KDE is premier for a modern system, but I have a handful of low-power devices where XFCE or LXQt are a lot more useful despite disliking their interfaces.
XFCE is great for mid-range old devices, and LXQt is great for dogshit old devices.
I was actually just considering trying out a different DE like Cosmic or a compositor like Hyprland, but idk if it’s just a “grass is greener” thing or not. KDE’s got a lot going on for it and switching between QT and GTK is a pain, and I’ve never used a compositor so idk what to expect.
If you don't use Gnome or KDE or one of the other big DEs, do you basically have no (user facing GUI) programs installed by default? If so, don't you end up installing a bunch of programs from one of those anyway?
I think most window managers typically come with just a fee GUI apps preinstalled, but most users install more.
Most window managers come with no GUI apps. They don’t even have a launcher (start menu), status bar, notification area, wifi menu, task bar, dock, etc.
For most window managers you pick and choose a shell, launcher, etc, to combine it with. Then you configure all those separate tools and the window manager to your liking
There are preconfigured packages, distros, and scripts that make sensible choices for this already. Even they usually don’t bring a lot of applications with them.
Omarchy brings a lot of applications in their default install. Check out this uninstall script to get an idea. KDEnlive is a KDE application, gnome-calculator, nautilus, gnome-diskutil, gnome-keyring are GNOME. Chromium is GTK too, I actually don’t know if LibreOffice is. So not many I would dare say. Others ship less.
Dank Linux, a full features shell for Niri, Wayland, mangowc describes it pretty well.
Batteries Included
The age of assembling your desktop from dozens of separate tools and spending hours trying to make it feel cohesive is over. While traditional Wayland setups require you to hunt down, configure, and maintain a sprawling collection of utilities, Dank Linux delivers everything in one cohesive package with minimal dependencies.
The Traditional Way: Package Hunting Simulator
A typical Hyprland, niri, Sway, MangoWC, dwl, labwc, Miracle WM, or generic Wayland setup forces you to learn about and configure a dozen or more separate tools, such as:
- Status Bar: waybar, eww, or custom scripts
- Notifications: mako, swaync, or dunst
- App Launcher: rofi, wofi, fuzzel, or tofi
- Screen Locking: swaylock, hyprlock, or gtklock
- Idle Management: swayidle, hypridle
- System Tools: htop, btop, nm-applet, blueman, pavucontrol
- Audio Control: pavucontrol, pamixer scripts
- Brightness Control: brightnessctl with custom bindings
- Clipboard Manager: clipman, cliphist, or wl-clipboard scripts
- Wallpaper Management: swaybg, swww, hyprpaper, or wpaperd
- Theming: manually configuring gtk, qt, various apps, bars, compositor gaps and colors
- Power Management: custom scripts or additional daemons
- Greeter: gdm, sddm, lightdm, greetd
Each tool has its own configuration format, its own quirks, and its own dependencies. You'll spend hours writing glue scripts, debugging integration issues, and discovering missing functionality at the worst possible moments.
Love KDE.
Hint: :q!
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