I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it’s Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)…etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.
Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the “Flagship Manjaro version”. I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.
After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.
What about you guys?
Sway for a laptop, Plasma for desktop.
Had you have asked me a few weeks ago, I probably would have said Sway for both,.or maybe Gnome for the desktop… But I decided to check out KDE again for the first time in like 20 years, and while it’s still kind of a hot mess it has come a long way.