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?

  • lpslucasps@lemmy.pt
    3·
    1 year 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.

  • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    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?

    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.

  • bellsDoSing@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Tried many, but Xfce won for me:

    • great keyboard support (tiling windows, virtual desktops, etc.)
    • doesn’t get in the way
    • compact re UI (don’t like modern GNOME look with lots of whitespace)
    • lightweight

    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:

    • virtual desktops (8 or so)
    • manual window tiling via shortcuts
    • tmux
    • dlarge6510@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      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!

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    KDE

    If there was a modern Window Maker, I would use that. I mean with a notification area and when I minimize Firefox or Chrome I don’t get five icons in the corner and it works as a Wayland compositor and supports HiDPI scaling.

    • dlarge6510@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year 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.

  • rise-if-you-would@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • konodas@feddit.de
    1·
    1 year 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.

    • snauth@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.