I’ve dabbled with Linux over the years, first with Ubuntu in the early 2010s, then Elementary OS when that dropped, and a few years ago I really enjoyed how customizable the gui was with Xubuntu. I was able to make it look just like WIndows 2000 which was really cool.

Which current distro has the best GUI, in your opinion? I find modern Ubuntu to feel a little basic and cheap. I guess I don’t really like modern Gnome. I’m currently using Windows 10 LTSC which is probably the best possible version of Windows, but I’d jump to linux if I could find a distro with a gui that feels at least as polished and feature rich as Windows 10 LTSC.

  • pfr@lemmy.ml
    21·
    2 years ago

    Distro is irrelevant. DE/WM choice is all that matters as far as GUI goes. Also, if you want a GUI that looks or feels like windows then KDE probably has you covered in that you could probably customise it to mimic windows.

    I quite like the Desktop Environment in elementaryOS. I think it’s called Pantheon Desktop? It’s very polished. Or InstantWM from InstantOS is also interesting and has some nice animations and effects.

    Personally, I use simple and minimal Openbox

    • Jarmer@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 years ago

      Yes, exactly. haha, the distro has nothing to do with the GUI. That’s your Desktop Environment. On almost every single popular distro you can get teh same DE’s either through official offerings or community versions.

    • John Van Ham@twit.social
      5·
      2 years ago

      @ADHDefy @bigbox perhaps I should try KDE again, I’ve been using Gnome for so long now, before that, Xfce. Haven’t tried KDE for many years and it didn’t seem very polished or have the look and feel but from screenshots, it looks a lot different to back then!

    • liara@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      I couldn’t agree more. I think that tying yourself to a specific distribution is a good way to keep yourself in a box. I think the better question here is “What DE do you prefer?” and then choose your distro based on your preferences for desktop environments while keeping other things in mind (i.e. frozen packages or rolling base).

      I, like yourself, pretty much require KDE to be functional on my desktop. A great distro for me is one that ships new KDE releases without much delay (or at least, one that’s not completely unreasonable) without having to wait for the next LTS release to get all the goodies. This narrows down the choices pretty substantially as there aren’t a lot of distros that meet this spec:

      • Arch
      • Tumbleweed
      • Fedora
      • NixOS (debatable on the keeping KDE up-to-date iirc)
      • KDE Neon
      • Ubuntu with PPAs (least favourite way to stay up to date though)

      I prefer to have a rolling (or close to rolling base) so that really only leaves me with the top 3 options.

      I’m not really here to shill for KDE, but just encourage folks to find the DE that feels most comfortable to them and then work on your requirements from there.

  • lysozyme@lemmy.ml
    18·
    2 years ago

    Linux Mint Cinnamon. Stable, yet tons of customizations possible and makes the jump from Windows a whole lot easier (I jumped 1.5 years ago and will never look back).

    • Tretiak@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      This is what’s currently doing it for me. I’m a ‘very’ heavy Windows user looking to make the jump out of privacy and telemetry considerations. Mint is what I’ve settled on for precisely this reason.

    • neytjs@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      Agreed. Linux Mint Cinnamon is also my favorite. I’ve been using it ever since I stopped using Windows and switched to Linux from Windows XP.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlM
    16·
    2 years ago

    You can use most desktop environments on most distros.

    If a distro has its own GUI and it doesn’t exist on other distros, usually that means either it isn’t free software or it’s not good enough that anyone has bothered to package it for other distros.

  • pAULIE42o@beehaw.org
    12·
    2 years ago

    The real question is what Window Manager has the best GUI… you can run any window manager on any distro - it just takes a little work.

    If you’re talking about out-of-the-box without any user customization, I’ll make a couple suggestions that I think work for new Linux users - not that I’m saying you’re green, but most power users know they can fully design the OS from the ground up if needed.

    PopOS - In between - GNOME-like with some PopOS customizations under the hood.

    ElementaryOS - MacOS-like WM thats clean fresh and easy to understand

    Mint - Cinnamon DM, Windows-like with some customization possible

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
      4·
      2 years ago

      As a caveat to this, System76 is working a brand-new DE that they’re writing from scratch in Rust called COSMIC Desktop, so they might become less GNOME-like fairly soon. Although presumably you’ll still be able to install GNOME on it if you really want to.

    • constantokra
      1·
      2 years ago

      Pop is is great. The tiling is so easy. There’s very little learning curve.

  • electrona@beehaw.org
    11·
    2 years ago

    I’m using Fedora with GNOME now and enjoying it. If you want a more Windows-like experience, go with Fedora KDE spin.

    • Link@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 years ago

      Although KDE is windows like out of the box, it is really customizable without the need of addons, which I like. The Gnome addons can be really cool, but in my experience they can make the desktop less stable and often get abandoned.

  • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
    9·
    2 years ago

    Distro? Probably Debian, because it has all the desktop environments. If you want, you can have Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all installed at the same time and switch between them at will. Most distros seem focused on one specific DE, which if I’m not mistaken means switching to another involves reinstalling the whole operating system.

