What DE and distro do you use and why?
I'm curious as to what the Tildes Linux/BSD community (and I suppose other answers like Windows or MacOS would be acceptable, though they may feel a bit more dry) use for their desktop. I imagine that Ubuntu and Gnome will dominate the answers as you would expect, but maybe you'll surprise me. Personally, I'm on Arch Linux with i3-gaps. I use Arch because I enjoy the DIY aspect of Linux as well as the aur and slim nature of Arch. I'd also be lying if I didn't say I use it partially just because I like the "pacman" pun.
As for i3-gaps, I think that WMs are generally more customizable and good for 'ricing', plus they go with my workflow and are convenient in that they load faster and the likes, though I have to admit I have only ever used i3 (I've been considering trying out bspwm). So, what do you guys use? You can also of course share more information such as your shell or DM if you wanted, though I highly doubt anyone cares what display manager you us or anything.
How does it feel being a living r/unixporn meme? ^_^
I've now almost wholly switched to OpenBSD (a Void Linux partition remains that is rarely booted into, for muh games). I use OpenBSD because I feel it gives me what I was missing on Linux: the sense of an entire OS coherently designed and engineered, with excellent documentation, and the comfort in knowing their track record on security. I would be lying if said there were not downsides (most notably the drop in performance and reduction in available software), but overall it's been a net benefit switch from Linux to OpenBSD.
I've been using dwm as my window manager. I've said a short while ago in a different thread, but I often switch between needing to tile and float windows, which is most convenient and configurable using dwm. Its ability to be patched and tweaked are also nice features. The only thing I miss is being able to minimise windows.
Haha, absolutely. You're not wrong. I almost didn't want to switch to i3-gaps because of that.
Fair enough, I've really been wanting to try out *BSD. I'm just kinda afraid that I'll love it but there will still be something I'm missing so now I have to make room for windows and linux and bsd.
That is true. I would love some sort of minimize system in WMs where you can hide the Window and then open a menu of hidden windows. For now though I'll just throw that window into a different workspace.
Doing a virtual machine install and the after-boot setup is useful for getting a general feel of OpenBSD, along with its limitations, before committing to an install (although performance is especially bad under it). The default theme for the default X WM (fvwm) is also atrocious in my opinion, just don't let that impact your views on the OS as a whole :).
Alternatively FreeBSD has better support for software (e.g. polybar is in ports) and supposedly has slightly better performance (I've not tried it out).
I did set up OpenBSD in a VM once, but then I played with it for a few minutes and didn't really feel any benefits from Linux so I deleted the VM. I don't quite sense a benefit but maybe I should give it another go.
I haven't set this up myself, but I think you could probably do something like this by making a keybind to move the current window into i3's scratchpad (effectively a hidden workspace), then using rofi or similar to unhide windows from it selectively.
Certainly you could. I don't really have any experience with rofi outside of just running programs like a normie, but I have seen some really cool and interesting uses.
cc @apoctr
i3 can group windows in stacks and tabs, that is effectively (better, IMHO) minimising.
That's what i3 has. Tho admittedly it's a bit complex for the uninitiated. Basically each window can become a container and each container can contain any sort of layouts and any number of windows. This screenshot has an illustration of it: the top right cell is a tabbed layout where a terminal is in the background and the mplayer window in the foreground.
That's possible: each group of windows, tabbed or stacked, live in a container which can be selected with the
focus parenti3 command (I have it bound to$mod+u, but my bindings are heavily customised) and manipulated just like the windows can be manipulated. Arbitrary nesting is possible.Yeah, the entire container. It is possible to move windows into containers too, just create the container and move the window towards it with the usual bindings. Same for removing a window from a container: just move it out of the edge of it.
I use OSX as my daily operating system, and have done since about 2012.
I used Ubuntu as my go-to from about 4.10 until 10.10. I occasionally still use Ubuntu (I have several Ubuntu VMs right now). I used Gnome more the KDE, but am familiar with both.
I have used Gentoo (pre-2004) a bit. I also used Arch (around 2010 - 2012) though at that time I was at a dev shop that had a hard requirement for Windows. Twas a dark time and I prefer not to think on it. I did enjoy Arch quite a bit, but mostly as a respite from a day in Windows.
I do use Windows as a casual / gaming operating system, and have done so for a long time.
Edit: I should write the why!
I started out on Windows, and I moved away because Windows doesn't enable you to do the things that I was interested in doing, notably "fiddling with computers" and coding.
