Personally it's kde for me. I find thier apps like konsole, krusader and krunner to all be better than gnome. I have went through decade long phases for both, but I just don't care for gnomes artistic direction. It's not bad, but it's just not for me. If you're coming from windows kde feels more familiar which also is nice. If you want to see beautiful a beautiful kde skin l then garudas gaming edition is pretty neat... Overall everything I use seems to work well in kde, and kwin has made it easy for me to vibe code a few desktop manipulation apps.
Now.. caveats. Xfce is good if you want something simple and lightweight. If you are happy with it, there is nothing wrong with it when compared to either of the two you mentioned. If you want something different that is strictly keyboard focused you could try the i3 tiling window manager. I go through periods of using that as well, but it takes a lot of setup and games haven't liked tiling. The above response about cinnamon is good too, and I use it instead of gnome if I'm not running kde. Mint is rock solid at the cost of new packages. I absolutely love it, but I've switched to cachyOS to be a bit more bleeding edge and for gaming since their kernel optimizations supposedly help ( I haven't tested, just read that it did). Anyway hopefully that helps! On Thu, Mar 5, 2026, 9:32 PM Michael L <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been meaning to give the thumbs up for Linux Mint Debian Edition > because I installed it for our computer hater in late May and haven't heard > one mutter, peep, complaint or hiccup since. > > Haven't bothered to thoroughly aquaint myself with it because I haven't > had to. I believe it's the Cinnamon desktop and it should run most or all > Debian based software. > MichaelL > > On Thu, Mar 5, 2026, 8:03 PM Howard White <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Drew, >> >> More information?? Desktop to do what? I find myself running >> everything in a web browser and an email client (yeah, I still use >> Thunderbird). Boring truth told. My home lab is consumed by servers >> running Folding At Home for the benefit of my power provider. >> >> I haven't even managed to upgrade my Debian 12 to 13... >> >> Howard >> >> On 3/5/26 18:32, Drew wrote: >> > Hello, >> > It's been a long time since I messed with Linux, specifically. I have >> > some more recent experience with BSD, but not recently enough to affect >> > my choices for a "modern" desktop. I have an older laptop I have >> decided >> > I want to install Debian on, mainly for the purposes of running ham >> > radio related software that won't run on MacOS, which is my main >> > desktop. I pulled live images for Gnome and KDE, and have verified that >> > everything on the laptop seems to work with the live image. >> > >> > My real, burning question is, are there compelling reasons to choose >> > Gnome vs KDE, and is there something obvious I'm overlooking? I think >> > the last desktop I ran on BSD was XFCE, but at the time I think that >> was >> > specifically because it was fairly light weight and allowed easy >> virtual >> > desktop changing. It might have been 20 years ago (and my last linux >> > distro might have been Slackware) so I am confident things have >> changed. >> > Any advice or shortcuts to sorting out which might ultimately work best >> > for me would be appreciated. >> > >> > Drew >> > >> > -- >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups "NLUG" group. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug- >> > [email protected] >> > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ >> > nlug-talk?hl=en <http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en> >> > >> > --- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups "NLUG" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> > an email to [email protected] <mailto:nlug- >> > [email protected]>. >> > To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug- >> > talk/ >> > CAOS9axzOygaGWFT9StAocUAyES0SygaV6GFLpfB31bykscwWdg%40mail.gmail.com >> > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/ >> > CAOS9axzOygaGWFT9StAocUAyES0SygaV6GFLpfB31bykscwWdg%40mail.gmail.com? >> > utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. >> >> -- >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected] >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/cfc19d76-091b-4d9e-8220-80989d58c7a8%40vcch.com >> . >> > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CALdmzXaQL2FHQaw2WjNJAEW2zSz_7T1M6PCZe5KQiW73AEEKqA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CALdmzXaQL2FHQaw2WjNJAEW2zSz_7T1M6PCZe5KQiW73AEEKqA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. 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