only came with like 50% of stuffs working and without any GUI. Yes, I've spent some time and configured it. But in the end, when I wipe off the Linux partition cuz I need more disk space, I was still using sudo reboot now and sudo shutdown now to reboot and shutdown while in the i3 session. (I mentioned about using XFCE panel earlier, but in the end that's too wonky I reverted to the default panel which, you know, sucks).

Qtile

mostly the same with i3 except this thing is an auto tiler. It appears to have solid documentation. But unlike i3, I don't even know where to start configuring this thing. (even if I mainly do programming in Python). AND installing a whole ass Windows Manager from pip.... YES, pip, the Python package manager. seems quite funny and cute to me.

That's all of my rant I guess.

KDE Plasma and GNOME are the most polished examples of DEs on the market. Kubuntu isn't a good candidate because in general Ubuntu is going the corporate route, enforcing Snaps for no real. Distributions like KDE Neon, Fedora Plasma Spin or openSUSE Tumbleweed have better implementations of the Plasma desktop than Kubuntu in my humble opinion.

Cinnamon is the Plasma of the GTK world. It tries to be as functional as possible and they mostly did that, but it is clear the best experience for Cinnamon is on Linux Mint.

XFCE is great if you want a lightweight DE, that's modular and based on GTK.

Everything else is either not worth looking at IMO or straight up esoteric land. For most people if GNOME doesn't work for them, they will go to Plasma. With Plasma 6, they have updated the settings menu to make more sense and be less scary.

great_elmo wrote:

When I was using XFCE Mint I used muffin (yeah, I know, im a complete Linux n00b) but I'll be going back tomorrow

To my knowledge, Muffin is the window compositor Linux Mint made for Cinnamon and they use it on XFCE too by default. Stop feeling inferior because of your level of knowledge regarding these things. After a while, you would naturally go towards just wanting stuff to work.

Im currently using kwin on endevourOS on kde plasma

I am trying out a kwin script called Platonium so I can have a tiling window manager in it just to see if I like it (so far its not too bad but its a little janky)

I decided to switch things up a few weeks ago and went back to using Enlightenment 0.26.0. A lot of stuff seems fixed from earlier versions, and I'm honestly enjoying the heck out of it. I really love how I can have the pager flash a window at me when it has an alert (and in the window switcher), or how I can drag windows around from within it (or across desktops). And its screenshot tool is rather neat. It's heavier (~300mb vs ~26mb for Sawfish lol), but meh I guess it's worth it.

The default theme is trash, though. I replaced it with a tweaked older default immediately.

DWM since it's simple and it works. If I want to configure something, I can just change the source code with a patch and recompile it. It's simpler than having to learn new syntax/complex features just for a window manager or a desktop environment. I haven't done anything to stock other than add a patch to allow for transparent windows and a wallpaper.

KDE plasma

Favorite window manager will probably hyprland, but for desktop environments I prefer Xfce and KDE plasma. Currently running Xfce on an Endeavour Install.

For me, experiencing different desktop environments/window managers is one of the motivations for me to tinker with Linux.

I started with Unity from Ubuntu, but to be honest, I wasn't very satisfied with it.

After that, I tried Fedora, which uses GNOME by default. Although it took some getting used to, I found it quite visually appealing.

Later on, I was introduced to Arch and KDE Plasma (I followed an installation tutorial written by someone else), which might be the desktop I used for the longest time (it wasn't until last week that I switched to Cinnamon).

Additionally, I've used Xfce on Kali, and I like its default theme.

I've also set up a container in Termux on Android, where I installed LXDE.

I've installed Lubuntu in a virtual machine, which uses LXQt.

I've also used Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) and Ubuntu Kylin User Interface (UKUI).

To sum up, I enjoy trying different things

ZnCookie wrote:

For me, experiencing different desktop environments/window managers is one of the motivations for me to tinker with Linux.

