Which distro has the best GUI in your opinion?

years_past_matter, 11 months ago

Probably any distro that ships KDE Plasma 5 as default - I'm stuck with GNOME for now as I need to use Evolution for work (EWS mail accounts), but if I had the choice I'd probably be on Plasma.

elouboub, 11 months ago

100%

It's hard to use anything else once you've configured plasma to do the exact things you want.

HallaWorld, 11 months ago

I've been using i3 for the past 8 years or so, and can wholeheartedly recommend it (or it's cousin Sway if you're in Wayland-land) if you're into tiling window managers (there are dozens of us!). I find them invaluable for their keyboard-centric operation, and also massively sweet on ultrawide monitors. Light on resources and minimalistic too.

As far as distributions go, I've been on Arch for the past several years. I think there are some (unofficial) spins for most Linux flavours with i3 out-of-the-box.

I used XFCE for a long long time before I went to tiles, which is a decent more traditional Window Manager, with a more lean focus than some of the others. Fairly customizable. I still use some of the system apps from there from old habit.

I wouldn't get too tied up into what window manager is default in any given distribution. At least for me, part of the joy is finding a combination of software (including the desktop environment/Window Manager) that works for you specifically. And there are plenty of live CDs (or usb images now I guess) with various WMs that can be used to take things out for a spin without commiting to installing it. :) Here are various Ubuntu flavors for instance.

XPost3000, 11 months ago

Kubuntu or KDE Neon 100%

Ultimately they both use the KDE Plasma desktop environment, which is the only DE I've ever seen that has a proper modern look by default (others IMO look like either the 2000's or an OS 4 Kidz), as well as being pretty featurful for multi monitor productivity

Arch+KDE Plasma is what I personally am gonna switch to this summer

years_past_matter, 11 months ago

Arch + KDE Plasma is very comfy, I used this myself for a few years and it felt super clean and unintrusive.

png, 11 months ago

Its also pretty easy to get it setup to a semi-customized basic look and feel. Use one of the bigger themes, a popular Icon pack and a nice matching wallpaper as well as a little task bar customization and some widgets and youre set, and all this takes less than two hours.

Parsnip8904, 11 months ago

Check out KDE Debian spin too. I booted the live iso to check some stuff and was seriously impressed. Gave me the early ubuntu 10-11 vibe where the OS just stays out of your way.

julieninthesky, 11 months ago

Nitrux, it's a Debian distro with KDE, a rather classic pair indeed, but their Maui Kit is what makes it really stand out IMO... Well worth a look 😁

EpicGamer, 9 months ago

I run tiny core linux for the UI personally

cfx_4188, 10 months ago

Let me let you in on a little secret. You can put any "GUI" on any distro. You can put ALL known DE and WM on the same distro. Linux is about freedom. Freedom of choice, among other things.

ANuStart, 10 months ago

Anything with GNOME 40+

52fighters, 10 months ago

I've used quite a few but nothing seems to work so well as Budgie on Solus. The setup is easy and the desktop gets out of your way but is visually appealing.

arthur, 10 months ago

All of them. Every distro can run any desktop, so all of them.

TheBaldness, 11 months ago

I'm going to hop in here and suggest you try out Linux Mint. This is a distro designed for people who are coming over from Windows or Mac. It "just works". The UI doesn't throw away thrity years of convention simply to be "linux". Everything is exactly where you expect it to be and most of what you need is already installed.
Mint offers a choice of different desktop environments which are all laid out exactly the same, but have differing degrees of polish. If you're using a very old PC, you may want to choose XFCE because it is very lean, but lacks some of the nice graphical touches. Most people just use the Cinnamon desktop environment, which is highly customizable and polished.
I fully switched to Mint many years ago and never looked back.

timo, 11 months ago

Distro doesn't really matter nowadays. You can get all desktop environments to work on most distros. Especially the big players like KDE, Gnome, Xfce have hundred distros they are shipped with by default. Most big distros have versions for each of the most popular desktop environments. Therefore, I would suggest that you look for the distro which fits your needs best and then install the desktop environment you want to work with afterwards, if there isn't a flavor of your distro that ships with it already.

TheOPtimal, 11 months ago

Fedora. It ships vanilla GNOME which is just a very pleasant experience. Vanilla GNOME is just something else man.

Joe_0237, 11 months ago

Feodora and Debian have a GNOME experience that has not been ruined to make less innovative in favor of making the UX more similar (and therefore familiar) to that of the worst desktop operating system available (windows).

If you've seen but never really used GNOME in a daily workflow it looks and feels alien. Thats becausethey devs are trying to make something that is friendly to the people who actually use it and intuitive to the people who are new to desktop computing, and they are making no attemt to appease thoes who believe that it is impossible to do better than Microsoft has with Windows.

If you've never really used it (and have used ms windows), Vanilla GNOME is alien to you. If you have really used it, nothing else is yet on its level.

jakob, 11 months ago

I switched from fvwm2 with heavy customizing over to gnome3 years ago.

I love that UX. Use it all day. Private and on my work-computer.

floppyslapper, 11 months ago

You might be looking for a KDE desktop. Many of Windows's better more modern desktop features are copied from it, and KDE is very customizable out of the box without needing to install a bunch of extensions like you do with Gnome. KDE can be customized to fit many different desktop paradigms, with the default being like Windows 10.

simple, 11 months ago

Maybe it's just that it's familiar, but Zorin OS has always had the most "it just works" GUI to me. It's clean, stable, and provides many sensible presets if you prefer windows environments, mac environments, old school gnome, etc.

Aside from being very pretty it also has great UX and linux beginner onboarding features. For example if you try to open an exe file for the first time, it explains that this is a Windows-specific file and sets up Wine for you.

A lot of people recommend Fedora and PopOS for people getting into Linux but honestly Zorin Core has always been my #1.

bigbox, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Using Zorin OS right now and it might be my favorite Linux distro ever. It's like a stock, good version of Windows 10 or 11 (it's obviously not Windows but that's just an easy comparison visually speaking). For the longest time I couldn't get myself to fully switch to Linux due to needing to use video editing software for my job, but installing DaVinci Resolve Studio on Zorin was a breeze, and they even have an easy to follow guide for doing so.