I’ve dabbled with Linux over the years, first with Ubuntu in the early 2010s, then Elementary OS when that dropped, and a few years ago I really enjoyed how customizable the gui was with Xubuntu. I was able to make it look just like WIndows 2000 which was really cool.
Which current distro has the best GUI, in your opinion? I find modern Ubuntu to feel a little basic and cheap. I guess I don’t really like modern Gnome. I’m currently using Windows 10 LTSC which is probably the best possible version of Windows, but I’d jump to linux if I could find a distro with a gui that feels at least as polished and feature rich as Windows 10 LTSC.
Distro? Probably Debian, because it has all the desktop environments. If you want, you can have Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all installed at the same time and switch between them at will. Most distros seem focused on one specific DE, which if I’m not mistaken means switching to another involves reinstalling the whole operating system.
The big downside of Debian is that the software in it tends to be very out of date. You’ll get security updates and the occasional bug fix between Debian releases, but that’s about all you’ll get.
You can get a rolling-release experience by running the “unstable” version, but as the name implies, upgrades will sometimes fail or break something, and you need to know your way around the system in order to recover from that. Not a problem if you want to learn to be a Linux sysadmin anyway, but if you want your system to Just Work™, then unstable Debian is unfortunately not for you. It’s a trade-off, as with most things in life.
Don’t most distros have access all desktop environments? I’m assuming OP is asking about the default DE.
They should specify that then. Because right now I’d also answer the question with “all distros”.
I’m assuming the OP just wants know what GUI we like best, and the distro is irrelevant.
@PureTryOut @howrar Well there are distros that are specifically geared to their default DE like #Elive #linux #RetroWave There’s no way any distro can just ‘slap that on’ as the saying goes.
https://www.elivecd.org/download/retrowave
I… Have never heard of those. I’m sure there are some distros like that, but the majority (and especially the few mainstream ones) just ship and offer all DE’s.
@PureTryOut Well, in general installing a different DE on a distro than the default, tends to be a sad experience. There’s lots of work under the hood that are geared to make the default DE nice and slick. It’s the reason why there are distros like Xubuntu, Kubuntu and what not.
Tbh the various DE’s should work just fine out of the box without additional distro work done outside of packaging. That’s the case on Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux and Alpine Linux at least, not sure why it would be different on distros like Ubuntu or Fedora.