What are your favorite DE's that you use on a laptop?
I have tried out Gnome, KDE, Lxqt and Xfce on a regular desktop and all of them feel nice. I haven't tried many DE's on a laptop.
Are there any particular DE's you like on a laptop, because of things like power consumption and efficiency that would not come normally into consideration for a desktop?
xfce is the least buggy de I ever used, never seen anything not work as intended on it even on very low en hardware
GNOME
GNOME, despite the critiques it receives it's the most polished one and the one that gives me less problems
I have nothing against gnome and it's defiantly the most polished, but in the same time it has alot of small inconveniences that are only fixable with plugins and messing around with the settings.
For my workflow kde is usable out of the box with almost no configurations.
i3 and never looked back!
I love how customizable i3 is but I'm not ready to go keyboard mode yet lol
I really get that.
It's a bit of a curve, but it gets suprisingly easy suprisingly fast.
I use kde on my laptop
On laptops Gnome has a big advantage in the multitouch gestures for the touchpad, and as everyone says it's pretty polished. But lately I've been using KDE since it offers a lot more functionality and customization out of the box. Most of it's apps are like a swiss army knife and I love that. KDE is also catching up in the multitouch gesture department.
Plasma on Wayland has got multitouch gestures as well.
The gestures are not as polished as gnome on wayland
xfce since it came default with eos and its pretty lightweight
Plasma KDE.
I prefer the typical Windows like layout and it offers a lot of customization options that the other DEs are missing.
I'm a KDE guy and use it myself on my notebook, but GNOME with its multitouch gestures and polished (if a little inflexible) workflow is also an excellent fit.
I just use Window Maker. It got an update recently. Notifications work out of the box, Firefox and Chrome have never created multiple icons, not seen that.
It is not a Wayland compositor which is fine as I only use X11 and probably won't use Wayland for many more years till it's mature enough. I went back to Window Maker several years ago and it's working just fine. With
wmsystemtrayI have a system tray so things like NetworkMakager and hplip and blue-z all can latch on and display their icons, I don't need a desktop environment now!YMMV regarding the HIDPI thing, I have never had a monitor with such a narrow pixel pitch to need anything like that.
i3
the less I need a mouse on a laptop, the better
edit: ok, you specifically asked for a full fledged DE and not just a WM. well, I picked what I needed and with Manjaro i3 as base, I had a nice place to start
full fledged de with tiling ? ::: spoiler spoiler kde with Krohnkite :::
i3 just feels much faster. can't change back to anything more bloated at the moment. It wrecks my nerves waiting for a window to open on other DEs/WMs - although it's often not much of a difference.
I'm very happy with my current setup. would like to try sway, but I think Wayland/sway isn't completely there yet.
haha I was being half serious here, as fun as I have with kronkite on my space heater, its is a layer of bloat on top of a mountain of bloat so not what you want in op's case
If you haven't tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.
I don't use Gnome, for example. People knock on it a bit BUT a large group of people swear by it for workflow.
KDE Plasma is the dream for anyone who likes to tweak settings. I used it on my laptop for a long time and it is very convenient. It also manages power and monitor settings very well. In terms of memory usage it is now similar to XFCE.
XFCE is perfect for people who don't like change. It is a slow moving DE; tried and true.
Right now I am using LXQt. Not sure why I decided to do that. It looks ok. It is fast and light. That's it's claim to fame. It can be used with different WMs which is nice.
I can't say I've ever looked into it. But, I found that KDE handled things very well. I used my laptop for full workdays, getting 11 hours out of it.
Thank you.
I have tried them on desktop and in most cases, I did not have any serious issue with them. I was thinking which one would be better optimised for laptops.
I'm on KDE now. It's good. Was thinking whether there are any DE's that are specifically recommended for laptops, for efficiency or ease of use.
I started with ubuntu then mint on desktop and then vm. I hated Gnome in those days, prefering KDE or XFCE (even i3wm). Now that my laptop is on EOS, I tried Gnome again and it's much better for use with a trackpad. So yeah, different DEs for different tastes/uses/systems.
I like Enlightenment. It uses 400 MB of RAM on my old laptop/
Gnome hands down has the best laptop experience. If you follow the intended workflow of using tiled windows and many workspaces. You can get to a very large number of windows, without getting lost, even with just the laptop screen.
Additionally the paradigm does translate well to a desktop for the times you are docked.
The only problem is that it only supports half tiling, which is quite annoying if you are using large screens.
Gnome is also amazing for laptops with touchscreens
Of the ones I tried, my top 3 would be cinnamon, budgie, and kde. KDE is probably the best bet for modern features ATM, cinnamon for simplicity.
I'm the type of person who gets tired of a DE after using it for too long, so I'm using Budgie right now and I really like it. However XFCE is pretty nice, too, it's what I used to use.
From what I hear, budgie may not get further updates.
sway, the i3 clone for Wayland. I'm really happy with it, even on my Intel iGPU + Nvidia GPU laptop.
Same! A lot of people feel restricted with 13" screens on laptops. Not with Sway for me, having a way to tile windows makes it so usable.
Exact same experience with me I was doubtful about tiling managers because my laptop being 13 inch but poople in the Sway subreddit told me it is worth it and it really is. You can utilise your screen space so much better.
Tiling window managers like i3 are imho nice for laptops, since they do not waste any space and can be easily controlled via keyboard. Takes a while to get used to them, however.
i3wm on my laptop, light on resources, keyboard-driven saves screen estate (no window decorations), and picom makes it easy on the eyes (rounded corners, shadows). If you prefer wayland, sway (and swayfx) is the way.
I'm the opposite. I only use tiling on desktop. When using screens under 4k a simple left/right split is all I feel which gnome can do out of the box.
I agree with this! I run i3 for all my builds and it’s great!
