Linux

KDE Plasma on all my computers and also as desktop mode on Steam Deck. because it supports the latest technologies especially when it comes to graphics (HDR, VRR) also has best support for Wayland and multi-monitors. It looks great out of the box and it has a lot of features out of the box and I do not need to battle with adding some extensions that break with almost every update. KDE Plasma is also the most flexible desktop and I can set the workflow really to fit my desires and I can actually set many options and settings. And despite all these built-in features and configurability it still uses very few system resources and is very fast and smooth. Oh and the KDE community is one of the most welcoming I have met in FOSS world, and they listen to their users instead of the our way or the high way mentality I have so often encountered in GNOME for example. So yeah TLDR KDE Plasma is the one I like the most of all in the industry, even when compared to proprietary closed alternatives.

GNOME. Eagerly waiting for cosmic.

Sway. Very customiseable and extremely snappy

Gnome. It just works out of the box and I can fly through it using the keyboard and touchpad without having to configure it first.
I've done the whole song and dance with tiling WMs, or going through all of KDE's settings until it was perfect, but I just can't be bothered anymore.

Cinnamon. Desktop environment peaked in the Windows XP/Gnome 2 days and everything else is just change for the shake of change. :C

My only annoyance is lack of Wayland support. Tried out cosmic, but it doesn't have the Windows XP/Gnome 2 style window list.

Screenshot for anyone interested:

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I'm just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that's okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn't use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it's a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I'm wrong, you aren't going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it's going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn't true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that's good enough for me. 🙂
• I'm unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don't remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You'll note I don't claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren't bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I'm sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven't even looked at any alternatives. If there's ever a time that I don't find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team's approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I'll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

GNOME

xfce4. Stable as hell. X11. Can move windows around using just some keypresses.

Gnome, be it PC or Laptop. It just remains out of my way with it's minimalism. Tried KDE for a while, and I seriously can't stand it, personally.

Gnome. I actually started with KDE. It's a good DE, but it's got so many options that I had choice fatigue. I constantly tweaked my taskbar instead of focusing on what I wanted to do. And it was easy to get it to a "looks broken" state

When I tried Gnome, I fell in love with it. I love the unique workflow, lack of distractions, the modern adwaita design, etc. Everything felt so polished

That being said, I don't like how Gnome devs seemingly can't agree on anything with other desktop environments. And I don't like how they refuse to support server-side window decorations. Like, I agree with them that CSD are better than SSD, but it would be reasonable to support SSD for toolkits that haven't/don't want to implement CSD themselves, right?

I'm excited for Cosmic. It looks like it combines the best of Gnome and KDE, and the devs don't have the “my way or the highway” mindset

XFCE4. It's intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line: MM/DD HH:mm:ss

Enough features so that it "just works" (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.

Can't wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don't have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.

KDE all the way, it's incredible especially since 6

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.

I dont use a DE, I use a WM.

Semantics aside I’m on Hyprland, been using it for 6 months now and absolutely love it

Depends on the computer I run. On fast computers (more than 5,000 passmark cpu points), i use gnome on whatever distro. On mid-speed computers (1000 to 5000 points), I use linux mint with cinnamon. On very old computers (400-1000), I use debian with XFce.

My desktop environment of choice would be XFCE. It's simply easy to configure while not giving me choice fatigue like KDE does. Also I don't like Qt for some reason.

GNOME is great but I find their extensions to be super clunky sometimes. Some of them even break in between updates. The main selling point of gnome (for me) is the minimal look and feel, extensions kind of ruin that a little bit.

Don't get me wrong plasma and Gnome are wonderful DEs but XFCE provides a simple and balanced desktop IMO. The only thing that's missing is full Wayland support.

P.S : Anyways most of the time I would be running a window manager instead of a DE, my current favourite Wayland window-manager is Labwc because it gives me openbox vibes.

Budgie, because I like the way it looks.

I am extremely basic and I'm using the XFCE that came with Linux mint. I don't need anything fancy.

Windows 10

Because I am soft and weak from getting smashed every day at my 3 part time jobs and I just want to drink and play video games at the end of the day, not learn a new OS.

I promise to try Linux Mint when windows 10 is no longer supported.

KDE Plasma. It came on my steam deck which was my first intro to it, it blew me away and installed it on my laptop and finally ditched Windows shortly after. Works great for me.

LXDE/LXQT because I grew up using potato computers and now I can't stand it if my DE uses more than 2% of my hardware resources

though I am currently using KDE because for fuck knows what reason, Kubuntu is the only prepackaged Linux I've been able to get to boot on my weird Samsung laptop and I haven't bothered to gut KDE and replace it with LXQT yet

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

I use gnome on my main machines, but looking to migrate to cosmic, and I use xfce on more limited devices.

I like the kde project, but I tend not to use it, because I find it a bit overwhelming, even after customizing it, it's hard to explain. I have issues with too many elements in front of me.

XFCE. I also like tiling WMs, but I often have to share computers and they are too unintuitive for the rest of the family.

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).

GNOME. Love the simplicity!

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.

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

GNOME because of PaperWM

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.

Hyprland on my desktop

GNOME on my laptop

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Plasma

It was what came on the steam deck lol

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