I moved to Gentoo because I didn't really know where else to go; someone suggested it to me, and they were willing to talk to me about it so it seemed like a good choice.
I switched to Ubuntu for a similar reason, and I loved the package management.
I moved away from Ubuntu for the aforementioned "dark time". At that time I was looking for something to run relatively well on the laptop I had and I read a bit about people having success with Arch with the particular hardware configuration that I had. So I played with it for a while.
I eventually landed on OSX because of the build quality of the MacBook Pro (the 2010 MBP I had is still one of the best machines I ever owned) and because OSX hits a number of sweet spots for me; it's *nix-like, it's beautiful, it runs all the proprietary software I want to run, and it doesn't take as much futzing around to get it to work as all the linux flavours I've tried in the past.
I used to love figuring out the ins and outs of my operating system but as I've gotten older, I don't have as much time to spend on things like that, and the "hobby" part of linux distros doesn't have the same draw that it used to have. OSX is good enough for most of the things I want to do, and it lets me spend my time on the other things that I need to do.
I also use windows for my gaming OS, but I find it a bit infuriating and more of a necessary evil to me than anything. OSX is... alright, I prefer it to Windows a bit I suppose, but to me the only real leg up I see with OSX is better third party support than BSD/Linux, which isn't really all that big of a problem to me. Half of the time when a project isn't available for Linux, I just say okay, and it doesn't impact me in the slightest. Usually, when asked why OSX people say because they like Macs or they need it for work, which really aren't compelling arguments for the software and I'd love to hear a different perspective.
I edited with the "why", but to sum up, my move to OSX was mostly about proprietary software support and because it's *nix-y enough that I'm happy.
As a developer, it's a dream OS for me - everything I want to do works right away, and I can concentrate on the things that I want to do.
I have a hard requirement for these things:
All of these things just work for me in OSX, and there have been times in other operating systems when they haven't.
That's fair, and I suppose it's because I'm a casual user and not a professional or anything that I don't encounter these problems. Adobe CC is the one thing that I'm really jealous of, personally, but not enough for me to switch to a whole nother OS that wouldn't even work on my current hardware and doesn't support my workflow, though I do get it.
Strongly disagree there. The free philosophy of Linux allows for far greater UI than Windows or MacOS. There's truly something for everybody. The distro of linux doesn't handle the UI anyways.
For me, nowadays, the simple answer is that my company would be very concerned if I told them that our iOS app was no longer being developed!
Even putting that aside, it's the only option that'll get me a proper bash shell, the Adobe suite, and Sketch, all in one place. That alone is a pretty strong argument for a lot of tech workers.
The long answer, ignoring those necessities and going back well over a decade now, is that I find it by far the most polished day to day experience - however, I am watching the gap close from both sides, with other *nix options improving and (sadly) with some decisions I dislike being made with OSX.
In terms of polished experience, I mean that there is a huge amount of focus given to the tiny tasks that I perform many times per day. The half-second animation when I want to see all open windows is well designed enough that I can see how they're stacked and what's coming in from where. The touchpad supports gestures fluidly and seamlessly, with no perceptible delay. The high-DPI scaling is perfect, and supported consistently across the board. The power management will keep everything exactly as I left it, indefinitely, just from closing the lid (and did so even back when Windows XP and Linux were lucky to restore from sleep at all a lot of the time). All small things when taken alone, but in aggregate it's all the features in this general vein that made me choose a Mac even before it was a work necessity.
That said, there are some definite trends I dislike. Not least, the fact that I now don't have a choice because (unlike Android), the iOS toolchain is completely locked in. Even on the Mac software side Apple is making some small but meaningful gestures towards a walled-garden approach; hopefully they won't take it too far, but I'm watching closely there. While the hardware has always been expensive, it used to be the case that it was more or less comparable to other premium options - now I'm seeing 500% mark up on commodity SSDs and RAM, and they're penny pinching on things like not including a USB-C cable with their already expensive power bricks.
Windows has ads built right into the fucking operating system, reboots without my consent, and is somewhere between "nonstandard" and "horrible" as a dev environment - so beyond the gaming VM I rent from Shadow, that's a no go.
I left Linux for OSX many years ago, and it has closed a lot of the usability gaps in that time. If I weren't locked in, it might well be at a point that I'd be happy to forego the polish in exchange for a wider choice of hardware. Maybe.
