Linux

I really like the GUI in Pop!_OS. It's a custom GNOME installation with some sort of window tiling manager I don't know what it's called. I really like it, and I like their system themes, too. It's very macOS-like. Simple, clean, and functional with a lot of little custom tweaks put in by system76 to cover some gaps in GNOME's basic configuration and things that are missing from Ubuntu (Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu variant).

Others have mentioned Linus Mint with Cinnamon. I haven't used it in several years, but I recall it being very nice and simple. It's very Windows-like, which I'm not a fan of, but the interface was quite pretty, as I recall.

Pop yea? Yeah?!

Kubuntu or KDE Neon 100%

Ultimately they both use the KDE Plasma desktop environment, which is the only DE I've ever seen that has a proper modern look by default (others IMO look like either the 2000's or an OS 4 Kidz), as well as being pretty featurful for multi monitor productivity

Arch+KDE Plasma is what I personally am gonna switch to this summer

I'm more of a window manager person myself (Qtile to be precise), and I imagine that's not really what you're looking for here, but DE-wise from what I've tried I like KDE and XFCE the most

I'm not aware of any distro that ships this by default yet, but Hyprland is my favorite visually so far. Excited for it to continue to develop. I'm sticking with Sway for now, Hyperland's grouping isn't nearly as extensive as Sway's tabbing and stacking, hopefully that will come eventually, but Hyprland sure does look amazing.

XFCE

I've been enjoying Gnome using !pop_os@lemmy.ml. It's not perfect, but good enough. The preinstalled tiling extension also makes using a full DE bearable without spending hours customizing a WM.

I'm looking forward to trying out Cosmic, which I have high hopes for.

Fedora or OpenSUSE with Gnome. Stable, GUI friendly, and simple.

I think i3 looks really pretty

Garuda is the first distro to really excite me visually since the KDE3 days. I just wished it booted faster.

I am into KDE Plasma, it works quite well on my distro (Fedora by the way) and one thing that I like about is is that I can make it truly mine. Defaults are nice, however sometimes I think I don't need that or need something else, and quite often I manage to do it to be the most comfortable for me. It's also very customisable and with enough learning you could rice it into quite a lot of stuff, even though I myself don't really know a lot how people do it.

Probably any distro that ships KDE Plasma 5 as default - I'm stuck with GNOME for now as I need to use Evolution for work (EWS mail accounts), but if I had the choice I'd probably be on Plasma.

Nitrux, it's a Debian distro with KDE, a rather classic pair indeed, but their Maui Kit is what makes it really stand out IMO... Well worth a look 😁

I've been using i3 for the past 8 years or so, and can wholeheartedly recommend it (or it's cousin Sway if you're in Wayland-land) if you're into tiling window managers (there are dozens of us!). I find them invaluable for their keyboard-centric operation, and also massively sweet on ultrawide monitors. Light on resources and minimalistic too.

As far as distributions go, I've been on Arch for the past several years. I think there are some (unofficial) spins for most Linux flavours with i3 out-of-the-box.

I used XFCE for a long long time before I went to tiles, which is a decent more traditional Window Manager, with a more lean focus than some of the others. Fairly customizable. I still use some of the system apps from there from old habit.

I wouldn't get too tied up into what window manager is default in any given distribution. At least for me, part of the joy is finding a combination of software (including the desktop environment/Window Manager) that works for you specifically. And there are plenty of live CDs (or usb images now I guess) with various WMs that can be used to take things out for a spin without commiting to installing it. :) Here are various Ubuntu flavors for instance.

I'm an arch kde user, but I gotta say Elementary / pantheon is / was incredibly beautiful. They took a lot of the simplistic design principles from iOS, and made something even prettier.

I probably switch what I'm using every few months. The thing I cannot live without though is tiling support, whether just inherent to the window manager I'm using or an extension, I find it painful to use a computer for anything serious without one now.

Currently using KDE with the Bismuth extension (Fedora Kinoite) which isn't perfect but not bad. I'm eyeing Hyprland up from afar but as an Nvidia user I have too many issues on Wayland at the moment.

Currently I am using Cinnamon with Debian and quite like it. Previouly I enjoyed XFCE, espacially on slower laptops. Never really liked GNOME or KDE Plasma though. GNOME has too many animations and feels slow. At the same time its not very customizable. KDE on the other hand feels slow as well and though it is kind of fancy it seems not to be my taste and I did not like the way you customize either. That is not so important to me anymore. So please don't read from this that Cinnamon or XFCE would be great for customization. I would not know it.

Honestly Opensuse with gnome or kde is really amazing!

Any with MATE or Xfce as an option (which tbh is basically all major distros). I just use a specific theme to give me the glossy, frutiger aero look and I'm happy. Currently on EndeavourOS using MATE as my DE.

Yeah, this may not be helpful for you but the best GUI is a tiling window manager (compositor?). Using it for 2.5 years, never looked back. I really recommend Hyprland for everyone to try, it's the perfect thing we've ever needed.

All of them. Every distro can run any desktop, so all of them.

Fedora. It ships vanilla GNOME which is just a very pleasant experience. Vanilla GNOME is just something else man.

When I switched over permanently at the release of proton, I went with Cinnamon since it was the most familiar to me. Before that I tried Ubuntu in the past.

After 2 years on Cinnamon I switched over to KDE Plasma since I want more tweakability and customization and Cinnamon and Gnome in general is just severely lacking in that regard.

And it was a good choice as well since KDE has a lot of options to tweak and I can make it look how I want. I also love fluid animations and KDE has that in spades together with early and now very stable Wayland support.

I could not be happier and I don't see any reason to ever switch to another GUI.

Just trying out OpenSuse microOS currently, as an alternative to Fedora Kinoite, and the installer doesnt even load.

I dont like Ubuntus variant of Gnome. I think GNOME can look good but its apps are often horrible. Mint has a better set of simple but powerful tools.

But I would stay with anything rocking KDE. I recommend fedora Kinoite fro ublue.it (better video previews and working RPM firefox basically), its a really great distro.