I haven’t tried Qtile and the others you mentioned but I’ve been using AwesomeWM for the last couple of months and absolutely love the concept of tiling window managers! I do plan to check out some of the others eventually but for now I’m enjoying Awesome.
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I came from Awesome before I switched over to i3, and if you’re trying out a few WMs then I’d recommend you to give it a go! The configuration is a bit more KISS compared to awesome, but I haven’t found it lacking.
The only thing I missed from awesome was how it creates 10 virtual workspaces per screen. i3 doesn’t have that feature by default, but someone found a way to do it by using i3 modes and a script, so now I’ve got that as well.
LXDE. I’m planning to use it as long as it’s possible (not too long, I’m afraid 
).
Yeah, i3 was definitely going to be next for me. I’ll probably go with Arco’s version again and customise from there.
I really like how Awesome handles its virtual workspaces as well so I might have to look at that workaround. Thanks mate
I’d previously tried Unity, XFCE, Cinnamon and Plasma.
The first time I tried MATE was a few years ago and I just sat down and got straight to work with no fuss, it’s been my DE ever since.
Tip for the Debian version. You want to use:
sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment-extras
then log out and back in so you get the Advanced MATE Menu and the rest of the cool features.
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I tried out Debian 10 with the various DEs available. I ended up with Cinnamon which I had never used before, but it was way better than xfce and Gnome for which I had used both for years. Cinnamon provided good customization and looks great. Also stability is a big factor. I have not had a single graphical glitch in 4 months. Xfce used to have them regularly which was merely annoying. Ubuntu would royally go wrong for no reason with Gnome.
I tend to favor MATE as my home base, but I’m really all over the place. I’ve tried everything from Plasma to Gnome to XFCE to i3. I enjoyed some things about i3 when I used Regolith, but then I forced myself to try Manjaro GNOME with all extensions disabled for a vanilla experience, and I’m starting to enjoy it somewhat. Budgie was all right, but it just didn’t click. I used XFCE for a while, and it was nice and stable, but it felt kind of fragmented. I can’t stand Qt-based desktops, for some reason. I also like Unity, but it doesn’t seem to be sticking around much longer.
What are you gonna switch to, once you need to switch?
Since 2008 vanilla Ubuntu (Gnome-2, Unity and now Gnome-3).
XFCE (Xubuntu) or Mate (Ubuntu Mate), if I need to save memory.
All look the same; dock on the left, panel on the bottom and a detailed Conky on the right.
I always take a distro from the Ubuntu family, because:
- it is boringly reliable!
- it has the best out-of-the-box support for the superior ZFS file system.
I prefer Gnome-3 for switching between full screen virtual machines, using one VM/Workspace.
At the moment it looks like it will be MATE.
Xfce - it was the first DE I fell in love with and remains my go to DE for stability. With that said, I can easily make a case for a lot of DE’s.
- Gnome (favorite for touchscreen/tablets)
- i3wm (favorite tiling manager DE)
- Plasma (favorite customization and most modern looking DE)
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MATE.
Every time I try something else, I end up going back to MATE.
Feels like home to me.
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I’ve tried Plasma, Gnome, Lxqt, Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce. I prefer Xfce for a number of reasons. 1) It’s low on resources, which is great for me because I don’t have a top of the line laptop; 2) It’s easy to customize; and 3) it’s easy to use.
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I usually don’t use a desktop environment. I’m not a fan of Gnome, and haven’t really tried KDE. The last time I installed it, I hadn’t installed video drivers (and hadn’t realized it), so my experience was less than ideal. When I need a floating window environment, I usually do XFCE.
Most of the time I just use a window manager, some panels, and a menu. Currently, that’s i3-gaps, polybar, and dmenu.
Xfce for desktops and i3 for laptops. I couldn’t imagine not using a keyboard driven environment on a laptop anymore
My DE hopping looks a little something like this:
KDE 3 (2007) > GNOME 2 (2008) > Unity (2011) > Plasma (2018) > Cinnamon (2019) > MATE (2020)
Unity was by far by favorite (I use a keyboard driven workflow, but am not a tiling WM fan). Lately, I would consider MATE as my primary DE.
Right now on my machines, I have:
Family Desktop - Cinnamon (Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 19.10)
Personal Laptop - MATE (Ubuntu MATE 19.10)
Old Personal Laptop - KDE Plasma (Kubuntu 19.10)
Testing Laptop 1 - Cinnamon (Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 20.04)
Testing Laptop 2 - MATE (Ubuntu MATE 20.04)
Intel NUC - Unity (Umix OS 18.04.3)
However, I have MATE, Plasma, and Cinnamon all set up to resemble Unity in look and usage. I really wish someone would pick up development on Unity for the desktop (UBPorts is working on Unity8 for their Ubuntu Touch mobile platform). Umix OS is great, but the developer, Tony George, is not really maintaining or updating Unity, just getting it to integrate well with newer versions of Ubuntu.
Cinnamon (on my desktop with Mint 19.3) and Pantheon (laptop running Elementary OS Hera). Gnome on my son’s computer (hMacMini running Ubuntu 18 LTS). I confess I have not tried Plasma. But I actually tried KDE about 15 years ago and really liked it 
I suppose I should try Plasma, but I am so comfortable with Cinnamon and Plasma looks very similar to Cinnamon.
Plasma. I’ve tried all the others, but I have a machine that can handle a lot and Plasma lets me make it pretty so why not? On top of that, the customization of Plasma just always wins for me. They do a lot to give you the tools to make it your own.
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GNOME. Love the polished look and feel, strict design guide which all apps follow (as far as I can see, I am totally not good when it comes to design, so take this with a grain of salt).
When I first bought 4k display, the only DE that could do fractional scaling was Plasma if my memory serves me, but it was very new and somewhat glitchy.
At that point, GNOME could only do fractional scaling for fonts, but that was enough for me.
Plus, it has Night mode out of the box.
There are downsides, like binary settings files, also 3.34 release was really broken on Arch, and for some people on Debian Testing, too.
Until recently there was no (AFAIK) modern looking GTK reader app, but now there is Foliate, which I am happy about.
Although I no longer use Google Drive, there is a very good integration available.
Today I first tried Evolution for work email and was pleasantly surprised, I have about 40 folders and several thousands of emails across them, and it was a very smooth experience, also finally I can sort those folders myself (it was broken in web app).
I rarely use it, but GNOME Web (aka Epiphany) has a web app mode, which is really good for things like Youtube, web mail client, etc. Basically you have a shortcut to any website you want and it is isolated from the main app.
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I gave you a heart simply for calling “Gah-nome ‘nonsense’”. 
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