Debian is really nice, and it's what I would probably use if I needed a server or something, although I don't. I have an old laptop I've been considering using for my plex and pi-hole server but I'm just not entirely sure if a laptop is up to spec or if I really need it, plus how much electricity would it use?
Running Debian Sid on my i5 7200U-powered laptop and it can slim down pretty gosh darn far. Near minimum brightness with as much shut down as I can, and even running GNOME it can sip ~3-5W. You slap something like Openbox or bspwm or whatever on there and it'd probably do even better.
Just GNOME on Debian Sid. The GNOME workflow is fluid, speedy, looks nice by default and it's easy to make it look a lot better with just a few minutes of work of initial setup.
I like the overview, being able to drag windows to different workspaces or even drag windows from other workspaces to my current or different workspaces from the lil tiny workspace previews. Everything works how I expect it to.
The touchscreen and trackpad gestures are pretty nice, and extensions add so much useful functionality.
You're right about extensions being cool, but the problem is they shouldn't need to exist. Hot take for a minute, but I hate Gnome. Cool if you like it, and I don't mean to sound antagonizing and of course use what you like, but in my opinion Gnome shouldn't take so much ram, it shouldn't require a browser extension just to rice it, and personally I haven't seen a Gnome rice that matches KDE Plasma or i3.
Why shouldn't they? You can't build every feature into a DE. Making it extensible is sensible. Very few people would appreciate a Picture-in-Picture preview of other windows. But I like having YouTube videos or video calls with my girlfriend floating in the corner. So I have an extension for that. I liked Pantheon's little round cutouts on the corners of monitors, so I built an extension for that myself. Most people don't monitor the weather 24/7, but my girlfriend likes to have a constant eye on it, so she has an extension that throws it up on the top panel. Extensions aren't bad.
GNOME Software works just fine as well.
It's a bit of a resource hog but I have and am willing to use those resources.
I personally haven't seen an i3 rice I liked. And KDE's workflow isn't as solid and integrated as GNOME's for it to be worth the true rounded corners for every window (through the ShapeCorners extension) and true blurred transparency (through another, built-in extension).
Let me rephrase what I said. I mean they shouldn't exist in their current state. They shouldn't be installed from a browser extension and activated with a third party application, and then half the time they don't work anyways.
And I personally haven't seen a Gnome rice that doesn't just look practically identical to stock Gnome, haha.
Disagree there, since you can modify KDE Plasma to operate and look effectively identical to Gnome, except for minor tweaks like not needing a browser extension just to rice and customize.
...That's not even true. You don't need GNOME Tweak Tool, everything can be managed from the browser. Gnome Tweak Tool isn't even third-party. And, again, you don't even need a web browser, everything can be managed from GNOME Software just fine.
Have you ever actually used GNOME or are you just regurgitating tired and outdated anti-GNOME memes? Resource usage is a valid point but everything else you've said is either totally off-base or completely up to personal opinion.
Do you know the amount of effort it'd take to get to that point? Have you ever tried to rice KDE? I love KDE and the people behind it to death but configuring it is painful. Why bother spending hours tweaking it to form some half-hearted and significantly less-polished approximation when I could just use GNOME?
To be fair, I was a regular Gnome user, but it was a while ago and then I switched to KDE Plasma so a lot of my information is out of date and nothing I say on the matter should be taken as fact. Gnome software certainly wasn't a thing when I used it.
Because KDE has a lot of good stuff Gnome doesn't. It's far more configurable with the way it treats everything as a widget, and third party support and desktop effects. Again, I've yet to see a Gnome rice that's more than just Gnome with the dock in a different spot and a few shell extensions. With KDE, it's "Oh cool it's just like Gnome" or "Oh cool it's just like Windows" or "Oh cool, it's just like OSX", or "Oh cool it's completely unique and unlike anything I've ever seen before". You shouldn't need 50 shell extensions just to get a desktop you're happy with.
KDE has a few neat things but none of that makes up for the lack of polish for me. Most features in KDE I care about, I can bring into GNOME. I don't need to be able to rice this into something else, I just need something fluid and polished. Same reason why you're finding so many macOS users in this thread is the same reason I use GNOME.
I love KDE and its developers to death, and every KDE rice looks great in a screenshot. But the defaults aren't great and actually using it makes it feel like a lot of disjointed parts rather than a cohesive whole. Shell extensions have never given me that impression of working against the grain.
Absolutely! That's why it's just my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I still like Gnome there's just these little things I don't like that pull me away from it, but if it works for you that's fantastic.
