I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it’s Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)…etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.

Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the “Flagship Manjaro version”. I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.

After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.

What about you guys?

    • Bogus007@lemm.ee
      2·
      3 days ago

      I am absolutely with you about i3. Simply great (there is also dwm or qtile)! But it is a WM, not a DE, what OP asked about.

        • Bogus007@lemm.ee
          2·
          2 days ago

          You mean switching between the DE xfce and the WM i3wm, right? Yep, this works and it can indeed make life sometimes easier to have a DE and a WM aside each other.

          • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            yeah, basically just running xfce but replacing xfwm4 with i3
            i was kinda surprised how well it worked tbh, i had been using i3 on it’s own for like a year before i tried it

            • Bogus007@lemm.ee
              2·
              2 days ago

              Oh, I did not know about the possibility of replacing xfwm4 with i3. I too am using i3 for some years and like a lot to have a clean surface which facilitates focussing on my tasks. However, never thought about integrating it in a DE.