KDE. It doesn't get in the way.

KDE all the way.

KDE currently. Modern GNOME drives me somewhat insane - too “streamlined”. I used WindowMaker for a long time and somewhat miss it, but I’ve had problems with compatibility with some software (Steam).

KDE because I want a setup that just works.

Tried XFCE, KDE and GNOME but settled on GNOME.

XFCE struggled with window management especially when gaming. KDE is too messy and inconsistent. GNOME is just easy, and my wife can use it without asking questions.

i3wm for me, no DE. I do like KDE when I run a DE though.

not a de, i use hyprland.

Once I touched kde, It's always kde.

maybe something like xfce or a tiling window manager would have the lowest recurce cost

Sway mixed with KDE,
games don't really like it and Pipewire doesn't work for video recording for some reason (it has to do with the KDE xdg-desktop-portal) but it's a small price to pay for salvation I guess.

I know Sway is a window manager, not a DE - but KDE applications and services seem to fill the gaps.
They're not necessary, but you won't catch me dead with a GTK file chooser popup open, and I haven't figured out how to set up Ranger to replace Dolphin (nor do I really want to).

@sambeastie@lemmy.world Hyprland, but technically it's a tiling window manager and Wayland compositor.

I use XFCE mainly because I'm running older hardware. But I really do like it. I have been wanting to try out window managers but have just been too lazy... 😂

Hyprland + waybar and bemenu. Not truly a DE, but I love the look and the minimalism and I like to do things in the CLI anyway.

No DE just swaywm, I think you can benefit from window managers like i3 or sway for low resource utilization

Xfce of course!

Gnome on my desktop and laptop. I use xfce when working in a vm, because it's a bit lighter (I usually just need a terminal + text editor). I prefer gnome for regular use.

Gnome Wayland mainly.

I’ve been flirting with Hyprland wick seems really nice. I’d fully switch to it if gaming performance was on par with what I get on Gnome.

I use Gnome because it seemed the most Windows like on the Linux Mint website.

xfce! I don't Hardcore Game or anything but I find it easy to customize without being overwhelming or clunky at all, so there's that.

sway

I'm not even sure.

Whatever comes with mint? I had a hard drive die, and my buddy hooked me up when I realized I couldn't read the windows key on the sticker any more. He was going to do some kind of fuckery to let me keep 7 despite that, but he'd been talking about Linux for a few years, so I asked what he thought about that.

He asked me a few questions, about what kind of programs I need to use, and when none of them were a pain in the ass for an idiot like me to deal with, he set it up for me. Told me it was mint, helped me set things up where they look nice and made sure I have what I need. Haven't fucked with anything since, and that was about two years ago.

Hyprland it is really clean and "easy" to use for a Windows compositor

KDE Plasma xorg. I use discord streaming quite a bit with friends so Wayland isn't an option and I'm not using a third party discord client since that's against discord ToS.

I use mostly KDE plasma, especially for gaming, but sometimes switch to Hyprland for online Pen and Paper, since i prefer the automated tiling when opening tons of documents

I switched to just using a window manager two years ago, and I haven't looked back since. Currently using qtile (WM written and configured in python) and it was pretty straight forward to install/configure. This is the video that made me want to try it out.

No DE. dwm

Until two months ago I was using gnome Xorg to play my games. Then I bought a second monitor for my games station and I had to switch to plasma Wayland to still use the freesync. So now I'm using kde plasma to play , but I still prefer gnome, and probably switch over again after they implement the vrr patch for wayland.

No DE, but i3-gaps as WM. Been working great for 5+ years.

I just stick to Gnome to avoid problems in gaming specifically, but obviously Plasma works great as well on Steam Deck.

You could give LXQT a shot, which should be QT-compatible, and maybe require less fussing with if you do run into an issue. Xfce or Mate might be options as well, but not as lightweight.