Hmmmm
You're right, haha fucked up there. I mean to say I really WANT to like Gnome, because I used to love it. I just can't see through it's issues anymore.
Could I ask you what theme are you using?
Canta. Found it not too long ago, it was instantly my favorite GTK theme.
Thanks!
Ubuntu, because I don't really care about the OS as long as it does its job and stays out of my way. I was fine with windows 7 but windows 10 was too much to swallow so I decided to give linux a try. It turned out pretty good. All I really missed were my games, but now that steamplay's a thing I have zero reason to switch back to windows. It helps that I'm a software developer so linux has really good support for everything I really need.
What does staying out of your way mean to you? I'd think most people would consider Ubuntu one of the distros that is the least like that.
Well, I came from windows so my standards are probably pretty low. All I really care about is having the option to change/disable stuff without a company breathing down my neck. Ubuntu asks if I want to install updates, and if I say no it actually listens. There was something the Amazon a while back, but I don't even remember the details because it was so easy to disable. I can't imagine Canonical pushing malware to advertise Ubuntu 19, or forcibly upgrading my system while I slept.
I don't have a problem with default settings. I like user-friendly interfaces. The command line is really, really useful for automation and scripting, but I see it more as an addition to the GUI instead of a standalone thing. I've tried vim, and yeah, it's not handy for remote stuff and not too bad once you get used to it, but I'd rather use a full graphical IDE. Mashing together a bunch of command line scripts could duplicate the same functionality, but an IDE is just easier for me to use.
I just want a computer that lets me game, code, isn't a glorified spyware box, and I don't have to put too much effort into.
I have experimented a bit with elementaryOS, and it was beautiful, but buggy. And it lacked the kind of community that I am used to have around Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD, and even Ubuntu.
Elementary is very well thought out. It even has a contol to set Caps as Ctrl there in its system settings. It was all well integrated. But I couldn't get used to it, as a user who spent most of his time i the past 6 or 7 years using one of i3, dwm, xmonad, twm, vtwm on one of Arch, Debian or FreeBSD. The level of control I have there is something I am used to, and when fluff gets in between, I am really frustrated.
So now I am on Debian Testing with i3 as my window manager. I love TWM and similar better, but certain apps use windows in such ways that they break it. i3 works and I am fairly content with it, but I'd dig having something like TWM b/c I don't need the windowing sophistication a tiling wm offers.
Here is my config, a phenonenal and prolonged act of yak shaving. But I love it.
My next stop will either be something like GuixSD (which I always fail getting it working and I don't think it is my fault, I lack the time to fiddle with it) or Open- or FreeBSD (but w/ OpenBSD I have a wifi card problem, and FeeeBSD cannot suspend resume reliably, and these are big obstables for now).
I originally went with xubuntu because I like Ubuntu, but GalliumOS chose to modify Xubuntu for its release. This is a custom flavor just for Chromebooks -- and it runs like a dream.
I use a similar setup on my macbook pro when I need to use linux, but for the most part I can cover the bases with brew in macos.
I use macOS as my daily OS, and love it to death. I won't move off it, and my workflow on macOS is critical to my career.
I've been hankering to try linux or a BSD variant as a "weekend OS" for side projects and such. I don't know which direction I really want to jump in.
The half of me that wants to try linux as an environment wants to install a desktop environment like nextspace, something that'll give a classic NeXTStep feel, for the hell of it. The half of me that wants to try a BSD variant actually wants to learn that well, with the intent of learning it well enough to deploy production servers on it rather than a Linux environment (which just feels too crufty in the wrong ways as a macOS user—yes, I know many people will consider this to be ironic).
Never heard of nextspace. That's certainly something... as for the OSX bit, I understand why you use OSX, but I would like to point out that if it's just about the UI/X and not third party software of OSX, due to the free nature Linux has many alternatives that can provide the same basic look and feel of OSX or even Windows. Your choice though, of course. If I may ask though I would like to know what it is about OSX in particular that you like?
Thought I'd chime in here too. I also use macOS as my daily driver, and am in the same boat as @cptcobalt. Even with the open source properties of most Linux distributions, nothing I've found in the *nix world rivals the UI/UX polish that macOS has. It would take a hugely concerted effort from the open source community to create a distro with macOS-levels of fit & finish.
If you've ever heard a macOS/Apple user say "it's the little things", this is absolutely the truth. It's the fact that macOS's icon design perfectly follows a cohesive pattern of illuminance, shape hierarchy, and material choice.
