I actually had the opposite experience with the Steam Deck. It showed me that I still really dislike KDE lol. I'm glad people like it though. It's really cool to see the Steam Deck affecting Linux desktop users like this.
@@MrQuay03 When scaling the interface, the sides of my screens will display small stripes along the borders of my screen. At increased scaling, fonts are also janky and have visible artifacts and alignment issues.This is noticeable after exiting full screen on a light colored interface. This is not reproduceable in GNOME 46. Both issues go away in KDE Plasma 6 after reverting scaling back to 100%.
For me, I just love the simplicity of Cinnamon's design mixed with Mint's super user-friendly nature. The only thing stopping me from switching to it is precisely the lack of Wayland support due to my multi-monitor setup as well as the extra things that Wayland offers like variable refresh rate. Having it "look more modern" isn't that relevant to me personally.
You have the right idea. I attempted a Linux move back in 2020 and X11 didn't like my multi-monitor setup and Wayland wasn't there yet, which was a dealbreaker, and so I went back to Windows. I spent years waiting, watching Linux videos (including yours) and being in Linux groups and watched it grow. I came back and Wayland is amazing for my use case. Linux has grown so much in those 4 years thanks to Wayland. You also have the right idea with DE, I feel exactly as you said about the other DEs, I feel they look as good as maybe Windows 98 (some even worse) and they were never an interest to me and I have no use case for a TM as cool as Hyprland looks, I feel they are for terminal users. To me, it's a "two man race" between Gnome and Plasma. Gnome is there for people who like the look of Mac and KDE for Windows (yes, you can customize both, but I also mean out of box) I also think Gnome is much better for a laptop user because of touch screen gestures, big icons and better calendar/productivity support, while KDE is better for multi-monitor users who don't need gestures, likes to customize, has better gaming performance and is just a better overall daily driver for desktops. (I am a Plasma guy) So you definitely have the right idea to entice people to come to Linux.
I use Cinnamon. It is fast, light - relative to a new computer and mostly - boring. I like it like that. Later we will have cinnamon wayland, on nvidia. Many people will come here and start to fight which is better, the best for you is the one you choose, regardless of what it is.
GNOME has become my favorite desktop environment ever since switching from the Microsoft ecosystem to the open-source ecosystem, it really brings out the uniqueness of Linux when compared to Windows or macOS.
I dunno about Cinnamon, seems like a good middle ground to me. Otherwise I agree that both GNOME and Plasma surely are the once that catch the eye the most.
@@cameronbosch1213 I couldn't care less about Wayland, honestly. Software I make use of still behaves buggy with it (KeepassXC can't connect to the sshagent, InputLeap doesn't work with Plasma YET) and overall as long as Xorg does the job, I don't a point in switching. Just like Michael said, everyone has to decide for themselves what they make of the whole desktop thing under Linux.
@@MegaManNeoSadly everything is moving towards Wayland. It's quite lacking still on some if its protocol standards but hopefully it'll improve just as Xorg did
For me when introducing a new user to Linux the overall distro is more important than just the DE. While I don’t personally run mint anymore, it is what got me to try Linux. Cinnamon may not follow current design trends, but I don’t think it looks outdated just yet. More importantly though it has an excellent onboarding process, an excellent graphical update tool, it pushes timeshift, and it comes with pretty much all the packages you need to have a functionally complete base system without being bloated. My recommendation may change if cinnamon begins looking too out of date, but for now I haven’t found a distro that is quite as polished as mint.
I like cinnamon over both KDE and Gnome, is a middle ground between the two I think, and it can be made to look fresh with ease... I would get to say that cinnamon does quite a few things better than those two, is meant for ease of use yet is customizable. There is also the experimental wayland support that is not 100% daily-driveable yet but supposedly in august, as LM 22 comes out, it will be nicely upgraded.
I jumped quite a bit when I switched back in 2020. I used a bit Cinammon, Gnome (Vanilla and Pop OS), LXQt and many others, but KDE always felt like the 'right' choice for me, with all the customization I need. Been running Fedora KDE Edition for about 2 years now, and Idon't plan on switching. Maybe I'll give Cosmic a shot if it comes to Fedora or on my Laptop.
I use XFCE4 for muscle memory and because I like a lightweight desktop that stays out of my way. Choice of desktop is a very personal thing, I guess. My non-technical sister and *very* non-technical brother-in-law also use XFCE4... because that's what I installed for them. Yes, they run Linux. They know if they want tech support, I won't support Windows. :)
I don't think that it matters that much honestly. This is more of a problem for professionals, as most probably don't even get their monitor icc profile, or even calibrate it at all.
I totally agree with your initial argument - first impressions matter. However I don't think saying Cinnamon is flat or less polished than KDE is entirely fair. I think they're both very polished and pretty straight out of the box. I see Cinnamon as a kind of middle ground between KDE's extreme customizability (I managed to break KDE in my early Linux days) and Gnome's almost non-existent customizability. Cinnamon is the best choice in it's official distro unless you have a low spec PC, but even on other distros, I feel it does its job well. The Mint team did a great job "fixing" Gnome. Just my take, I may be a little biased haha.
For personal use, KDE Plasma 100%. I do enjoy Cinnamon and Mate, but I reserve them for my absolutely slowest systems. I like Cinnamon for its Vista-looking interface with modernizations, and I love MATE for its easy plugins on its taskbar - CPU/GPU/HDD/Network graphs are quite easy to set up with it, so good for servers where I want a desktop. This is all home-based, I don’t have clients or anything. My dad did get a 2-in-1 laptop with touchscreen recently, and I used GNOME for that machine because of its tablet optimizations. He loves being away from Windows!
as a awesome wm user i cant recommend any tiling window manager to anyone they are hard to learn and adjust for new users but the initial pain is worth it cuz its just so cool
I actually tried Hyprland today for a bit. Kinda cool how you configure it, but yeah, I guess it could take a couple or hours or even trial and error to get stuff to ones preference
I too use AwesomeWM, but wouldn't recommend it or any other tilling wm, bc it just adds on top of complexity from switching OSes the need to learn to use the keyboard No, awesome wm is not awesome for mostly mouse users
If you are a beginner on linux and gained some confidence dont hesitate to trying other DE's and WM's on some kind of virtual machines etc. Evantually you'll find which one fits you best. Personally, i am a window manager user but my fav DE is xfce. I install all of my systems with xfce so i can use some of the tools that included in xfce on my window manager setup.
It's a good idea but remember a lot of beginners may not know how to use a vm. Remember, the goal is to improve Linux support for EVERYONE, including those that know very little about computers but just want an alternative to Windows/Mac.
XFCE is phenomenal especially when combining it with i3. Best of both worlds. I have also found plasma with the polonium tiling add-on and some custom key bindings to be quite functional and aesthetically pleasing
100% agree! It's not just visuals (but visuals are also important), it's also the underlaying technology that many ppl don't know about, Wayland, VRR, DRM leasing, fractional scaling and so on. + both projects have a big team dev team behind it. I have much respect for XFCE or Cinnamon, but they are not for me, at least not yet. I can't wait for Cosmic, because it seems like the perfect middleground between GNOME and Plasma, lets see! Great Video!
"Cinnamon doesn't follow current trends." That is the point. Most people coming from windows want something that looks like Windows 7. Look at Windows 8 and Windows 11. Even users on those OSes were installing things like Classic Shell to get back to a Windows 7 look and feel.
for me cinnamon is perfect, it's stable , lightweight, customisable and simple settings(looking at you plasma). onlythings that stopping me to use it are stable wayland support, functional fractional scaling.
