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?

  • @konodas@feddit.de
    3•2 years ago

    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.

  • lpslucasps
    2•2 years ago

    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.

  • @okiloki@feddit.de
    1•2 years ago

    I recently switched from i3 to hyprland and quite like it. Wayland still has some issues, but the better scaling makes it worth it.

  • @0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
    1•2 years ago

    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.

  • @nyan@lemmy.cafe
    1•2 years ago

    I’m the weirdo over in the corner using TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment, forked from KDE3) on both my desktop and laptop.

    • @dlarge6510@lemm.ee
      1•2 years ago

      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 wmsystemtray I 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.

  • Haunting_Tale_5150
    1•2 years ago

    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.

  • rise-if-you-would
    1•2 years ago

    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.

  • cfx_4188
    1•2 years ago

    I like Enlightenment. It uses 400 MB of RAM on my old laptop/