It's the consistent use of system wide functionality you can almost be guaranteed to find in any application. Thesaurus & Dictionary lookups for words are available system-wide. Option & Preference functionality is accessible with the same keyboard shortcut irrespective of what app you're currently using. Drag & drop is ubiquitous through the OS. The aural design of the system sounds are tuned to the machine you're using.
OSX is *nix, but I see what you're saying.
And that's why millions of people are busting their asses every day for it, and you have config files and whatnot to easily do it yourself.
Linux has icon themes though, this isn't anything unique. Everything you say can be found on Linux, and if it can't the user can do it or something. I could run around saying OSX doesn't have polish because it doesn't have this or that or a thousand other things I've tailored to myself with my Linux system, but I don't. I like OSX, I do, but the problem is with OSX it's "what does apple want" and with Linux it's "what does the use want". You can get way more consistency with your own ideals on Linux if you really care to and don't go with the defaults.
@lukeify nailed many of my usage reasons.
I don't think this adequately addresses the ease of use macOS has over a *nix. Where in linux land I'd certainly need to play with tons of configs and maintain an obsessive collection of dotfiles (which aren't necessarily unheard of in macOS either), I think the expectation in macOS land is fewer user settings that do more for the user. It's a different baseline, and where I live in a world of fast change and high productivity requirements, I don't necessarily have the time to fool with tons of things because I don't use the same tools/workflows/etc daily. Even though macOS may now not be as stable was it was in its 10.6 days, the age old trope of "it just works" still holds true, which does not match my experience in my use of Linux.
Absolutely correct, yes. That's what I mean. MacOS has everything out of the box, and it works nice. It's a really good noob and business friendly OS. I just mean that if you have the time and the knowledge, you can get linux to a point where it surpasses MacOS in usability and the little things and etc. You are completely correct. I love Linux, but it is in no way user friendly and absolutely does not "just work".
You clearly value personalisation very highly, and to you that means Linux will always have a superior UI because it's your UI. Others place more value on a consistent and seamless UI experience, and for that it's hard (I'd venture borderline impossible) to beat a dedicated team under a "benevolent dictator". The two are, to some extent, mutually exclusive.
Neither is inherently superior, but they are different, and which holds more value is something that varies widely from person to person.
I do value my personalization, and I don't mean to claim OSX is a bad OS or anything, just that Linux will beat out OSX in UI and UX if you put the effort in.
Not true though. Not in the slightest, if you have the skills. You want that consistent UI? Here's the KDE source code. Do your worst. Out of the box of course OSX will have a more seamless UI, but if you're game to theme your DE and change the icons and possibly even fork the DE, go ahead. Nobody is stopping you. OSX can not beat Linux if you're willing to put the time in for that reason.
What I tried to say above is that it's not reasonable to say one "beats" the other when different people are judging them by different criteria.
In the abstract, theoretical sense this is technically true. It's what Apple actually did - took BSD and built an entirely new UI on top of it.
But in the sense I think you mean it, talking about an individual user working to their own tastes in the real world, there are limits. A full operating system UI represents hundreds of thousands of hours of work from development and design experts. Either those people work independently, giving choice, or they work under a single framework, giving consistency. Only with vast time and resources would it be plausible to have both.
Fair enough, but I mean if you REALLY put the work in and I mean REALLY, you can make Linux function identical to OSX. Obviously, that's a total stretch and not expected of anyone, but I mean to say Linux with the right determination can certainly beat OSX aside from third party support. You can always tailor Linux better to yourself if your willing too, but it won't just work and that's not the mentality to have with linux.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the OSX design or it's consistency. I really don't like it. Just because it's backed by a large company, doesn't mean automatically it's great and everyone is gonna like it. That's just your taste.
Some people want their computers to work for them, others want to work for their computers. It depends what you prefer.
I don't see what this has to do with what I said. I wouldn't say there's "millions of people" working on Linux daily for one, but also config files are orthogonal to the goals of macOS. I have no interest in endlessly tinkering with my computers as a hobby. My computers are tools that allow me to 1) earn money, 2) accomplish tasks efficiently, while looking cool while doing so. Config files are time wasted. I want a dotfiles repo & system configuration which alters as few preferences as possible so restores, rebuilds, & any troubleshooting are trivial.
