this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025

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146

Which Desktop Environment Do Arch Linux Users Prefer (linuxiac.com)

submitted 1 week ago by cm0002@literature.cafe to c/linux@programming.dev

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Arch Linux’s pkgstats data provides one of the few large-scale, opt-in snapshots of how real users configure their systems. While not a perfect census (participation is voluntary), the long-running dataset offers a clear picture of how desktop environment and window managers’ preferences have shifted across more than a decade.

At the same time, the data (to some extent) also reflects a broader trend for one key reason: as you know, a default Arch installation gives you only a base system, and you build everything else according to your own needs and tastes. In other words, there’s no predefined desktop environment that users are locked into, unlike most other distributions.

That means these statistics give us a very accurate look at which desktop environments and window managers Arch users actually choose to install and use. But enough talk, let’s move on to the data.

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[–] SirHery@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago

KDE because it was recommended with cachy os, and i don't really know enough or care enough to use something else 😅

[–] BigTrout75@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago

KDE works and Arch is easy to install.

[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I3. No desktop. Just me and the bash.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 points 6 days ago

Expected it

[–] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 days ago

Does this count steamOS instances? Because that would really tip the scales in KDE's favor.

[–] iamlyth@beehaw.org 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I really love gnome but my friends keep pushing me for KDE and I really just don’t like the windows style of desktop.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 5 days ago

You should use what you like.

COSMIC may offer a middle ground if you did want to try something else though.

And KDE is very configurable. It does not have to look like Windows.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

They should do this for Mint. I want to know how many of us weirdos using KDE on Mint there are.

[–] blackris@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Never tried Cinnamon(?) but to be honest, if I was forcred to use Mint, I probably would install KDE Plasma on the device.

Mint is said to be the perfect beginner friendly distribution. I am not sure, why. Robust and easy to understand package/update manager? If some of my f&f would ask to install them Mint, it absolutely would come with Plasma!

[–] Lojcs@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Robust and easy to understand package/update manager?

Honestly if it still has 2 gui package managers like when I last tried it that's not true neither.

[–] blackris@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Ouch. That doesn't sound good.

[–] ApertureUA@lemmy.today 3 points 6 days ago

I did that before just getting Arch.

Also, I wonder if KDE on Ubuntu stuff still includes that FUCKASS FONTCONFIG FILE THAT MAKES EVERYTHING LOOK SHIT I SPENT 4 HOURS LOOKING FOR

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I’d use Gnome if it had tray application icon support. I just cannot do without my tray icons for Dropbox.

[–] _Nico198X_@europe.pub 2 points 6 days ago

KDE, beautiful and flexible

[–] kamstrup@programming.dev 3 points 6 days ago

Bash

[–] roran@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Sway. Though I graduated from Arch to NixOS, sway remains as one of the core tenets of my personhood.

[–] BetterDev@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

Upvote for sway, but the word graduate there feels out of place, though to be honest I havent given NIX an earnest shot.

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Weirdly, my Arch System has a bog-standard absolutely uncustomized kde plasma install.

Its the Debian system which has been customized to hell and back with i3 and lxqt. I'd like to switch to sway but my gpu does NOT like wayland.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Waiting for a tiling window manager with nice animations

[–] msokiovt@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think you have to code those yourself. I heard Niri had some nice animations, despite being a scroller. Hyprland has good animations if you put some time into it.

I do also understand if that was sarcastic. I've learned....

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

Not sarcastic, animations add greatly to the understandability of what's going on which is helpful anyway and especially if you fat finger something.

But yeah I don't especially want to put loads of time in either heh

[–] msokiovt@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago

While a CachyOS user, I'm old school (X11 user and maybe XLibre) with i3 as my WM of choice. I know, hate on me all you want because I use antiquated tech. It works, unlike Wayland which is still broken as of right now. I need some features not found in Wayland natively, and that requires I use X11 (thankfully, i3 is customizable with some decent plugins). I know about Sway, SwayFX and other i3-style compositors for Wayland, but they don't work with NVIDIA as of right now I don't think.

[–] coriza@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Openbox for me. Going strong since my early days on Ubuntu when one release Unity had a memory leak that wast just too much for my 2GB of RAM. I had already being flirting with Openbox and that was the cue to finally use it for good. When I migrated to archlnux it was a no brainier.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If you ever want to try Wayland, check out LabWC.

[–] coriza@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

I will definetly do at some point. But last time I looked into LabWC they were not implementing some of the actions that I use. I guess I can adapt but even recently I started to use some key chains and is a shame that LabWC has no intention to implement it.

Apart from that It would be nice if they implemented an alternative format for the config files, because that is one drawback of Openbox, the XML config is really rough to do and to read.

[–] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I like gnomes features but not gnome itself. Cinnamon is good, but has its faults. Plasma is better but is missing online features (calendar for example can’t be used to create events or sync with your cloud accounts). Really would like to see how Comic a desktop turns out when it’s ready.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

You are in luck. COSMIC launches in 3 days.

I am also interested to see what kind of adoption COSMIC gets. From the comments I have seen, I looks like it may pull-away a fair number of GNOME users.

Nor sure that COSMIC calendar will have all the features you want. COSMIC is a pretty good base for GNOME apps though. It does not have to be either / or.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 85 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

the KDE Plasma desktop at 38.36%, nearly doubling the share of GNOME, which sits at 19.84%

Then xfce at ~11% and cinnamon, mate, etc. to round it out.

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