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?

  • konodas@feddit.de
    4·
    1 year ago

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

    • snauth@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year 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.

  • bbbhltz@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 year 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.

    • aMalayali@beehaw.orgOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you.

      If you haven’t tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.

      I have tried them on desktop and in most cases, I did not have any serious issue with them. I was thinking which one would be better optimised for laptops.

      KDE handled things very well

      I’m on KDE now. It’s good. Was thinking whether there are any DE’s that are specifically recommended for laptops, for efficiency or ease of use.

    • CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi
      1·
      1 year ago

      I started with ubuntu then mint on desktop and then vm. I hated Gnome in those days, prefering KDE or XFCE (even i3wm). Now that my laptop is on EOS, I tried Gnome again and it’s much better for use with a trackpad. So yeah, different DEs for different tastes/uses/systems.

  • okiloki@feddit.de
    1·
    1 year ago

    I recently switched from i3 to hyprland and quite like it. Wayland still has some issues, but the better scaling makes it worth it.

  • bellsDoSing@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Tried many, but Xfce won for me:

    • great keyboard support (tiling windows, virtual desktops, etc.)
    • doesn’t get in the way
    • compact re UI (don’t like modern GNOME look with lots of whitespace)
    • lightweight

    An even though I use terminals a lot (neovim, git, etc.), I never stuck with tiling window managers in the end (e.g. i3). Rather I’m heavily relying on:

    • virtual desktops (8 or so)
    • manual window tiling via shortcuts
    • tmux
  • lpslucasps@lemmy.pt
    1·
    1 year 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.

  • bitwolf@lemmy.one
    1·
    1 year ago

    Gnome hands down has the best laptop experience. If you follow the intended workflow of using tiled windows and many workspaces. You can get to a very large number of windows, without getting lost, even with just the laptop screen.

    Additionally the paradigm does translate well to a desktop for the times you are docked.

  • naeap@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    1 year 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
        0·
        1 year 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·
          1 year 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

  • rise-if-you-would@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    On laptops Gnome has a big advantage in the multitouch gestures for the touchpad, and as everyone says it’s pretty polished. But lately I’ve been using KDE since it offers a lot more functionality and customization out of the box. Most of it’s apps are like a swiss army knife and I love that. KDE is also catching up in the multitouch gesture department.