I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it’s Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)…etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.
Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the “Flagship Manjaro version”. I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.
After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.
What about you guys?
Definitely Gnome here. Though I have a long list of notes, it mostly just works exactly like I expect with little friction or guessing. I donate $100/year to both Gnome and KDE since they are both good pieces of software, and I love that I get to chose mine. Further, I think KDE is the logical choice for something like the SteamDeck where it’s going to have a lot of gamers that expect computers to work like Windows. (even if I don’t like it, >_<)