XFCE minimal but good looking. You could also go for MATE or Cinnamon..
Cinnamon is my choice on both laptop and desktop, though if it's for a particularly underpowered system, I go for MATE.
@aMalayali KDE - desktop or laptop.
I have not used a desktop environment on a laptop in a very long time. For a long while, I had fluxbox installed and that was good enough. Nowadays, my laptop almost exclusively runs EXWM. I can't really recommend that for general use though.
If I were to install a full DE now, I think I would go for LXQT. I love Openbox, and I would probably end up replacing the panel with tint2. That would be a decent environment, I think.
On my laptops I like the same one as on my desktops: KDE Plasma. With any other I quickly start missing the features that KDE Plasma offers and the configurability and customizability. And It is also quite lightweight for all that it offers. Others often offer much less and consume more resources then KDE Plasma.
Yeah, KDE Plasma is surprisingly light on resources. I'm flexible and can make almost any desktop environment work for me, maybe because I started back in the day with TWM and FVWM on HPUX. However, given the choice I run Plasma with the Latte dock, I got it setup to look like a macOS/Unity mix on my Laptop.
I recently got it going with Wayland, even though I'm using a NVidia gfx card in Dedicated mode, and it's just amazingly smooth and free of several X11 old annoyances. Gaming through Proton/XWayland works well too.
XFCE works for me!
DE: KDE & Cinnamon. WM: Awesome & I3
I really love the simplicity of dwm (I haven't quite understood the difference between a WM and a DE). It's hackable and efficient and just the way it should be. It runs really well on my age old ThinkPad. For more user friendly environments (i.e. desktops which not only I use) and more performant machines, I still use GNOME though.
Cinnamon for me, It looks like old Windows
Cinnamon is great. I just did a fresh install of Mint on an older laptop.
KDE customize to how ever you like to use it!
I recently switched to xfce.
I used KDE exclusively since 2004. That's a very long time but KDE Plasma in combination with nvidia got worse, what felt like, every single day over the last years, so it finally came to the point where I had no choice to look for something that works better.
Super happy with xfce after I set it up almost exactly like my KDE setup. Sure there are some thing that are not as "well rounded" than some of the excellent Plasma features but over all it works great!
LXDE
Started out with xfce, used lxde for a short while... it was too minimalistic for my taste. Tried KDE for about a week, that was the oposite, too flashy. Went back to xfce, haven't tried anything else since. It's a sweet spot IMO.
Tried many, but Xfce won for me:
And even though I use terminals a lot (neovim, git, etc.), I never stuck with tiling window managers in the end (e.g. i3). Rather I'm heavily relying on:
Like you I never latched onto tiling wm's. I did think they were fun to play with but unless they use Emacs keybindings I don't think my brain will like learning a whole set of new ones.
I love virtual desktops however. Used them from the start!
I haven't tried Gnome since they trashed the UI ;) and I wasn't ever much of a KDE fan so the only desktop I have ever used since the demise of Gnome 2 is XFCE.
However I've switched back to Window Maker (a window manager) on my main PC and on my VM's and I may do so on my laptops too. I don't really need a desktop so to speak, I just use
wmsystrayto add a system tray and things like NetworkManager, bluez etc all end up there giving me what I actually do use of a desktop.I recently switched from i3 to hyprland and quite like it. Wayland still has some issues, but the better scaling makes it worth it.
I've used Sway for a few years but Hyprland is certainly on my list.
Also a fan of hyprland, will be ovewriting my arch+kde desktop with my laptop's nixos+hyprland flake this week. Wayland definitely has some early adoption pains but the tearing reduction alone makes it worth it.
KDE on Manjaro.
I'm using xfce everywhere, it's simply the most lightweight and I got so used to fast reactivity that I couldn't care less about barebone icons (and even those have come a long way since).
GNOME because the window/workspace management is very good on a single monitor, and the touchpad gestures are nice.
I always come back to KDE for it's easy of customization. Don't like the effect that happens when you minimize or maximize screens? Simply go into the settings and download a new one.
KDE can be made to run really light, or really heavy.
I find cinnamon to strike a nice balance of speed and function if you have an ok processor, it's straight to the point and doesn't try to make you use summoning circle on your trackpad to do anything, like gnome does, but still has enough features and native configs to not make you feel like you're missing anything.
XFCE is my favourite on both desktop and laptop. It's light weight, has all the features I need and feels really snappy, especially when all animations are turned off (which I always do).
I use EXWM with desktop-environment.el. It's pretty bad for almost everything unless you reallyyyy like emacs keybinds.
However, if you just want everything in emacs, it pretty perfectly scratches that itch.
Plasma.
I'm the weirdo over in the corner using TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment, forked from KDE3) on both my desktop and laptop.
Plasma. I have it configured to match my workflow.
I like Mate. On both laptop and desktop.
I've been using NixOS with Pantheon and I'm pretty happy with it.
I usually prefer DE's based on my needs.
KDE plasma - for customization and features.
GNOME - for UI and simplicity.
cinnamon - for windows like and simple.
I love Sway and been using it for a year or so. Never looked back
Same on my desktop: XFCE4.
I recommen GNOME, but I usually use Hyprland.
Hyprland is my go to, but it requires a lot of effort compared to proper DEs. I really like KDE as long as you don't ask too much of it. The UI is nice & it doesn't use too much battery if you cut down on effects.
If I want to use a graphical user interface, I generally use KDE Plasma.
I use Gnome on my Thinkpad. That machine has an i7 and 16gb of ram. Ok my tiny Chromebook I got Mate. Very lightweight and almost as many features as Gnome.
@aMalayali I'm quite happy with Cinnamon in the moment but I know what you mean. If my daily work experience with Cinnamon would suffer, I would also go back to XFCE.