I am the absolute minority and run LXDE ,out of the box it looks absolutely ancient,but i only make it look slightly less ancient bcz it doesnt bother me.The absurdly low ram and cpu usage are a good fit for my old hardware
I left windows 11 and went straight to hyprland lol. I figured that if i had to learn something new, why not challenge myself a little. I’m now on dwm and it’s amazing! Plasma 6 is nice too but imo too much like windows (whom I now hate with a passion). Great content sir! Keep up the good work!!!!
I do agree with a lot of the criticisms aimed at Wayland for breaking things that just worked before. For my own part, I would have been much happier with the transition had Wayland provided equivalents for all the various little X11 utilities, like xprintidle. A *lot* of scripts use these little utilities, and a lot of them simply have no direct equivalent under Wayland. That being said, I have been working on building or finding alternatives for a while now, and I finally have XScreenSaver working fully on Plasma under Wayland, complete with DPMS and session locking (and not using XScreenSaver's locking hack). It would have been great for the Wayland project to have taken on a compatibility layer for these tools on their own, though.
Wayland is also nigh on essential for multi monitor setups ESPECIALLY if you need different scaling on those two monitors because one is a higher resolution than the other. X11 simply has NO IDEA what it is doing. My gaming experience on GNOME is extremely comfy and I appreciate it a whole lot, even if I had to apply a few patches, it's nice and comfy and works great 99.99% of the time
I like to switch my desktop environment relatively often and right now I'm only switching between Gnome, KDE and Hyprland because I'm so used to using Wayland that it feels like a step back going to a X11 based desktop environment
Yeah, only reason I use X11 on my tablet is when I need to screen share on skype, though wayland is better on everything else on there. On my desktop I still use X11 for games/nvidia, but I'll see how it works once I upgrade to 24.04 after the first patch arrives.
I do agree that Wayland has come a long way, and that its definitely beneficial to use if your hardware can support it. However, those running Nvidia cards(like myself) still run into quite a few problems on Wayland. I was running Fedora 40 /w Gnome and the application windows would occasionally have parts of them flickering. The UI was really sluggish and for some bizarre reason electron apps had an input delay, and often when typing quickly would show ghost characters. Pressing backspace would delete more than one character, and sometimes during input multiple characters would be added despite only pressing the key once. Only one real character was added, the rest weren't even there. Latest available driver or previous one resulted in the same results. Hopefully whenever the next driver rolls out these problems are resolved because they're extremely annoying. I went back to EndeavourOS with Gnome on X11 and everything works fine. Computer at home also has an Nvidia card running Suse on X11 and it also works fine. Both PCs running Nvidia have the exact same issues running Wayland.
@@Halfbit_0I'll have to try KDE with Wayland at some point then. Problem is both machines need to run properly and with the graphical glitches that were in my dev tools it was almost impossible to work with. Media playback was also an issue with the videos constantly freezing while the sound was still playing. I encountered none of these issues running X11.
I use Plasma and Hyprland both roughly equally. I use Plasma on my PC where I have many windows across a few virtual desktops and Hyprland on my laptop because I don't have to care about window layout as it's done for me.
Every time I give wayland a chance I run into some stupid problem that I have to fix with some wild workarounds. For example, push to talk for applications such as discord is still an issue, and while there's fixes, if you like to use mouse buttons for push to talk you're just out of luck unless you wanna do some crazy workarounds... Or vsync is also still an issue with wayland for some reason. I had the weirdest issues running dark souls. It was a stuttery mess, then I realized it's wayland not playing nice with vsync. And sure I can turn that off and for many games that's completely fine, but when I am locked in 60fps I don't wanna deal with screen tearing. This is just two issues I've ran into using wayland, there's so much more... So for now I stick with x11. It's not worth the headache for me at the moment. I already troubleshoot linux systems as my dayjob, I don't need it in my free time as well.
Agreed, there are too many issues with Wayland still. For me, not saving window positions is so annoying. Also screen waking with nvidia cards is broken.
I would add, giving feedback based on your actual experience is something that counts and it adds to the quality and authenticity of your channel .. which honestly makes it unique on TH-cam 🤣👍
no DE is for everyone though, especially gnome considering how controversial it is in the linux space and if your goal is to appeal to windows users, UKUI was literally made for that, and ukui-kwin has wayland support personally i find KDE looks pretty dated, everythings cramped and boxy and gives off bloated vibes in the default configurations, win11 and the latest macOS moves towards more minimalist designs, KDE feels like taking windows xp and slapping transparency on it and lastly when it comes to attracting new users, you get more success showing them stuff they can't do in windows rather than "look it can pretend to be windows decently enough", cuz the latter isn't a reason to swap, there's a lot of windows users trying out linux specifically because they want to try something like hyprland
Here's to hoping Cosmic DE fixes this for the masses...I'm still using GNOME, mostly because it has that minimal macOS inspired UI and has better Window management than macOS. Even GNOME though, has sacrifices, like poor fractional scaling support. Most of the Linux DE's really look like win9x, which is why I ultimately use GNOME. I've not tried UKUI, can it use x11 in VMs? (I don't do wayland for virtual machines), only hosts.
@@DDracee cool, I've been experimenting with XFCE these days since it has better high DPI than GNOME as of now. Biggest thing is miss from GNOME is touchpad gestures. Does the wayland session for UKUI support touchpad, or will that be a future implementation?
@@grantschilb8019 not sure about gestures, i dont use touch, i know it supports custom touch mapping and has it's own touch input library so worst case scenario gestures are just a script away i've only shortly played around with ukui since it was offered on cachyOS and i was curious, so im no expert on it, personally i mostly use tiling WMs, currently on awesomeWM
I say show off XFCE at least as it is the "ol reliable" of linux DE's Sure it still uses xorg and some versions of it look old-fashioned but it would be a way to show off XFCE's amazing customization capability.
I agree, we get into Linux because we want choices.....then many of us ask the community to choose for us. Choose the distro, DE, WM, and setup YOU like and forget everyone else's opinion on it.
Because linux start to evolve and before there was Microsoft monopoly and now people (thx to Valve) we have a choice to run from w11 annoying ads and this discrimination thing like yor PC not good enough for our system (and now your ai doesnt good for our system)
I started with Cinnamon, then moved to Gnome and finally ended up on KDE Plasma. However, Wayland more than anything has been the biggest game changer.
Windows users aware of X’s keypress sharing will definitely opt for a wayland distro. These users will often start with a VirtualBox VM. As VirtualBox requires xwayland for wayland to work, these users will be limited to a couple distros - KDE and GNOME. So, thumbs up on presenting these two Linux variants. Consider demoing how any non-root app running in X can capture the keypresses for any financial account userid/pw entered into a browser, and sudo pw entered into a terminal, any message typed into an editor/mail/messaging app. Use xinput for the demo.
I moved from Fedora to Ubuntu many years ago ( 6.06 LTS ) and was with them through the Gnome 2 and Unity days ( Though I was pretty disgusted with Unity 8. ) I had tried Ubuntu Gnome, before Ubuntu moved to having a Gnome Desktop with a few tweaks, and I really didn't care for it. I went "shopping" for a new Desktop Environment, and landed on Mate` ( both Ubuntu Mate` and Mint Mate`) for a while, but then I tried Mint Cinnamon, and was juggling between then for a couple of years. I finally had enough of the odd quirks with Mate` and just moved to Mint Cinnamon, and I am still there. From what I am hearing about the new Ubuntu releases, I may move to LMDE.
I've had stability issues with Plasma for a long time but since Plasma 6 I don't think I've had any issues, and Plasma 6.1 is looking even better. I'm still pining after the new update to the Breeze icons that haven't arrived yet. It wont be complete until I have those!
