What Desktop Environment do you use?

[dos2unix]

I could have added Elementary Linux here.

Thoughtful, capable, and ethical computing ⋅ elementary OS

Thoughtful, capable, and ethical computing

elementary.io

I don't know what the DE is called in Elementary, but it's definitely a MacOS knock off.

Edit: Ai says it's called "Pantheon".

The thing about Elementary is, it isn't free, and many of the apps (not all of them) cost to download.
It does use apt, so I think it's likely Ubuntu/Debian based?

 

[bob466]

My Tower has Mint Cinnamon and my 14 year old Laptop has Mint xfce.

 

[rado84]

It's far better now

Aha. Look at the VRAM usages.
1 min after boot:

About 10 minutes of using Plasma 6:

This meme was born after trying 5.27 where the VRAM usage was even worse - it left me with 124 MiB free VRAM, just enough not to crash the system.

And I won't even comment on the BS that conky is solid color in Plasma, instead of the transparent view you can see in Cinnamon!

 

[ron.alan]

I use Mate. It's all I ever used since switching to Linux, and I don't see any change coming for the foreseeable future.

 

[MzQ1NjExN2]

Aha. Look at the VRAM usages.
1 min after boot:
View attachment 30775

About 10 minutes of using Plasma 6:
View attachment 30777

This meme was born after trying 5.27 where the VRAM usage was even worse - it left me with 124 MiB free VRAM, just enough not to crash the system.
View attachment 30776

And I won't even comment on the BS that conky is solid color in Plasma, instead of the transparent view you can see in Cinnamon!

Interesting. There are so many people posting online how it uses little more RAM than Xfce. Here is one such link I came I quickly found just now:

Linux DE's resource usage compared

Nick of The Linux Experiment posted a comparison of resource usage for Desktop Environments, that could be quite useful, particularly when it comes to tailoring options to older hardware. Below is a summary of sorts. RAM seems to be the real standout, with a nearly 100% difference between...

forum.endeavouros.com

Here is also a recent post on this forum:

N

Thread 'KDE Memory consumption'

Mar 2, 2026

Hey everyone,
I keep seeing information circulating online that KDE Plasma 6 is incredibly lightweight these days, often compared to XFCE and frequently praised as being significantly lighter than GNOME.
I recently set up a new laptop (Intel Core Ultra 7, 16GB RAM) and decided to test this out.

Here is what I found:I installed Fedora 43 KDE, and out of the box, the memory footprint was higher than expected. Even after doing some under-the-hood optimization, specifically disabling packagekitd and DiscoveryNotifier (which reclaimed about ~400MB of idle RAM, removal of korganizer that...

• nolim
• gnome kde memory ram
• Replies: 17
• Forum: Desktop

• 
• 

I did take a look on my Chromebook that has KDE on it. Initial RAM usage is about 1.8 or 1.9 GB but it has never crashed due to going over the RAM so far.

 

[rado84]

I did take a look on my Chromebook that has KDE on it. Initial RAM usage is about 1.8 or 1.9 GB but it has never crashed due to going over the RAM so far.

First learn the difference between RAM and VRAM! I didn't put that "V" there just for kicks.

 

[Goatmilk]

Back to KDE/Plasma, after a short sojourn to xfce. Guess I'm a creature of habit.

 

[charlie.corder]

Found MATE was the easiest in switching from Windows. Tried Cinnamon, Plasma and a few others I can't remember.
Always ended up back at MATE. I am not as proficient with computers as most others on the forum. {at my age, I don't have to be - LOL}. I can recognize a C program when I see it. Bash scripts are fun to look at and see if I can install without help.
Old Geezer
TC

 

[Brickwizard]

off topic.. @charlie.corder , how are you doing?, dont see you about quite so often

 

[MikeWalsh]

I don't know what the DE is called in Elementary, but it's definitely a MacOS knock off.

Edit: Ai says it's called "Pantheon".

