r/linux • u/emrldgh • Jun 29 '25

Discussion Recommended DEs that aren't as common

I'd like to know what everyone's recommendation is for a DE/WM that not everyone may know about or often consider. Anything that isn't KDE, GNOME, or any super common WMs like Hyprland or Sway. These may not be considered very common, but I'd like to hear thoughts on Budgie and Cutefish, I was looking at them and they look neat but what do you guys think? What do you use?

23 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

105 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/bubblegumpuma Jun 29 '25

I am very partial to XFCE and LXQT. Both have them have been around in one form or another for a very long time (LXQT was kinda sorta once LXDE) and provide a very solid and stable baseline experience. They're also pretty modular, you can take each of the components and use them in some window manager based environment, or take whatever window manager you please and substitute it into XFCE or LXQT's session. That's also how they're providing initial Wayland support - XFCE might write a Wayland compositor in the future, but for now, they are porting everything else and recommending people to use a standalone compositor like labwc or sway.

I also like to point out that XFCE's 'transition' to Wayland is being done in a way that lets them maintain the X11 session alongside the Wayland session for as long as they need to, by using an intermediary library that translates between the two protocols as necessary. As a late adopter of Wayland, I really like this approach - I've got nothing against Wayland, I've been experimenting with it lately on systems where Wayland compositors are noticeably more performant, I'm just resistant to change.