First impressions are so ridiculously important that Linux adoption is a joke compared to what it would have been if wine, lutris and all dependencies came with every single distribution and most windows programmes worked out of the box But headless gentoo nerds that hate convenience will scream at you for including bloat in their precious distro that should not take up more than 20 megabytes of your storage by default
I think my big requirement in any OS is an easy way to search for a program. In GNOME or Windows (I think KDE as well?), you can just hit Super (Windows key) and start typing. In MacOS, you hit Super+Space to open the search bar. Some older DEs don't support easy searching like that, but I think LXDE and XFCE both do. My second big selling point is a good desktop switching.
I know you can share your screen under Wayland because I do it every week in WebEx in my Red Hat Academy classes. At least with WebEx under KDE Plasma 6, screen sharing is natively supported and doesn't require any additional configuration.
KDE is pretty much the only DE that doesn't feel like a toy. It has so many useful features and customization that pretty much everything else pales in comparison. With that said, as a heavy user, I've found Plasma 6 to be generally a bit less stable than Plasma 5 - at least on Wayland. Some of the problems may actually be with Qt6 rather than Plasma itself, but since it's heavily tied to Qt, that doesn't really change a thing.
I keep IceWM installed because of how little RAM it uses by default, which makes it perfect for memory-bound tasks. In some games it's the difference between a slideshow and playable performance. Though normally I use KDE (which sadly eats 2.2GB of RAM with nothing running and everything in startup closed). Unfortunately, for some software you end up having to create "icewm start scripts" because they expect certain env vars to be set, env vars that are set by kde, but not in IceWM, so you need a script that sets those up to the values expected by the program in question, then launch it. And a simple shell script is the best way to do it.
I have 180 degrees opposite experience of what you are saying half of this video. I listened to you with my mouth half open actually... Using Wayland with my Nvidia has been the worst experience I have ever had in my 40 years (yes) of using computers. It tears the desktop, flickers windows and mouse cursor, also stutters the cursor, have multiple issues with my dual monitor setup. It is a house of horrors no matter the distro and both on Kde and Gnome. And I have none of the above problems while using Mint + Cinnamon x11 and I didn't need to do anything at all. Wayland and Gnome developers know this crap and they promised to solve it in mid May with new drivers. Stuff you say are contradictory to reality (for nvidia at least).
And I would completely disagree with you. If I had to use X, my multi-monitor, multi-VRR setup would be completely wasted. Using the 555 beta drivers from nvidia, my experience has been completely smooth on Wayland.
I'd go one step further and just show Gnome. KDE is nice and everything but every time I tried it I found at least one bug that was breaking my UX. The most recent one was with a 7840HS machine where the KDE version of Debian would not work with my dock but the normal Gnome version had absolutely no problems. Gnome might be a bit limited sometimes but at least it does what it is supposed to do. I first installed Debian KDE because it has proper fractional scaling and wayland support which isn't unimportent when a 14" laptop has a resolution of 2560x1600@120Hz and installed everything I needed only to then realize the next day that the dock doesn't work. I then tried the Live ISO with Gnome and had no problems so I just installed that instead. Not having fractional scaling doesn't bother me that much because everything looks decent at 200% scaling anyways. I'd have liked 150-175% but tbh, 200% is still ok and wayyy better than 100% on a screen that size. Grüße aus Wien ;)
If you're a Windows user, GNOME with no extensions is a good way to keep them from using Linux. The UI and UX paradigm is just way too different to be a good fit coming from Windows.
I don't know about you but if something looks different and works in a different way than Windows is a positive in my book if you are seraching for Windows alternatives. If your goal is to have a Windows replacement then KDE also doesn't help because even if the UI is similar, the rest ist not. If you don't expect it to work like Windows, you are wayyy more likely to search for other solutions and new approaches. (Unless you just need an internet machine then it literally doesn't matter what you run as long as it has an up to date browser...)
When the Nvidia 555 came out, Wayland became possible for a lot of Nvidia users, but at the moment any game (or any apps that use GPU to render) that uses XWayland simply won't work properly if it doesn't have the fps to match the monitor's refresh rate.
As someone with a multi-monitor setup that's been put-off by linux because of X11 lag, I was so excited that Wayland finally got better. I tried installing both Ubuntu and Fedora, but with either of them when I used the full resolution and refresh rate of all 4 of my montiors the displays would start flickering insanely, and the only option was to change my main 240hz monitor's refresh rate to 120hz to fix the issue. I have no idea if it's because I'm somehow overwhelming it with my monitors (1440p at 240hz, 1440p ultra-wide at 100hz,1440p at 165hz and 4k and 120hz) or something else but it made me give up on linux again. I find it hilarious that Linux works flawlessly on obsolete hardware from the 90s that's impossible to find drivers for on Windows, but it's struggling when it comes to high-end PCs. Hopefully wayland improves even more and native HDR support gets added so I can finally transition away from windows, without feeling screwed for spending thousands on good monitors/tv.
I'm not quite sure how big the impact actually is. Cinnamon is a bit lighter, but battery tuning is usually not being affected much by the Desktop Environment, but rather drivers, schedulers, and kernel tweaks
@@MichaelNROH there are probably a bunch of things affecting it for sure. In my experience, Linux Mint Cinnamon gives about 4 hours battery while Fedora KDE gives 2.5.
@@MichaelNROH your comment inspired me to test the battery life of all 3 desktops on the same distribution on my PC. With Fedora 40 I got 2.5 hrs battery on KDE, 3 hrs on Gnome, 4 on Cinnamon. No hate on any desktop, I'm sure KDE and Gnome have their own benefits too.
For whatever reason, for me, Wayland (with Nvidia) everything just feels smoother on the desktop vs X11. Like moving around app windows, the way things animate, or scrolling text in a web browser. Everything is finally smooth. I'm assuming X11 is acting weird for me because I have multiple monitors at different refresh rates? I've tested this on quite a few distros and desktop environments too. On X11 everything works properly but it feels like everything is running at 1/3rd of the framerate. It's weird. My biggest test for Wayland is whether or not I can play Factorio without reducing my monitor's refresh rate down to 60 (Factorio runs locked at 60fps and it's tied to the game's logic). If I leave the refresh rate at 144hz (or higher) the game flickers like crazy. It's a native Linux game too. A lot of steam proton/wine stuff actually works fine. Some still have random elements flickering, but it's rare. I feel so annoyed with having an Nvidia card because I really like what I've tried out of Linux. It's just this dumb flickering nonsense! It happens in Chromium too. Almost exclusively on Twitter for some random reason. As if it's a flickering sign from God to stop using Twitter. And again, I have tried to get used to X11 but when it feels so weird and low framerate it just pushes me back to windows. X11 is also screen tearing quite a bit too. I know that explicit sync thing is coming soon right? Please let that finally fix this cursed flickering wayland issue.
well gnome did convince me to use linux just cos how simple and fluid it looks out of the box. which what I need a desktop that work and looks good. mind u its way less customizable than other alternative. but I don't need customizable. i just want it to feel nice with no tinkering.
I'm a full time GNOME user and love it. It's my happy place. Sure there's some jank here and there but the vast majority of the time it works fantastic and shell extensions are super freaking useful and most importantly, it's SUPER stable
For me, KDE plasma is better for touch screen support. With high dpi, gnome xwayland looks blurry. But on KDE, they fixed this in 5.25. Plasma, would be kinda like windows with touch scree, i prefer usability. Would be nice, if you make a DE video especially for touch screen.