The think about Elementary is, it isn't free, and many of the apps (not all of them) cost to download.

Heh. And that's mainly WHY it's seen as a MacOS 'knock-off'. Because most of Apple's target demographic (young, upwardly-mobile, easily-impressed and thoroughly embedded in the 'brand-name' ecosystem) have more money than sense, and seem perfectly content to pay Apple's over-inflated prices for every little thing they need, or want.

So Elementary's 'pay-for-stuff' model makes them feel comfortable, and at home......still in their "comfort zone".


Mike.

 

[MikeRocor]

No DE - just JWM and an icon bar.

 

[dos2unix]

No DE - just JWM and an icon bar.

Ha, on my servers at work, bash is my DE!

 

[MikeRocor]

Ha, on my servers at work, bash is my DE!

I'd like to say I'm like that, too (although I never got to work on linux systems at work - the closest I came to "linux on servers" was... wait for it... SCO! And bash wasn't installed on them so I had to make do with "sh". Maybe I can say "I used to be like that".

Hmmm... now that I think of it, there was a brief period of using Ubuntu on robots a few years ago - I guess that counts. A few hundred new robots (new hardware platform), with a new version of the navigation software and a couple of dozen brand new "remote operations techs". "We'll go live on April first"... what could go wrong?

As for my personal in-house web server - I've gotten lazy in recent years and I actually have a full desktop (by which I mean JWM + icon bar + at least a gui file manager + a lot of other shtuff). Even though its nominally "headless", I can run GUI stuff over ssh when the mood strikes me - though in reality the only GUI thing I ever actually use on that machine is my text editor which, ironically, runs just as well in terminal/console mode (and, even more ironically, I could just run the editor locally and use it on the files on the remote machine. Mind you the difference between "local" and "remote" is only about six feet.)

 

[charlie.corder]

off topic.. @charlie.corder , how are you doing?, dont see you about quite so often

Good morning Brick.
I check the site most every day. Don't sign in unless some topic interests me, and I can comment on.
Other than that, I take my wife {who will be 91 in a week} to the mall every day for her daily 3 mile walk, take care of things around the house and get ready for the golf season coming up soon.
Thanks for asking.
CC

 

[KGIII]

her daily 3 mile walk

Impressive, excellent, and inspiring.

Thanks!

 

[rado84]

Found MATE was the easiest in switching from Spyware. Tried Cinnamon, Plasma and a few others I can't remember.
Always ended up back at MATE

Use MATE's options of the panel to make it 100% transparent and you'll find out why I lasted 30 seconds with that desktop.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Use MATE's options of the panel to make it 100% transparent and you'll find out why I lasted 30 seconds with that desktop.

it was something else, wasn't it? the b____y thing is buggy!

in porteux 2.6. with mate 1.28 desktop for example. all panel elements seen are unlocked for some reason. then the user just wants to move the "task manager" widget. the one that handles the app buttons on the panel. it disappears and the panel goes crazy! i only wanted to make a bit more space for launchers. sometimes when the user doesn't want the clock. to be the last thing on right-hand-side. when a new session is started. the buggy panel shows a mind of its own. on sparky linux "seven sisters" with mate desktop. i tried to place the "show desktop" widget. behind the clock on the right-hand side. fire the operating system anew again. there's the clock hugging the corner again. (shake head)

that transparency thing. might have to do with choosing to use the compositor or not. because disabling the compositor. also disables moving, resizing, min/max windows in sensible fashion. as long as it behaves that way. a window manager like fluxbox is better than mate any day.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I use KDE plasma, although I'm not happy with the possibility that Debian 14 may be shipped with KDE that dumped X11.

It's possible I'll switch to some good window manager when that happens.

 

[deb_user]

Debian doesn't control KDE, and what ships will be what is available from KDE.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Debian doesn't control KDE, and what ships will be what is available from KDE.

No but Debian controls what version gets into release.
Users can however bet on just 1 OS release not getting something new, 2 years span is too large to bet twice.