After trying out Cosmic, Gnome,KDE Plasma, and Hyprland, I feel like plasma is the most usable for me coming from Windows. It solves the gripes I had about lack of customizability while still starting me off with a familiar homebar. I will be going back and forth with gnome for a while.
I really like gnome and the sliding desktops, and all the extensions seem to make it very customizable as well, but not directly like plasma, instead you mix and match (or make) extensions to get the look you want. (correct me if im wrong, I used it for a day)
Hyprland seems very nice for multitasking but the keyboard focus of the presets ive tried doesn’t really appeal to me, I like being able to just use my mouse sometimes.
Cosmic, is definitely an alpha and im interested to see what it becomes, wont be using it now.
I’ve jumped over the years, Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, Unity, AwesomeWM, QTile, XMonad, Hyprland.
For the last couple of years I’ve completely settled on KDE for my Desktop, and Gnome on my Laptops.
I love the customisability of KDE and being able to turn it into whatever the hell I want lol. But Gnomes gestures on a laptop are unmatched in the Linux space imo, and finally at a point that I firmly believe Gnome gestures are now on par with MacOS gestures.
For the touchpad? I basically use my laptop like a desktop with a mouse, pluggedin to power. (it was more for easy transportation from college to back home, didn’t have a desktop and gaming laptops get insane deals if you keep track, got mine $2,000 off at like $1100 and it was the best all amd alienware config at the time (still handles everything), just preemptively explaining because im used to redditors giving me shit for using a laptop as a desktop)
Lol dw, you won’t get shot here for using your hardware how you intend to use it… Why would anyone get mad about that??
Well if you don’t use your trackpad then obviously Gnome gestures won’t be a big point for you. I never really used to either back when I used tiling Window managers, I solely relied on a purely keyboard driven workflow, until I got a new job and they use MacBook Pros as our work laptops, there I got super into the trackpad gestures. For example, three finger swipe left or right to change workspace, three finger swipe up for an application/workspace overview.
I read this often but found KDE so difficult to customise. XFCE or Cinnamon is what I’d consider extremely customisable, KDE doesn’t even consistently listen to what theme colour I set :-(