Used Linux back in 2001-3 my second round of being in college and I remember hating Gnome back then and thinking I enjoyed KDE more. Plus tried out early Fedora Core, but I was mostly messing w my old machine bc I had replaced it and didn’t want to try and futz w Linux to run things like Star Wars Galaxies. I’ve checked in here and there over the years and the last year or so played in a lot of distros in Virtual ox on my Mac. Still can’t stand Gnome and I think the “Launchpad as main way to start apps” is taking the worst part of MacOS and putting it front and center. I do really like where Cinnamon sits and installed LMDE 6 on my MIL 12 yr old Dell after I made a couple of upgrades to it. I still play in several different distros, but at this point most of them are running KDE in Wayland. Mac has t had NVidia in ages so no worries on that front, but Virtualbox is so outdated I’m exploring UTM now. If I eventually grab a copy of Parallels I may dive deeper into things, but really it’s just something fun to explore more than anything else. I do feel MacOS just gets out of my way vs Windows,and Linux is capable of that, although some distros do really feel like are a million updates. Arch based for example, of which I have enjoyed EndeavourOS the most. Generally Fedora, OpenSUSE, EndeavourOS have been where I’m settling in more. Mint seems like they are quickly coming to a point where they will have. To make a decision regarding Ubuntu, bc Ubuntu’s baseline feels like it’s at odds with what the project wants for itself. While Debian’s r3cent update last summer made LMDE6 a more up to date option for my MIL computer vs regular Mint, Ubuntu sticking w/5.27 KDE is deflating if still understandable. Enjoyed the video and frankly there are plenty of folks talking about all those other DEs. Focus on the ones you want to talk about and the videos will feel better to make.
2:49 when talking about beginners and shortcuts. Im a Linux beginner, but I don’t care about how Mac or windows do things. All I want is the best way to do shortcuts. I come from Mac, I don’t need to do things the way Mac does them. I just want the most efficient, effective, and modern/new way of doing shortcuts/hot keys. Learning a new work flow isn’t a problem. I just don’t want it to be too complicated, no terminal. I’m not looking for OSs that look similar to mac or windows. I’m looking for a new, fresh, just works, and futuristic UI. What’s the best desktop environment for me? Also I’m thinking about Buying a system76 Rig with pop/cosmic preinstalled.
Wayland: No screen tearing while playing games (Fedora 39 and 40) X11: Definite screen tearing on fast moving scenes. Wayland: No support for Rust Desk Remote Desktop. X11: Rust Desk works fine.
Very informative. I prefer Mint Cinnamon *because* I find modern design trends distracting & often ugly. I actually modify the interface to bland single color or 2 color gradient back grounds. I'd rather look *away* from the screen for an engaging visual environment. (Physically better for the eyes, more choice.) Wayland support *may* become an issue, but by then it will likely be improved & supported & better supported in Cinnamon & elsewhere.
Some distros like ZorinOS or Fedora offer a Lite Version or IoT Spin of their Distros, but with 2 Gigabytes of RAM, your main concern are applications like browsers which are nowadays made for more memory machines unfortunately
yeah it gets tough when it comes to web browsing concerning RAM. I have some REALLY old laptops that I tested running Linux on, and majority of somewhat light distros will work very well. Where issues run is running a browser. TH-cam and very script heavy websites will use up not only a lot RAM, but also CPU which if you have a really old and slow CPU, it's gonna struggle. No matter how light the distro. the best you can do is use Konqueror to browse websites that aren't that heavy. that being said, I've used AntiX Linux and Puppy Linux for these tests. Occasionally Debian.
I mean NVIDIA has been working much more actively on their drivers and the situation has improved quite a bit just in the last few months. Plenty of articles and videos talking about the strides being made
I agree with you that Gnome and KDE are the two best DEs out there right now. That said wayland is horrible at the moment and will likely take another year or two (at least) before its ready.
Im a XFCE lover but I do admit it looks dated and monitors can be hepatic. You can’t argue with its incredible speed but unfortunately it does feel dated. KDE is amazing but it’s easy to get lost if you come from other OS while Gnome is beautiful but… it’s almost like it really hates you customising it. I lost count of how many times I had issues with it. Nothing is perfect but I do agree KDE and GNOME are the cutting edge but who knows what will happen in the near future.
Interesting that you've had no issues in Wayland. Wayland was working for me until I opened blender. For whatever reason, it hobbles my Nvidia gpus and Blender viewport stutters. Not an issue on X11. Apparently this has been an issue for a long time.
Even KDE suffers from this, with its settings and other widgets looking quite dated. Its why I have hope for both System76's COSMIC & Nitrux's Maui Shell, GNOME is stuck with an opinionated design that is considered so unusable by default that most distro's ship a laundry list of Extensions with it, and Nitrux got frustrated with KDE breaking their customisations (similar to System76) in making a useable and attractive environment for users.
I fell in love with Plasma on the Steam Deck. Now I run Plasma on all my machines.
Plasma is definitely usable. It's got some quirks, but I have no reason to doubt that KDE will eventually fix the bugs like they always do.
@@SecretAgentBartFargo What bugs?
I actually had the opposite experience with the Steam Deck. It showed me that I still really dislike KDE lol. I'm glad people like it though. It's really cool to see the Steam Deck affecting Linux desktop users like this.
@@MrQuay03 When scaling the interface, the sides of my screens will display small stripes along the borders of my screen. At increased scaling, fonts are also janky and have visible artifacts and alignment issues.This is noticeable after exiting full screen on a light colored interface. This is not reproduceable in GNOME 46. Both issues go away in KDE Plasma 6 after reverting scaling back to 100%.
I have always been a bit of a kde fanboy, at least since plasma 5 hit the scene. Before that I really liked ubuntu's unity
For me, I just love the simplicity of Cinnamon's design mixed with Mint's super user-friendly nature. The only thing stopping me from switching to it is precisely the lack of Wayland support due to my multi-monitor setup as well as the extra things that Wayland offers like variable refresh rate. Having it "look more modern" isn't that relevant to me personally.
@@horizon4895 pretty sure that Zorin supports Wayland
You have the right idea. I attempted a Linux move back in 2020 and X11 didn't like my multi-monitor setup and Wayland wasn't there yet, which was a dealbreaker, and so I went back to Windows. I spent years waiting, watching Linux videos (including yours) and being in Linux groups and watched it grow. I came back and Wayland is amazing for my use case. Linux has grown so much in those 4 years thanks to Wayland.
You also have the right idea with DE, I feel exactly as you said about the other DEs, I feel they look as good as maybe Windows 98 (some even worse) and they were never an interest to me and I have no use case for a TM as cool as Hyprland looks, I feel they are for terminal users. To me, it's a "two man race" between Gnome and Plasma. Gnome is there for people who like the look of Mac and KDE for Windows (yes, you can customize both, but I also mean out of box) I also think Gnome is much better for a laptop user because of touch screen gestures, big icons and better calendar/productivity support, while KDE is better for multi-monitor users who don't need gestures, likes to customize, has better gaming performance and is just a better overall daily driver for desktops. (I am a Plasma guy)
So you definitely have the right idea to entice people to come to Linux.
Wayland has come an insanely long way in just these past 4 years it's amazing
I would love to use GNOME on my laptop but i need to use fractional scaling and some apps gets blurry with it so it's inusable for me :(
You encouraged me to install linux on my main PC, Your content is very helping
Watch ChrisTitusTech, he'll make you use all OSes with Linux being the main
I use Cinnamon. It is fast, light - relative to a new computer and mostly - boring. I like it like that. Later we will have cinnamon wayland, on nvidia.
Many people will come here and start to fight which is better, the best for you is the one you choose, regardless of what it is.
GNOME has become my favorite desktop environment ever since switching from the Microsoft ecosystem to the open-source ecosystem, it really brings out the uniqueness of Linux when compared to Windows or macOS.
I dunno about Cinnamon, seems like a good middle ground to me.
Otherwise I agree that both GNOME and Plasma surely are the once that catch the eye the most.