On my desktop workstation, I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and KDE 5. It looks really nice with some custom themeing, to make it more OpenSUSE like, and OpenSUSE works really nicely with Ryzen in my experience.
On my ThinkPad X61t, due to its age, I run plain Debian with the Trinity Desktop Environment (basically a modernized KDE 3), with an entirely custom theme based of the GTK theme neotif, so lots of beige and pink. It's very fast, visually ergonomic, powerful, and looks appropriately retro (which I really like with how pervasive flat design is these days, it's nice to have something different), and I've been thinking of making a /r/unixporn post about it, if just since I've yet to see anyone with a comparable setup there.
If either of these sound interesting, I'm happy to take some screenshots for whoever wants them.
Ooh, I've never heard of Trinity Desktop Environment. I like that about Linux, no matter how much I think I know, there is always something out there I haven't heard of. Suffice to say, I'm a complete distro and DE hopper.
Depending on how long you've been engaged with the Linux community, if you weren't around for the mid 2000's, it's a really great way to see what Linux used to be like. It works with any modern version of Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora. If you've got a spare machine or space for a VM, and you're interested in checking out different distros, I definitely suggest giving it a try sometime! :)
Have you tried setting
ILoveCandyin yourpacman.confyet? If not, you're in for a treat.I currently mainly use Bedrock and Arch in a multiboot; I pretty much just use Void components in Bedrock right now, but I'll add Arch to it once I transfer to the latest release (the version I'm on didn't have an automated upgrade procedure yet). I use i3, and occasionally Xfce when I need a DE (Anbox doesn't play well with tiling WMs).
Of course! I make sure to do set up ILoveCandy every install when I enable multilib. XFCE is pretty nice as well, it and KDE Plasma are my go to "regular" DEs.
I'm currently using Elementary OS. So far, it seems to hit the sweet spot of linux customizability and macOS 'polish' -- ie, most things just work and I don't have to think about them too hard or go through extensive configuration. Usually.
Void with xfce for all the usual reasons xfce is good, just simplifies things. Maybe one day I'll use a window manager but I've just become accustomed to xfce as workflow.
Void because void is awesome and everyone should try it
I use Ubuntu and Unity because I'm a filthy casual. I'm just sad that Unity is pretty much dead.
Everyone craps on unity and says "JUST USE GNOME LOL", but, although they look very similar, unity really did have some nice features that aren't really replicated anywhere else. It sucks when a program you regularly use kicks the bucket.
Have you tried out Gnome? It's pretty much like Unity but better and shinier IMO.
Thanks to Microsoft's great Longhorn Letdown I switched to Linux indefinitely around 2008. Seemed logical to start with Ubuntu and never saw a need to change that up until my last clean install. I decided to go with Mint as I don't really trust Canonical.
I've been using Awesome as my WM of choice since the months leading up to the Mayan apocalypse. Not sure how that happened but I imagine I just really liked some dude on 4chan's screenshot and then I just got used to it.
On the main PC I use Windows without any problem but on the older laptop (where no gaming happens) I threw a Xubuntu which is an Ubuntu distro with XFCE desktop. Latest Ubuntu turned out to be better than Mint or OpenSuSE at getting iGPU running properly in reasonable time, and XFCE is quite nice and simple comparing to a bit clunky KDE and especially monstrous Unity.
On my desktop: Arch w/ i3 on tty1 and Openbox on the second. Thinking about transitioning i3 to sway but I dislike some of Wayland's tendencies. It does run Okular okay now, though, so we'll see.
On my laptop: 9front and Haiku w/ default environments.
Easy on the battery, good for getting rid of distractions, nice text-editor. Very pleasant. No web browser. Pretty much ideal.
I use Mint with i3 gaps, currently in the transition period from Cinnamon. I still consider Cinnamon by far the best at what it does, I'm just loving being able to stick to my keyboard more and stuff. I didn't think I would stay with i3, but when I started up Cinnamon again I was super uncomfortable. Still leaving it on my machine, but i3 is too comfy now for me to easily leave.
I use Windows 7 mainly. I have basically no experience with OSX or anything, but for Linux I've sort of settled with Devuan right now. I use either i3 or XFCE. I like the simplicity of i3, but for things like editing a bunch of documents, I find it much easier to use a regular DE. If I'm working on something I might have a spreadsheet open, a few images open, a browser, a document writer. I find it more comfortable to have floating windows because I like to shuffle things around as if I'm working on a physical desk. But for regular stuff i3 works just fine. I use Devuan as opposed to Debian because it doesn't come with SystemD, and I feel that this is a good decision, privacy-wise.
