Not counting the Steam Deck, since KDE isn’t actually turned on while you’re running games.
Normally I’m a Gnome guy, but I’m building a tiny low power portable computer and wanting to keep resource utilization low, so I’m investigating other options.
KDE all the way.
Once I touched kde, It’s always kde.
I’m not even sure.
Whatever comes with mint? I had a hard drive die, and my buddy hooked me up when I realized I couldn’t read the windows key on the sticker any more. He was going to do some kind of fuckery to let me keep 7 despite that, but he’d been talking about Linux for a few years, so I asked what he thought about that.
He asked me a few questions, about what kind of programs I need to use, and when none of them were a pain in the ass for an idiot like me to deal with, he set it up for me. Told me it was mint, helped me set things up where they look nice and made sure I have what I need. Haven’t fucked with anything since, and that was about two years ago.
I think default mint is cinnamon
Xfce of course!
KDE currently. Modern GNOME drives me somewhat insane - too “streamlined”. I used WindowMaker for a long time and somewhat miss it, but I’ve had problems with compatibility with some software (Steam).
KDE. It doesn’t get in the way.
KDE because I want a setup that just works.
No DE just swaywm, I think you can benefit from window managers like i3 or sway for low resource utilization
How does loading up a game through steam work with that? I’m a big fan of Sway (and i3) but I don’t use them on gaming focused systems at all, so I’m curious.
Mostly just fine with i3 my experience. Sometimes I have to move the game window to a different workspace if I want to interact directly with steam, or whatever else I have in the same workspace that I launched the game in, because it keeps forcing it self exclusive/full screen. In some instances, depending on the game, that might mess things up (crash, freeze, missing/stuck mouse cursor), but most of the time it works just fine.
I use XFCE mainly because I’m running older hardware. But I really do like it. I have been wanting to try out window managers but have just been too lazy… 😂
not a de, i use hyprland.
Tried XFCE, KDE and GNOME but settled on GNOME.
XFCE struggled with window management especially when gaming. KDE is too messy and inconsistent. GNOME is just easy, and my wife can use it without asking questions.
KDE Plasma xorg. I use discord streaming quite a bit with friends so Wayland isn’t an option and I’m not using a third party discord client since that’s against discord ToS.
I was on Xfce until they adopted Gtk 3. Now it’s KDE Plasma.
No DE, but i3-gaps as WM. Been working great for 5+ years.
xfce! I don’t Hardcore Game or anything but I find it easy to customize without being overwhelming or clunky at all, so there’s that.
Xfce might be the choice here, since most of benefits of Wayland won’t really apply to this machine (from an end user perspective) and it is relatively lightweight.