Once they reach Mint 23 and Cinnamon gets full Wayland support, I think it will be a good middle ground. Right now, it's a bit too old for my liking.
Cinnamon has a bright future I think. Eventually it will find it's own design, which will look modern, sleek, but still in their classic imagination.
@@cameronbosch1213 I couldn't care less about Wayland, honestly.
Software I make use of still behaves buggy with it (KeepassXC can't connect to the sshagent, InputLeap doesn't work with Plasma YET) and overall as long as Xorg does the job, I don't a point in switching.
Just like Michael said, everyone has to decide for themselves what they make of the whole desktop thing under Linux.
@@MegaManNeoSadly everything is moving towards Wayland. It's quite lacking still on some if its protocol standards but hopefully it'll improve just as Xorg did
i think the best middleground will be cosmic when it finally finished first release
For me when introducing a new user to Linux the overall distro is more important than just the DE. While I don’t personally run mint anymore, it is what got me to try Linux. Cinnamon may not follow current design trends, but I don’t think it looks outdated just yet. More importantly though it has an excellent onboarding process, an excellent graphical update tool, it pushes timeshift, and it comes with pretty much all the packages you need to have a functionally complete base system without being bloated. My recommendation may change if cinnamon begins looking too out of date, but for now I haven’t found a distro that is quite as polished as mint.
I like cinnamon over both KDE and Gnome, is a middle ground between the two I think, and it can be made to look fresh with ease... I would get to say that cinnamon does quite a few things better than those two, is meant for ease of use yet is customizable.
There is also the experimental wayland support that is not 100% daily-driveable yet but supposedly in august, as LM 22 comes out, it will be nicely upgraded.
I jumped quite a bit when I switched back in 2020. I used a bit Cinammon, Gnome (Vanilla and Pop OS), LXQt and many others, but KDE always felt like the 'right' choice for me, with all the customization I need.
Been running Fedora KDE Edition for about 2 years now, and Idon't plan on switching. Maybe I'll give Cosmic a shot if it comes to Fedora or on my Laptop.
I use XFCE4 for muscle memory and because I like a lightweight desktop that stays out of my way. Choice of desktop is a very personal thing, I guess. My non-technical sister and *very* non-technical brother-in-law also use XFCE4... because that's what I installed for them.
Yes, they run Linux. They know if they want tech support, I won't support Windows. :)
At least you showed & acknowledged the color management situation on Wayland.
I don't think that it matters that much honestly. This is more of a problem for professionals, as most probably don't even get their monitor icc profile, or even calibrate it at all.
I totally agree with your initial argument - first impressions matter. However I don't think saying Cinnamon is flat or less polished than KDE is entirely fair. I think they're both very polished and pretty straight out of the box. I see Cinnamon as a kind of middle ground between KDE's extreme customizability (I managed to break KDE in my early Linux days) and Gnome's almost non-existent customizability. Cinnamon is the best choice in it's official distro unless you have a low spec PC, but even on other distros, I feel it does its job well. The Mint team did a great job "fixing" Gnome. Just my take, I may be a little biased haha.
For personal use, KDE Plasma 100%. I do enjoy Cinnamon and Mate, but I reserve them for my absolutely slowest systems.
I like Cinnamon for its Vista-looking interface with modernizations, and I love MATE for its easy plugins on its taskbar - CPU/GPU/HDD/Network graphs are quite easy to set up with it, so good for servers where I want a desktop. This is all home-based, I don’t have clients or anything.
My dad did get a 2-in-1 laptop with touchscreen recently, and I used GNOME for that machine because of its tablet optimizations. He loves being away from Windows!
as a awesome wm user i cant recommend any tiling window manager to anyone they are hard to learn and adjust for new users but the initial pain is worth it cuz its just so cool
I actually tried Hyprland today for a bit. Kinda cool how you configure it, but yeah, I guess it could take a couple or hours or even trial and error to get stuff to ones preference
I too use AwesomeWM, but wouldn't recommend it or any other tilling wm, bc it just adds on top of complexity from switching OSes the need to learn to use the keyboard
No, awesome wm is not awesome for mostly mouse users
Been watching you for awhile now. Your videos are VERY insightful and enjoyable! Great job :)
Thank you
If you are a beginner on linux and gained some confidence dont hesitate to trying other DE's and WM's on some kind of virtual machines etc. Evantually you'll find which one fits you best. Personally, i am a window manager user but my fav DE is xfce. I install all of my systems with xfce so i can use some of the tools that included in xfce on my window manager setup.
It's a good idea but remember a lot of beginners may not know how to use a vm. Remember, the goal is to improve Linux support for EVERYONE, including those that know very little about computers but just want an alternative to Windows/Mac.
@@Spladoinkal yeah you are right. I just wanted to say that xfce is my favorite starting point.
XFCE is phenomenal especially when combining it with i3. Best of both worlds. I have also found plasma with the polonium tiling add-on and some custom key bindings to be quite functional and aesthetically pleasing
I've played with every desktop and a few window managers. After that I decided to stick with gnome because I love it's workflow.
Yeah, same here. Simple and does everything I want.
We should laser focus on bringing new users to the new user friendly environments, when they grow, then we show them customization.
100% agree! It's not just visuals (but visuals are also important), it's also the underlaying technology that many ppl don't know about, Wayland, VRR, DRM leasing, fractional scaling and so on. + both projects have a big team dev team behind it.
I have much respect for XFCE or Cinnamon, but they are not for me, at least not yet.
I can't wait for Cosmic, because it seems like the perfect middleground between GNOME and Plasma, lets see!
Great Video!
With the Steam Deck using KDE, I would encourage KDE by default as a lot of new users are most likely to encounter it in the future.
"Cinnamon doesn't follow current trends." That is the point. Most people coming from windows want something that looks like Windows 7. Look at Windows 8 and Windows 11. Even users on those OSes were installing things like Classic Shell to get back to a Windows 7 look and feel.
I fell in love with Plasma the FIRST time I tried it. Never used anything else after that!
Your Gnome videos turned me from one of the biggest tiling window managers to Gnome fan lol. I've spent time on Gnome on a laptop and it is great.
Well, that's an unexpected surprise :)
How's battery life?
Gnome on laptops is so perfect that I'll get a touchpad when I move to a desktop computer :D
I agree that first impressions matter alot for someone who is looking into this as a non linux user
for me cinnamon is perfect, it's stable , lightweight, customisable and simple settings(looking at you plasma). onlythings that stopping me to use it are stable wayland support, functional fractional scaling.
It will also take up a lot of time to test the various desktop environments. Where you might want to spend time on other things as well.
XFCE will be getting wayland support in 4.20.
Definitely agree first impressions matter! Good reason.
I run Cinnamon on my Arch installation. I like this DE.
I am the absolute minority and run LXDE ,out of the box it looks absolutely ancient,but i only make it look slightly less ancient bcz it doesnt bother me.The absurdly low ram and cpu usage are a good fit for my old hardware
I left windows 11 and went straight to hyprland lol. I figured that if i had to learn something new, why not challenge myself a little. I’m now on dwm and it’s amazing! Plasma 6 is nice too but imo too much like windows (whom I now hate with a passion). Great content sir! Keep up the good work!!!!
I do agree with a lot of the criticisms aimed at Wayland for breaking things that just worked before. For my own part, I would have been much happier with the transition had Wayland provided equivalents for all the various little X11 utilities, like xprintidle. A *lot* of scripts use these little utilities, and a lot of them simply have no direct equivalent under Wayland. That being said, I have been working on building or finding alternatives for a while now, and I finally have XScreenSaver working fully on Plasma under Wayland, complete with DPMS and session locking (and not using XScreenSaver's locking hack). It would have been great for the Wayland project to have taken on a compatibility layer for these tools on their own, though.
its currently invested in Gnome, i was a long time plasma lover... I am also liking the hyprland wm...
