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?

  • naeap@sopuli.xyz
    4·
    2 years 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
        1·
        2 years 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·
          2 years 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

    • pendsv
      4·
      2 years 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.

  • DarkThoughts@kbin.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    Plasma KDE.
    I prefer the typical Windows like layout and it offers a lot of customization options that the other DEs are missing.

  • konodas@feddit.de
    2·
    2 years ago

    Tiling window managers like i3 are imho nice for laptops, since they do not waste any space and can be easily controllen via keyboard. Takes a while to get used to them, however.

    • snauth@lemmy.ml
      2·
      2 years 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·
      2 years 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.

  • lpslucasps@lemmy.pt
    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.

  • Fryboyter
    2·
    2 years ago

    If I want to use a graphical user interface, I generally use KDE Plasma.

  • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
    2·
    2 years 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.

  • Haunting_Tale_5150@kbin.social
    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.

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    2 years 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.

  • godless@latte.isnot.coffee
    1·
    2 years ago

    I’m using xfce everywhere, it’s simply the most lightweight and I got so used to fast reactivity that I couldn’t care less about barebone icons (and even those have come a long way since).