Two full months into Pop_OS now. While genereally happy, I struggle a bit with the system getting slower and slower over time, I need to reboot every 2-3 days to get back to normal. Resource monitors shows no havoc procresses and no excessive memory usage.
For some other reasons I installed openSUSE Tumbleweed in a VM with KDE 6 and now find it very tempting to switch. It was super fast and KDE seems just so much better at this point.
Switching distro is a huge PITA, so if you have any arguments against it, I would appreciate that before I go down that road 🙂
@louis as some others have pointed out, desktop environment and operating system are best to separate in your mind. You could try a different DE first, or decide to go all out and switch to a different OS.
If you want to switch distributions, I'd focus on one that promoted flexibility as opposed to tight defaults like KDE/Gnome etc. Pick a Linux distribution that has a philosophy that appeals to you, the desktop environment (or lack of) can come after.
@withoutclass Very good advice, thank you. 🙏
Btw. I installed KDE on my Pop_OS and - surprise - after a few hours was not so happy anymore, its feature richness comes at a mental price for me. I was constantly fiddling with settings and completely lost focus. I realize now that some of the dumbness of the Gnome UI has advantages - perhaps my multidecade Mac experience is somewhat part of my DNA now.
With regards to lightweight DEs: I rely on full-blown DEs like Gnome for all the built in goodies like automatic power and network (Wifi) management, printer and scanner support etc. etc. since I only have one machine for personal and work. I realize this can all be done with the right mindset and patience with every DE, but that's where I personally run out of steam.
@louis I have been using Archlinux for so long I do not remember using anything else for my workstation or my laptop (still use FreeBSD for my servers and Ubuntu LTS for production professional work because it’s the path of least resistance despite being a shitty distribution).
I have neither the time nor the interest in tinkering with my OS (I had my Gentoo phase a long time ago thank you very much), so a distribution with up-to-date packages and very little opinions (I’m looking at you Debian) suits me perfectly.
Also, yes, Gnome and KDE are self inflicted pains, using i3 or equivalent is a game changer.
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