Not to he a shill for my employer but COSMIC is shaping up to be really good
You work for System 76?
There wasn't really any time to show it off. I think it's going to fit with the "big boys" pretty well
I can’t wait to try it! Last I heard they fixed some of the gripes I have with gnome. I do hope they’ll make it lighter as well!
Wayland is also nigh on essential for multi monitor setups ESPECIALLY if you need different scaling on those two monitors because one is a higher resolution than the other. X11 simply has NO IDEA what it is doing.
My gaming experience on GNOME is extremely comfy and I appreciate it a whole lot, even if I had to apply a few patches, it's nice and comfy and works great 99.99% of the time
For me xfce 4 is one of best and light weight desktop environment.
Installed mx with fluxbox on my aunt's 2009 mac laptop. Still going strong
I like to switch my desktop environment relatively often and right now I'm only switching between Gnome, KDE and Hyprland because I'm so used to using Wayland that it feels like a step back going to a X11 based desktop environment
Yeah, only reason I use X11 on my tablet is when I need to screen share on skype, though wayland is better on everything else on there. On my desktop I still use X11 for games/nvidia, but I'll see how it works once I upgrade to 24.04 after the first patch arrives.
@@ironfist7789 try xwaylandvideobridge.
I would just like to say...that enlightenment desktop environment is so modular it can do anything...
I think you said it perfectly. The desktop environment you use should be what works for you.
I do agree that Wayland has come a long way, and that its definitely beneficial to use if your hardware can support it. However, those running Nvidia cards(like myself) still run into quite a few problems on Wayland. I was running Fedora 40 /w Gnome and the application windows would occasionally have parts of them flickering. The UI was really sluggish and for some bizarre reason electron apps had an input delay, and often when typing quickly would show ghost characters. Pressing backspace would delete more than one character, and sometimes during input multiple characters would be added despite only pressing the key once. Only one real character was added, the rest weren't even there. Latest available driver or previous one resulted in the same results. Hopefully whenever the next driver rolls out these problems are resolved because they're extremely annoying.
I went back to EndeavourOS with Gnome on X11 and everything works fine. Computer at home also has an Nvidia card running Suse on X11 and it also works fine. Both PCs running Nvidia have the exact same issues running Wayland.
I would like to note that for laptop users with hybrid GPUs, wayland is a non-issue. X11 is basically a must on dedicated NVIDIA systems.
I have a Nvidia GPU and had no issues with Wayland Plasma.
@@Halfbit_0 Awesome!!! It's what we like to see!
@@Halfbit_0I'll have to try KDE with Wayland at some point then. Problem is both machines need to run properly and with the graphical glitches that were in my dev tools it was almost impossible to work with. Media playback was also an issue with the videos constantly freezing while the sound was still playing. I encountered none of these issues running X11.
I use Plasma and Hyprland both roughly equally. I use Plasma on my PC where I have many windows across a few virtual desktops and Hyprland on my laptop because I don't have to care about window layout as it's done for me.
Every time I give wayland a chance I run into some stupid problem that I have to fix with some wild workarounds. For example, push to talk for applications such as discord is still an issue, and while there's fixes, if you like to use mouse buttons for push to talk you're just out of luck unless you wanna do some crazy workarounds...
Or vsync is also still an issue with wayland for some reason. I had the weirdest issues running dark souls. It was a stuttery mess, then I realized it's wayland not playing nice with vsync. And sure I can turn that off and for many games that's completely fine, but when I am locked in 60fps I don't wanna deal with screen tearing.
This is just two issues I've ran into using wayland, there's so much more...
So for now I stick with x11. It's not worth the headache for me at the moment. I already troubleshoot linux systems as my dayjob, I don't need it in my free time as well.
Agreed, there are too many issues with Wayland still. For me, not saving window positions is so annoying. Also screen waking with nvidia cards is broken.
I would add, giving feedback based on your actual experience is something that counts and it adds to the quality and authenticity of your channel .. which honestly makes it unique on TH-cam 🤣👍
I use xfce btw ✌️😁
no DE is for everyone though, especially gnome considering how controversial it is in the linux space
and if your goal is to appeal to windows users, UKUI was literally made for that, and ukui-kwin has wayland support
personally i find KDE looks pretty dated, everythings cramped and boxy and gives off bloated vibes in the default configurations, win11 and the latest macOS moves towards more minimalist designs, KDE feels like taking windows xp and slapping transparency on it
and lastly when it comes to attracting new users, you get more success showing them stuff they can't do in windows rather than "look it can pretend to be windows decently enough", cuz the latter isn't a reason to swap, there's a lot of windows users trying out linux specifically because they want to try something like hyprland
Here's to hoping Cosmic DE fixes this for the masses...I'm still using GNOME, mostly because it has that minimal macOS inspired UI and has better Window management than macOS. Even GNOME though, has sacrifices, like poor fractional scaling support. Most of the Linux DE's really look like win9x, which is why I ultimately use GNOME. I've not tried UKUI, can it use x11 in VMs? (I don't do wayland for virtual machines), only hosts.
@@grantschilb8019 yeah cosmic seems like itll tick all the boxes, and yes ukui does both x11 and wayland
@@DDracee cool, I've been experimenting with XFCE these days since it has better high DPI than GNOME as of now. Biggest thing is miss from GNOME is touchpad gestures. Does the wayland session for UKUI support touchpad, or will that be a future implementation?
@@grantschilb8019 not sure about gestures, i dont use touch, i know it supports custom touch mapping and has it's own touch input library so worst case scenario gestures are just a script away
i've only shortly played around with ukui since it was offered on cachyOS and i was curious, so im no expert on it, personally i mostly use tiling WMs, currently on awesomeWM
cinnamon is literally what won me over to using linux as my daily machine, couldn't fucking stand kd plasma
Same, Cinnamon just feels comfy. KDE is cluttered and doesn't feel like a cohesive experience
I just love the flexibility of plasma. The endless flexibility is just perfect.
I say show off XFCE at least as it is the "ol reliable" of linux DE's
Sure it still uses xorg and some versions of it look old-fashioned but it would be a way to show off XFCE's amazing customization capability.
KDE is top. 4 newer hardware best choice. My old Laptop -> MX XFCE. KDE takes way more CPU cycles than XFCE.
I agree, we get into Linux because we want choices.....then many of us ask the community to choose for us. Choose the distro, DE, WM, and setup YOU like and forget everyone else's opinion on it.
Because linux start to evolve and before there was Microsoft monopoly and now people (thx to Valve) we have a choice to run from w11 annoying ads and this discrimination thing like yor PC not good enough for our system (and now your ai doesnt good for our system)
I hope you can try Cosmic when is ready
I'm sure gonna check it out
I started with Cinnamon, then moved to Gnome and finally ended up on KDE Plasma. However, Wayland more than anything has been the biggest game changer.
Which kde is the best kde
Windows users aware of X’s keypress sharing will definitely opt for a wayland distro. These users will often start with a VirtualBox VM. As VirtualBox requires xwayland for wayland to work, these users will be limited to a couple distros - KDE and GNOME. So, thumbs up on presenting these two Linux variants. Consider demoing how any non-root app running in X can capture the keypresses for any financial account userid/pw entered into a browser, and sudo pw entered into a terminal, any message typed into an editor/mail/messaging app. Use xinput for the demo.