Little late to the party, but I use Arch Linux with xfce wherever possible. I like xfce because, after learning to use a computer back in the windows 9x days, and classic GNOME being the DE I first used Linux on, it's got an extremely familiar and intuitive flow that stays out of my way to an extent unmatched by anything else I've used, while being lightweight, customizable, and nice to look at without being so flashy it's distracting.
As for Arch, it might be a meme, but it didn't get as popular as it is for no reason. It's got all the hidden depths you could want, as well as top tier customizability, without actually being that hard to use or setup (though I do miss the AIF and pre systemd days in that regard). It has hands down the best documentation of any software I've ever used, and the AUR is something just unmatched on other distros. Plus, performing an update hardly ever borks your system anymore!
I use cwm on OpenBSD. cwm is keyboard-driven, lightweight, unobtrusive, and great for laptops. And OpenBSD is just a great little Unix with world-class documentation. If you use the numbered releases, OpenBSD is what Debian wants to be when it grows up. And if you use snapshots and run -current, OpenBSD is what Arch wants to be when it grows up.
I'm using Void linux and bspwm as a window manager. I always liked Void, but was a Gentoo user for so many years that i was afraid to change.
One day i made a huge mistake and lost all my Gentoo configs. Kernel config, use flags, everything. If you guys ever used Gentoo and compiled your own kernel you know how it is to start everything from scratch again. It was the first time in almost 10 years that i dreaded using Gentoo, but i wasn't happy with any alternatives. Then i remembered Void.
Never looked back. What a wonderful distro.
Distro:
I have been using Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Sabayon, Debian, Aptosid, Arch, .... but none of them come even close to NixOS that I am using for last years, the stability - I havent re-installed NixOS to this day on any computer, still running the original installations, the rollbacks after each system upgrade are great if you want to go back, even several upgrades back. On this system, do you want Docker? Turn it on in the system configuration file like with virtualisation.docker.enable = true; option. Do not want it anymore on your system? Just delete that option or set it to false. Want fingerprint daemon? services.fprintd.enable = true; want iptables? networking.firewall.enable = true; you get the point... you want to fix a bug or add a new feature? clone nixpkgs and make a pull request, the community is very active. But there is one downside to use NixOS like an advanced user you will have to know Nix (talking about the language), learning curve can get steep quite fast, but once you get it you can make any change.
Desktop Environment:
Like distros, I have been using all sorts of them: Gnome2, Gnome3, Mate, XFCE, Enlightenment, KDE 3,4,5..., for all of them I have been using them for work and home, and NOT just trying to use them for a month or so. I have setup them to my liking. Lately I do not want to loose too much time with configuring all sorts of small things... so I went with Gnome3 and KDE5, the winner was KDE5 because of it stability, Gnome3 is much more simple but even with i7 and 16GB of ram + integrated graphics if running for weeks it just turns sluggish, KDE5 just does not.
I do not count I3wm and Awesome and stuff like that here because those are not desktop environments but window managers. There is one more thing .. I am all for growing the Linux community ... with i3wm only you just not gonna get a lot of the Windows followers to use Linux
I just installed Manjaro with KDE ... two things I've never used before. My computer was in a permanently semi-broken state before with Void (awesomewm), which was my fault: I wanted to be one of the ricers, but I never put in the effort. That being said, I liked Void, so I think I'm going to try it with XFCE again soon.
Ha! Story of my "awesome" life as well. I'm into deep tech just enough to have my semi-functional weirdo setup, but it would take me hundreds of hours of free time I don't have to master it all. I'm kind of a neo-luddite anyway, so I just blame my system flaws on the jinn
Wow, I am so glad I'm not alone, both in wanting to have enough time and not, and in being a neo-luddite. I haven't theard that term before but I think it describes me pretty well.
MX-LINUX cause it’s nice simple and super stable. i3wm so my friends think I’m a haxor. Jk, I like keeping my hands on the keyboard and i3 is easy, stable, and can be configured without using a programming language.
You should check out Artix Linux if you want Arch without system-d
For the longest time I ran Gentoo + i3wm. It was a great learning experience and it really taught me how Linux and Unix operating systems work. Though now I just run MacOS. At this point, I just prefer my OS to work so I can get my work done without fiddling with drivers. If I went back to Linux it would most likely just be Ubuntu or Fedora.