I started with Unity from Ubuntu, but to be honest, I wasn't very satisfied with it.

After that, I tried Fedora, which uses GNOME by default. Although it took some getting used to, I found it quite visually appealing.

Later on, I was introduced to Arch and KDE Plasma (I followed an installation tutorial written by someone else), which might be the desktop I used for the longest time (it wasn't until last week that I switched to Cinnamon).

Additionally, I've used Xfce on Kali, and I like its default theme.

I've also set up a container in Termux on Android, where I installed LXDE.

I've installed Lubuntu in a virtual machine, which uses LXQt.

I've also used Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) and Ubuntu Kylin User Interface (UKUI).

To sum up, I enjoy trying different things

This is one of the most fun parts of Linux, imo :3 Every once in a while I'll go on a WM/DE binge and try out a bunch of them just for the fun of it, though mainly older/obscure ones for me.

My first DE was MATE but my current favorite is GNOME, I'm using Debian and it has worked well for me.

I really enjoy GNOME's workspace switching.

I've also tinkered with Sway as a WM and it's fun although I don't think I can replace GNOME, it just works.

On my laptop, I run i3. I tried it out one day and it kinda just stuck. I like that I can do most things without touching a mouse, which is nice on a laptop. It also ships with sane defaults. On a desktop, I've found I actually really like Gnome. It kinda just works, and I find that I prefer mouse-driven interactions on a desktop.

MistressRemilia wrote:

For me I prefer to go oldschool and use Sawfish because it's so lightweight (16mb right now lol), fast, and written in Lisp (so I can modify its code as it's running if I want).

Although I might need to check out Sawfish when I have more time.

two-hand Tim wrote:

On my laptop, I run i3. I tried it out one day and it kinda just stuck. I like that I can do most things without touching a mouse, which is nice on a laptop. It also ships with sane defaults. On a desktop, I've found I actually really like Gnome. It kinda just works, and I find that I prefer mouse-driven interactions on a desktop.

That I had stuck to i3 as well, since nothing else stuck (like Xmonad or Awesome).

ZnCookie wrote:

For me, experiencing different desktop environments/window managers is one of the motivations for me to tinker with Linux.

I started with Unity from Ubuntu, but to be honest, I wasn't very satisfied with it.

After that, I tried Fedora, which uses GNOME by default. Although it took some getting used to, I found it quite visually appealing.

Later on, I was introduced to Arch and KDE Plasma (I followed an installation tutorial written by someone else), which might be the desktop I used for the longest time (it wasn't until last week that I switched to Cinnamon).

Additionally, I've used Xfce on Kali, and I like its default theme.

I've also set up a container in Termux on Android, where I installed LXDE.

I've installed Lubuntu in a virtual machine, which uses LXQt.

I've also used Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) and Ubuntu Kylin User Interface (UKUI).

To sum up, I enjoy trying different things

Isn't Deepin the only Linux distro allowed in China? I might be wrong about that, but I thought it was.

I am currently using KDE Plasma with a kwin script to give me a tiling window manager (I wanted to try it out without putting the effort into i3 or hyprland **YET**)

KDE is probably my favorite DE so far but XFCE is really nice too.

I really want to give hyprland a shot on my thinkpad though.

XFCE is my personal favorite as an on and off Linux user. But I'm willing to try others

i3 - wm — The best window manager, with Vudek, Red Pixel & Bubbleman was playing.

tityaa wrote:

i3 - wm — The best window manager, with Vudek, Red Pixel & Bubbleman was playing.

I'm also an i3 stan myself (though if I could get Wayland working, I could take a crack at Sway).

linux user try not to make your OS an identity statement challenge

...bspwm on void

clayton wrote:

bspwm on void

I tried installing Void on a VM one time. I did not have a good time with the install process.

MATE + Compiz

user3412 wrote:

MATE + Compiz

I happened to use Picom, which is a modern fork of Compiz (unless I got that information wrong, and it's the other way around).