I moved from Fedora to Ubuntu many years ago ( 6.06 LTS ) and was with them through the Gnome 2 and Unity days ( Though I was pretty disgusted with Unity 8. ) I had tried Ubuntu Gnome, before Ubuntu moved to having a Gnome Desktop with a few tweaks, and I really didn't care for it. I went "shopping" for a new Desktop Environment, and landed on Mate` ( both Ubuntu Mate` and Mint Mate`) for a while, but then I tried Mint Cinnamon, and was juggling between then for a couple of years. I finally had enough of the odd quirks with Mate` and just moved to Mint Cinnamon, and I am still there. From what I am hearing about the new Ubuntu releases, I may move to LMDE.
I've had stability issues with Plasma for a long time but since Plasma 6 I don't think I've had any issues, and Plasma 6.1 is looking even better. I'm still pining after the new update to the Breeze icons that haven't arrived yet. It wont be complete until I have those!
First impressions are so ridiculously important that Linux adoption is a joke compared to what it would have been if wine, lutris and all dependencies came with every single distribution and most windows programmes worked out of the box
But headless gentoo nerds that hate convenience will scream at you for including bloat in their precious distro that should not take up more than 20 megabytes of your storage by default
I think my big requirement in any OS is an easy way to search for a program. In GNOME or Windows (I think KDE as well?), you can just hit Super (Windows key) and start typing. In MacOS, you hit Super+Space to open the search bar. Some older DEs don't support easy searching like that, but I think LXDE and XFCE both do. My second big selling point is a good desktop switching.
I am with you on this.
I know you can share your screen under Wayland because I do it every week in WebEx in my Red Hat Academy classes. At least with WebEx under KDE Plasma 6, screen sharing is natively supported and doesn't require any additional configuration.
My main DE is GNOME. It's perfect for my taste. Although Budgie caught my attention recently, it looks nice as well.
KDE is pretty much the only DE that doesn't feel like a toy. It has so many useful features and customization that pretty much everything else pales in comparison.
With that said, as a heavy user, I've found Plasma 6 to be generally a bit less stable than Plasma 5 - at least on Wayland. Some of the problems may actually be with Qt6 rather than Plasma itself, but since it's heavily tied to Qt, that doesn't really change a thing.
I keep IceWM installed because of how little RAM it uses by default, which makes it perfect for memory-bound tasks. In some games it's the difference between a slideshow and playable performance. Though normally I use KDE (which sadly eats 2.2GB of RAM with nothing running and everything in startup closed).
Unfortunately, for some software you end up having to create "icewm start scripts" because they expect certain env vars to be set, env vars that are set by kde, but not in IceWM, so you need a script that sets those up to the values expected by the program in question, then launch it. And a simple shell script is the best way to do it.
I have 180 degrees opposite experience of what you are saying half of this video. I listened to you with my mouth half open actually... Using Wayland with my Nvidia has been the worst experience I have ever had in my 40 years (yes) of using computers. It tears the desktop, flickers windows and mouse cursor, also stutters the cursor, have multiple issues with my dual monitor setup. It is a house of horrors no matter the distro and both on Kde and Gnome. And I have none of the above problems while using Mint + Cinnamon x11 and I didn't need to do anything at all. Wayland and Gnome developers know this crap and they promised to solve it in mid May with new drivers. Stuff you say are contradictory to reality (for nvidia at least).
And I would completely disagree with you. If I had to use X, my multi-monitor, multi-VRR setup would be completely wasted.
Using the 555 beta drivers from nvidia, my experience has been completely smooth on Wayland.
I'd go one step further and just show Gnome. KDE is nice and everything but every time I tried it I found at least one bug that was breaking my UX.
The most recent one was with a 7840HS machine where the KDE version of Debian would not work with my dock but the normal Gnome version had absolutely no problems. Gnome might be a bit limited sometimes but at least it does what it is supposed to do.
I first installed Debian KDE because it has proper fractional scaling and wayland support which isn't unimportent when a 14" laptop has a resolution of 2560x1600@120Hz and installed everything I needed only to then realize the next day that the dock doesn't work. I then tried the Live ISO with Gnome and had no problems so I just installed that instead. Not having fractional scaling doesn't bother me that much because everything looks decent at 200% scaling anyways. I'd have liked 150-175% but tbh, 200% is still ok and wayyy better than 100% on a screen that size.
Grüße aus Wien ;)
If you're a Windows user, GNOME with no extensions is a good way to keep them from using Linux. The UI and UX paradigm is just way too different to be a good fit coming from Windows.
I don't know about you but if something looks different and works in a different way than Windows is a positive in my book if you are seraching for Windows alternatives.
If your goal is to have a Windows replacement then KDE also doesn't help because even if the UI is similar, the rest ist not.
If you don't expect it to work like Windows, you are wayyy more likely to search for other solutions and new approaches.
(Unless you just need an internet machine then it literally doesn't matter what you run as long as it has an up to date browser...)
100 % Linux mint, I love the win 9X user experience
I started with Gnome, now on KDE and Hyprland on two of my devices. All of them are great, maybe the new cosmic de will be great too
When the Nvidia 555 came out, Wayland became possible for a lot of Nvidia users, but at the moment any game (or any apps that use GPU to render) that uses XWayland simply won't work properly if it doesn't have the fps to match the monitor's refresh rate.
I am honored to have my post shown in the video!
Been using xfce on wayland by replacing xfwm with mutter. Sure it's more like "gnome" with xfce4 panel but 1gb ram use on idle is just that tempting
Everyone: Usable desktop environments that (sometimes) mimic windows that we're all relatively used to
Me: Haha ricing with hyprland go brr
As someone with a multi-monitor setup that's been put-off by linux because of X11 lag, I was so excited that Wayland finally got better. I tried installing both Ubuntu and Fedora, but with either of them when I used the full resolution and refresh rate of all 4 of my montiors the displays would start flickering insanely, and the only option was to change my main 240hz monitor's refresh rate to 120hz to fix the issue. I have no idea if it's because I'm somehow overwhelming it with my monitors (1440p at 240hz, 1440p ultra-wide at 100hz,1440p at 165hz and 4k and 120hz) or something else but it made me give up on linux again. I find it hilarious that Linux works flawlessly on obsolete hardware from the 90s that's impossible to find drivers for on Windows, but it's struggling when it comes to high-end PCs. Hopefully wayland improves even more and native HDR support gets added so I can finally transition away from windows, without feeling screwed for spending thousands on good monitors/tv.
Imo Cinnamon is by far the best desktop.
It's more stable and easier to use than KDE, more customizable than Gnome, better battery life than both.
I'm not quite sure how big the impact actually is. Cinnamon is a bit lighter, but battery tuning is usually not being affected much by the Desktop Environment, but rather drivers, schedulers, and kernel tweaks
@@MichaelNROH there are probably a bunch of things affecting it for sure.
In my experience, Linux Mint Cinnamon gives about 4 hours battery while Fedora KDE gives 2.5.
@@MichaelNROH your comment inspired me to test the battery life of all 3 desktops on the same distribution on my PC.
With Fedora 40 I got 2.5 hrs battery on KDE, 3 hrs on Gnome, 4 on Cinnamon.
No hate on any desktop, I'm sure KDE and Gnome have their own benefits too.
For whatever reason, for me, Wayland (with Nvidia) everything just feels smoother on the desktop vs X11. Like moving around app windows, the way things animate, or scrolling text in a web browser. Everything is finally smooth. I'm assuming X11 is acting weird for me because I have multiple monitors at different refresh rates? I've tested this on quite a few distros and desktop environments too. On X11 everything works properly but it feels like everything is running at 1/3rd of the framerate. It's weird.
My biggest test for Wayland is whether or not I can play Factorio without reducing my monitor's refresh rate down to 60 (Factorio runs locked at 60fps and it's tied to the game's logic). If I leave the refresh rate at 144hz (or higher) the game flickers like crazy. It's a native Linux game too. A lot of steam proton/wine stuff actually works fine. Some still have random elements flickering, but it's rare.