    The big downside of Debian is that the software in it tends to be very out of date. You’ll get security updates and the occasional bug fix between Debian releases, but that’s about all you’ll get.

    You can get a rolling-release experience by running the “unstable” version, but as the name implies, upgrades will sometimes fail or break something, and you need to know your way around the system in order to recover from that. Not a problem if you want to learn to be a Linux sysadmin anyway, but if you want your system to Just Work™, then unstable Debian is unfortunately not for you. It’s a trade-off, as with most things in life.

    • howrar@lemmy.ml
      5·
      2 years ago

      Don’t most distros have access all desktop environments? I’m assuming OP is asking about the default DE.

      • PureTryOut@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 years ago

        They should specify that then. Because right now I’d also answer the question with “all distros”.

        I’m assuming the OP just wants know what GUI we like best, and the distro is irrelevant.

          • PureTryOut@lemmy.ml
            1·
            2 years ago

            I… Have never heard of those. I’m sure there are some distros like that, but the majority (and especially the few mainstream ones) just ship and offer all DE’s.

            • triantares@fosstodon.org
              1·
              2 years ago

              @PureTryOut Well, in general installing a different DE on a distro than the default, tends to be a sad experience. There’s lots of work under the hood that are geared to make the default DE nice and slick. It’s the reason why there are distros like Xubuntu, Kubuntu and what not.

              • PureTryOut@lemmy.ml
                1·
                2 years ago

                Tbh the various DE’s should work just fine out of the box without additional distro work done outside of packaging. That’s the case on Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux and Alpine Linux at least, not sure why it would be different on distros like Ubuntu or Fedora.

      • Parsnip8904@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 years ago

        They do but I wouldn’t really install two DEs in say Ubuntu because it leaves you with a bunch of confusing shit. Debian does it a nice way where they don’t interfere with each other.

  • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
    9·
    2 years ago

    I don’t see why distros should be married to a specific GUIs. Any distro can support any number of GUIs. It just seems like a huge waste of effort to make a distro just to support one GUI.

    I would encourage people who want to implement their unique vision for a GUI to make their effort easily packagable by any distro and to work with an existing community distro to make their work available widely.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    9·
    2 years ago

    This is subjective. For me, anything with Mate as desktop environment. Currently using Ubuntu with it.

    I’m a conservative user. I don’t really care about whistles and bells, nor appeal to novelty. I want something that works and that I’m used to.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 years ago

      MATE is my pick. It’s got all the modern features with a relatively simple baseline that is easy to customize, that also come with several presets.

      Two or more start menus? You got it. A Plank dock plus taskbars filled with shortcuts and info covering every other edge of the desktop? Hell yeah! A simple Windows, macOS, or old Ubuntu like interface. Yep. Hide it all away leaving a minimalist and clean space to work? Sure can do!

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 years ago

        Plus it feels to me more feature rich than even GNOME 3.x (where x≤14; I stopped bothering with its releases later on, so I’m not sure on its current state). And it’s easier to get it pretty than Xfce IMO.

  • nixfreak@sopuli.xyz
    8·
    2 years ago

    i3, and swaywm , I have used almost … All Linux/BSD/Windows/Osx/Unix Desktop Environments. I really like #enlightenment but it can be pretty buggy especially on wayland.

    • naeap@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      2 years ago

      I’m currently quite happy with i3, but would really like to check out Wayland.

      currently the support for barrier/synergy (controlling multiple computers with one keyboard/mouse) seems to be not there - although I saw something about a workaround with the newest synergy version.

      would you be so kind to give me some other reasons to hold back?
      Anything else that sucks in the new world?

      • nixfreak@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        2 years ago

        I have never used Synergy , but with sway which is built on top of wayland. I can use multiple monitors and it works great for me. I don’t really have a need for multiple computers since I use libvirtd (VirtualManager) and host multiple OS’s and share directories between different systems.

        • naeap@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          2 years ago

          multiple monitors is sadly different than multiple computers, side by side

          thanks for the input, maybe I’ll use a test system first :⁠-⁠)

  • nickiam2@lemmy.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    I just switched to Fedora 38 with KDE and it’s been great! It’s using Wayland now too, so it’s been really smooth and stable. My last distro was Manjaro with KDE, but I started having issues with the lastet round of updates and wanted to switch to something more stable. I really don’t like gnome as it feels to “basic”. Sure it looks nice, but for me it feels like it’s missing some important features that are just there with the default KDE layout.

  • Skimmer@lemmy.ml
    8·
    2 years ago

    i really like gnome, especially with extensions like dash to dock, transparent top bar, etc. really nice, simple, and clean ui imo.

    • NullRiver@beehaw.org
      6·
      2 years ago

      Yup, I tend to recommend fedora to my newbie friends because Gnome is simple to switch to and works really well.

    • lps2@lemmy.ml
      5·
      2 years ago

      Gnome with pop’s cosmic extensions is great. Excited to try their rust based replacement once it’s ready