Linux

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

Gnome on the laptop, its keyboard and touch gestures are the best for notebooks. I also like its simple design and reliability.

KDE on desktop, I'd use gnome, but kwin has more gaming relevant features.

i3. Superb for keyboard-driven environment. Ultra fast, so responsive and configurable. The best.

I use i3. Pretty bare bones, so it took me a while to get productive with it. But it's all exactly how I want it, it's all mine.

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.

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.

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

Hyprland on my desktop

GNOME on my laptop

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

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.

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

KDE, it does what I want it to do.

KDE Plasma

It was what came on the steam deck lol

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:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Gnome, but I just wanted to say Cinnamon is fantastic (probably my first choice if I weren't on a laptop)

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.

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.

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).

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

Sway, will try the new cosmic once its in beta

trinity because it's lighter than almost everything else while having more features than almost everything else

I used enlightenment for something like a decade. When Gnome hit the big time I used Gnome because it looked Nice and was very flexible. I went back to Mac and Windows Land for a bit, when I came back I went Gnome again. I just screw around for a day looking and picking plugins and fighting with it to get it exactly how I wanted it. After fighting with one of the older plugins that mustn't doing what I wanted to do I saw somebody mentioned using KDE. I tried KDE and sure enough every single thing I was plugging the hell out of Gnome for was a default setting in KDE. I'm currently running Plasma. I must say that Cinnamon's not bad either.

KDE on my main gaming PC, or if I want something that looks really modern and sleek without tons of setup/tweaking on another PC.

Mint with Cinnamon if I want a #justworks setup that is rock stable and I don't need to look sexy.

My side business laptop uses LMDE with Cinnamon for that reason. I need that thing to be rock stable and dependable at all times.

Cinnamon has been more stable for me than any other DE, and in my experience, is just as performant as other low-spec favorites like XFCE. My fresh install of LMDE with Cinnamon right after boot uses about 850MB of memory. My testing with XFCE was about the same, maybe 50-75MB less, which for my use case is effectively identical.

Not crapping on XFCE though, I like playing with it on one of my old thinkpads. Not a fan at all of Gnome, I've tried to like it for years, but I just don't care for it, and I experience quite a few bugs.

I plan on trying the new Cosmic DE soon, it seems like Gnome done better, and I could see myself liking it from the reviews I've watched.