I feel so annoyed with having an Nvidia card because I really like what I've tried out of Linux. It's just this dumb flickering nonsense! It happens in Chromium too. Almost exclusively on Twitter for some random reason. As if it's a flickering sign from God to stop using Twitter. And again, I have tried to get used to X11 but when it feels so weird and low framerate it just pushes me back to windows. X11 is also screen tearing quite a bit too.
I know that explicit sync thing is coming soon right? Please let that finally fix this cursed flickering wayland issue.
well gnome did convince me to use linux just cos how simple and fluid it looks out of the box. which what I need a desktop that work and looks good. mind u its way less customizable than other alternative. but I don't need customizable. i just want it to feel nice with no tinkering.
I'm a full time GNOME user and love it. It's my happy place. Sure there's some jank here and there but the vast majority of the time it works fantastic and shell extensions are super freaking useful and most importantly, it's SUPER stable
For me, KDE plasma is better for touch screen support. With high dpi, gnome xwayland looks blurry. But on KDE, they fixed this in 5.25. Plasma, would be kinda like windows with touch scree, i prefer usability. Would be nice, if you make a DE video especially for touch screen.
Used Linux back in 2001-3 my second round of being in college and I remember hating Gnome back then and thinking I enjoyed KDE more. Plus tried out early Fedora Core, but I was mostly messing w my old machine bc I had replaced it and didn’t want to try and futz w Linux to run things like Star Wars Galaxies. I’ve checked in here and there over the years and the last year or so played in a lot of distros in Virtual ox on my Mac.
Still can’t stand Gnome and I think the “Launchpad as main way to start apps” is taking the worst part of MacOS and putting it front and center. I do really like where Cinnamon sits and installed LMDE 6 on my MIL 12 yr old Dell after I made a couple of upgrades to it. I still play in several different distros, but at this point most of them are running KDE in Wayland. Mac has t had NVidia in ages so no worries on that front, but Virtualbox is so outdated I’m exploring UTM now. If I eventually grab a copy of Parallels I may dive deeper into things, but really it’s just something fun to explore more than anything else.
I do feel MacOS just gets out of my way vs Windows,and Linux is capable of that, although some distros do really feel like are a million updates. Arch based for example, of which I have enjoyed EndeavourOS the most. Generally Fedora, OpenSUSE, EndeavourOS have been where I’m settling in more. Mint seems like they are quickly coming to a point where they will have. To make a decision regarding Ubuntu, bc Ubuntu’s baseline feels like it’s at odds with what the project wants for itself. While Debian’s r3cent update last summer made LMDE6 a more up to date option for my MIL computer vs regular Mint, Ubuntu sticking w/5.27 KDE is deflating if still understandable.
Enjoyed the video and frankly there are plenty of folks talking about all those other DEs. Focus on the ones you want to talk about and the videos will feel better to make.
2:49 when talking about beginners and shortcuts.
Im a Linux beginner, but I don’t care about how Mac or windows do things. All I want is the best way to do shortcuts. I come from Mac, I don’t need to do things the way Mac does them. I just want the most efficient, effective, and modern/new way of doing shortcuts/hot keys. Learning a new work flow isn’t a problem. I just don’t want it to be too complicated, no terminal. I’m not looking for OSs that look similar to mac or windows. I’m looking for a new, fresh, just works, and futuristic UI.
What’s the best desktop environment for me?
Also I’m thinking about Buying a system76 Rig with pop/cosmic preinstalled.
Your vids made me install linux 5 months ago with Fedora 39 with Gnome 45. I now use Arch with AwesomeWM
Plunged straight in I see. I love it
Wayland: No screen tearing while playing games (Fedora 39 and 40)
X11: Definite screen tearing on fast moving scenes.
Wayland: No support for Rust Desk Remote Desktop.
X11: Rust Desk works fine.
I had too much lag on KDE, including games. Some even crashed. On XFCE all that disappeared.
Why not have a video showcase them for people who want something different than KDE or gnome?
Very informative. I prefer Mint Cinnamon *because* I find modern design trends distracting & often ugly. I actually modify the interface to bland single color or 2 color gradient back grounds. I'd rather look *away* from the screen for an engaging visual environment. (Physically better for the eyes, more choice.) Wayland support *may* become an issue, but by then it will likely be improved & supported & better supported in Cinnamon & elsewhere.
Bro which Linux distro should i use for good performance, looks and it should be able to run in my old laptop with 2 gigabyte's of ram
Puppy Linux.
Some distros like ZorinOS or Fedora offer a Lite Version or IoT Spin of their Distros, but with 2 Gigabytes of RAM, your main concern are applications like browsers which are nowadays made for more memory machines unfortunately
Bro which OS do you use it looks attractive
yeah it gets tough when it comes to web browsing concerning RAM. I have some REALLY old laptops that I tested running Linux on, and majority of somewhat light distros will work very well. Where issues run is running a browser. TH-cam and very script heavy websites will use up not only a lot RAM, but also CPU which if you have a really old and slow CPU, it's gonna struggle. No matter how light the distro. the best you can do is use Konqueror to browse websites that aren't that heavy.
that being said, I've used AntiX Linux and Puppy Linux for these tests. Occasionally Debian.
5:40 If only NVIDIA would help, we finally wouldn't have to be forced to use X11 cause of their cards...
I mean NVIDIA has been working much more actively on their drivers and the situation has improved quite a bit just in the last few months. Plenty of articles and videos talking about the strides being made
I simply use Wayland DE's because they are supporting touchpad gestures. And it's already my 3rd year with wayland
That's a big advantage for many distros, as only a handful actually implemented X11 gestures, yes
I agree with you that Gnome and KDE are the two best DEs out there right now. That said wayland is horrible at the moment and will likely take another year or two (at least) before its ready.
great video
Thanks
If your multiple monitors match, then X11 usually works fine. However, if they don't, especially the refresh rate, you will likely run into problems.
i3wm for life
gnome looks nice by default where as kde looks okay after customizations.
Im a XFCE lover but I do admit it looks dated and monitors can be hepatic. You can’t argue with its incredible speed but unfortunately it does feel dated. KDE is amazing but it’s easy to get lost if you come from other OS while Gnome is beautiful but… it’s almost like it really hates you customising it. I lost count of how many times I had issues with it. Nothing is perfect but I do agree KDE and GNOME are the cutting edge but who knows what will happen in the near future.
Linux Mint Cinnamon's simplicity and ease of customization makes it the best for me. KDE is close second. Gnome or TWMs aren't for me.
Default Xfce has the crappiest default look. But it can be customised to look like KDE or Cinnamon or Pantheon.
Yeah XFCE doesn’t look good to me and I really hate the package manager. Tried a few different times but always nope out.
Interesting that you've had no issues in Wayland. Wayland was working for me until I opened blender. For whatever reason, it hobbles my Nvidia gpus and Blender viewport stutters. Not an issue on X11. Apparently this has been an issue for a long time.
Xfce is my favourite but xorg causes screen glitches on my machine so i was using kde for 2yrs and was waiting for xfce wayland. Now i m on windows.
Even KDE suffers from this, with its settings and other widgets looking quite dated.
Its why I have hope for both System76's COSMIC & Nitrux's Maui Shell, GNOME is stuck with an opinionated design that is considered so unusable by default that most distro's ship a laundry list of Extensions with it, and Nitrux got frustrated with KDE breaking their customisations (similar to System76) in making a useable and attractive environment for users.
GNOME and KDE Plasma provide some of the best accessibility options on a Linux desktop.
Well I use hyprland (tiling wm) and it's pretty great , runs on Wayland and , not having any issue (which can't me solved) yet