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?

    • pendsv@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      1 year ago

      I have nothing against gnome and it’s defiantly the most polished, but in the same time it has alot of small inconveniences that are only fixable with plugins and messing around with the settings.

      For my workflow kde is usable out of the box with almost no configurations.

  • lpslucasps@lemmy.pt
    5·
    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.

  • konodas@feddit.de
    4·
    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
      2·
      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.

    • klz@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m the opposite. I only use tiling on desktop. When using screens under 4k a simple left/right split is all I feel which gnome can do out of the box.

  • naeap@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    1 year ago

    i3
    the less I need a mouse on a laptop, the better

    edit: ok, you specifically asked for a full fledged DE and not just a WM. well, I picked what I needed and with Manjaro i3 as base, I had a nice place to start

      • naeap@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        1 year ago

        i3 just feels much faster. can’t change back to anything more bloated at the moment. It wrecks my nerves waiting for a window to open on other DEs/WMs - although it’s often not much of a difference.

        I’m very happy with my current setup. would like to try sway, but I think Wayland/sway isn’t completely there yet.

        • 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          1 year ago

          haha I was being half serious here, as fun as I have with kronkite on my space heater, its is a layer of bloat on top of a mountain of bloat so not what you want in op’s case

  • MattMist@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’m the type of person who gets tired of a DE after using it for too long, so I’m using Budgie right now and I really like it. However XFCE is pretty nice, too, it’s what I used to use.

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    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.

  • okiloki@feddit.de
    2·
    1 year 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.

    • rankshank@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      Also a fan of hyprland, will be ovewriting my arch+kde desktop with my laptop’s nixos+hyprland flake this week. Wayland definitely has some early adoption pains but the tearing reduction alone makes it worth it.

  • rise-if-you-would@kbin.social
    2·
    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.