Tiling window managers like i3 are imho nice for laptops, since they do not waste any space and can be easily controlled via keyboard. Takes a while to get used to them, however.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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i3wm on my laptop, light on resources, keyboard-driven saves screen estate (no window decorations), and picom makes it easy on the eyes (rounded corners, shadows). If you prefer wayland, sway (and swayfx) is the way.
I agree with this! I run i3 for all my builds and it’s great!
XFCE minimal but good looking. You could also go for MATE or Cinnamon..
If you haven't tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.
I don't use Gnome, for example. People knock on it a bit BUT a large group of people swear by it for workflow.
KDE Plasma is the dream for anyone who likes to tweak settings. I used it on my laptop for a long time and it is very convenient. It also manages power and monitor settings very well. In terms of memory usage it is now similar to XFCE.
XFCE is perfect for people who don't like change. It is a slow moving DE; tried and true.
Right now I am using LXQt. Not sure why I decided to do that. It looks ok. It is fast and light. That's it's claim to fame. It can be used with different WMs which is nice.
Are there any particular DE’s you like on a laptop, because of things like power consumption and efficiency that would not come normally into consideration for a desktop?
I can't say I've ever looked into it. But, I found that KDE handled things very well. I used my laptop for full workdays, getting 11 hours out of it.
I started with ubuntu then mint on desktop and then vm. I hated Gnome in those days, prefering KDE or XFCE (even i3wm). Now that my laptop is on EOS, I tried Gnome again and it's much better for use with a trackpad. So yeah, different DEs for different tastes/uses/systems.
Thank you.
If you haven't tried them, I recommend giving them a try. They all have something to offer.
I have tried them on desktop and in most cases, I did not have any serious issue with them. I was thinking which one would be better optimised for laptops.
KDE handled things very well
I'm on KDE now. It's good. Was thinking whether there are any DE's that are specifically recommended for laptops, for efficiency or ease of use.
Cinnamon for me, It looks like old Windows
i3 and never looked back!
GNOME
I like Enlightenment. It uses 400 MB of RAM on my old laptop/
xfce since it came default with eos and its pretty lightweight
I use kde on my laptop
Tried many, but Xfce won for me:
- great keyboard support (tiling windows, virtual desktops, etc.)
- doesn't get in the way
- compact re UI (don't like modern GNOME look with lots of whitespace)
- lightweight
An even though I use terminals a lot (neovim, git, etc.), I never stuck with tiling window managers in the end (e.g. i3). Rather I'm heavily relying on:
- virtual desktops (8 or so)
- manual window tiling via shortcuts
- tmux
I have not used a desktop environment on a laptop in a very long time. For a long while, I had fluxbox installed and that was good enough. Nowadays, my laptop almost exclusively runs EXWM. I can't really recommend that for general use though.
If I were to install a full DE now, I think I would go for LXQT. I love Openbox, and I would probably end up replacing the panel with tint2. That would be a decent environment, I think.
Of the ones I tried, my top 3 would be cinnamon, budgie, and kde. KDE is probably the best bet for modern features ATM, cinnamon for simplicity.
If I want to use a graphical user interface, I generally use KDE Plasma.
Started out with xfce, used lxde for a short while... it was too minimalistic for my taste. Tried KDE for about a week, that was the oposite, too flashy. Went back to xfce, haven't tried anything else since. It's a sweet spot IMO.
I went with i3 (i3wm) instead of a full DE on my debian laptop. I wanted to minimize trackpad use without requiring peripherals (like a mouse).
On one hand it's highly performant and easily configurable; on the other hand, it does lead to problems that I wouldn't have known about with a DE—for example, I had screen tearing for months until I learned I needed a compositor, which doesn't come included.
In other words: it is a very barebones OOBE, and requires a lot of setup and RTFM (it's probably in the user guide that i need a compositor), but the reward of higher performance/lower power draw, easily configuring the hell out of it, smoothly navigating everywhere with the keyboard alone, and reclaiming screenspace from taskbars and titlebars has made it my preferred setup (even on desktop).
Tangential to the question, but my "no mouse" ethic has taken considerable effort to learn the cli way of dealing with configuration that is trivialized by GUIs (e.g. volume and wifi, i'm still struggling with bluetooth and rtorrent), but it's made the experience of working on a laptop 500% more enjoyable and less of an uphill struggle against the trackpad, and it doesn't require a flat surface for a mouse.
I'm a KDE guy and use it myself on my notebook, but GNOME with its multitouch gestures and polished (if a little inflexible) workflow is also an excellent fit.
I3 and KDE
Gnome hands down has the best laptop experience. If you follow the intended workflow of using tiled windows and many workspaces. You can get to a very large number of windows, without getting lost, even with just the laptop screen.
Additionally the paradigm does translate well to a desktop for the times you are docked.
i3
the less I need a mouse on a laptop, the better
edit: ok, you specifically asked for a full fledged DE and not just a WM. well, I picked what I needed and with Manjaro i3 as base, I had a nice place to start
full fledged de with tiling ?
spoiler
kde with Krohnkite
i3 just feels much faster. can't change back to anything more bloated at the moment. It wrecks my nerves waiting for a window to open on other DEs/WMs - although it's often not much of a difference.
I'm very happy with my current setup. would like to try sway, but I think Wayland/sway isn't completely there yet.
haha I was being half serious here, as fun as I have with kronkite on my space heater, its is a layer of bloat on top of a mountain of bloat so not what you want in op's case
Plasma.
I recently switched from i3 to hyprland and quite like it. Wayland still has some issues, but the better scaling makes it worth it.
On laptops Gnome has a big advantage in the multitouch gestures for the touchpad, and as everyone says it's pretty polished. But lately I've been using KDE since it offers a lot more functionality and customization out of the box. Most of it's apps are like a swiss army knife and I love that. KDE is also catching up in the multitouch gesture department.
XFCE works for me!
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