Dig Deeper Community Forum

Just wondering what you like, dislike and what you use on a regular basis. Maybe you don't use a Desktop Environment....

I use cinnamon because I like pretty things and it is what I am used to.

xfce with clearlooks cannot be beaten

Cinnamon, visually I think UKUI is really nice, unfortunately I get graphical issues on my computer when using UKUI.

Xfce 4.12 (GTK2). Otherwise, LXDE (GTK2) or TDE (TQt) will do. Say no to GNOME, KDE Plasma, and every other GTK3-based (and newer) and Qt5-based (and newer) DE.

I use dwm, it's the most minimal usable solution

Xfce. LXDE is barely maintained last I checked, IceWM is unusable, and most other DEs are all bloat. I tried tiling WMs before but they don't work for me. Trinity is okay but too niche and requires setting up their own repos. Basically everything sucks but Xfce sucks the least.

Didn't vote because it's been awhile since i used Linux. Last one i used was Ubuntu and it had unity, looked pretty nice, i actually liked it. Nowadays, if i had a decent computer, I'd go with KDE.

I have yet to try ukui. I like xfce because of the good balance of features and leaving the user in co trol of the system. Also it's nice you can iconify things to te desktop. Apparently you can still change the wm when using gnome or kde but I don't feel like learning the process. I like kde as well. It has a great feature set, is easy to configure, and it has the global menu. It also looks good, unlike most gtk based environments.

I like IceWM, it's what I use on a daily basis. Before that I used MATE because I liked Gnome2 and I found it perfectly adequate. I'm considering trying FVWM3 soon, it seems cool

qualia wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2026 10:48 am I use dwm, it's the most minimal usable solution

Pretty much, that or DWL.


I don't like any of those options in the poll, but if I had to pick one I guess I would go with i3.

In reality the suckless way is the best way. WindowMaker is cool because novelty.
Everything else is mostly a waste of time IMO (except for the novelty of it) unless you have to deal with someones muscle memory towards start menus (IceWM) or docks (CommodoreOS Vision then lol? not sure what they use for the dock program).

There is a possibility of another, more efficient DE/WM design, maybe something like what BlueBottle was supposed to be IDK, there's others too, who knows...

Currently its complicated for me to choose, i use KDE but i wanna switch, but for now there's not much options for wayland that are decent, XFCE is still in experimental for wayland.. i would want to switch to a stacking window manager so that the DE-like usage stays but again on wayland there isn't much, wlmaker exists and seems cool but i haven't used it enough to decide especially since somehow it doesnt want to work in virtual machines..
Maybe one day something decent will release or i haven't heard of it yet. would be great to be able to ditch elogind because KDE genuinly has issues when you use seatd instead of elogind
(i have a hard time with muscle memory so other types of WMs are more annoying to get used to)

At this point I don't really have one. Gtk2 was superior to all subsequent Gtks, so any that uses gtk>2 is out. Xfce 4.12 is okay but getting it to work on modern systems is a pain, and it's missing some "modern" things I like. Simpler ones like IceWM don't do everything I want them to do.

I wonder what happened to the resurrected gtk2.

Trinity Desktop is missing in the poll.

I guess enjoy every non-GNOME desktop while it lasts. GTK3 is passable, GTK4 is a disaster. It's what happens when devs decide nobody gives a fuck about theming and everyone uses their computer the same, you know, like Apple and Microsoft. The future of Linux desktops is bleak. I might write a whole article on this at some point if I feel like it since I haven't updated my site in months (It's not dead, just inactive).

You have several options:

• Use AI to make your fancy GTK4/QT6/whatever theme that you apparently NEED
  • The more generic your setup looks, the better that is for privacy/anonymity.

• Simply get rid of GTK3 and older, use a theme that applies to everything nicely that is already made (these exist).
  • Reminder that you can use ie qt6ct or similar to set a GTK theme across both. Adwaita or Adwaita-dark or similar can be used for a unified system look.

• Use TUI or CLI applications instead, thus sidestepping the GUI rat race entirely.
  • A TUI is not gonna care what version of foot_in_face_disease you have, and will likely keep working past the expiration date of whatever API lib you are currently using.

• Use applications built in an entirely other lib.
  • These are few and far between, but GNU Step, FLTK, Tk and Motif come to mind.

digdeeper wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2026 3:50 pmI wonder what happened to the resurrected gtk2.

Still being developed.

If you can take Anupiss, this is where the commits are:

https://git.devuan.org/Daemonratte/gtk2-ng

digdeeper wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2026 3:50 pm At this point I don't really have one. Gtk2 was superior to all subsequent Gtks, so any that uses gtk>2 is out. Xfce 4.12 is okay but getting it to work on modern systems is a pain, and it's missing some "modern" things I like. Simpler ones like IceWM don't do everything I want them to do.

I wonder what happened to the resurrected gtk2.

Trinity Desktop is missing in the poll.

EDE was a good one, i used it in openbsd a lot, but i couldn't make it work no more, today i can affirm that CTWM rulz