Your Favorite Desktop Environments

[evening_hunger]

I have a WM which is mostly self-made, based on Notion (based on ion3 (similar to i3)). It is something like 100% zen, along the lines of ratpoison/awesome/i3, it shows as much as nothing if you want it to. black screen, or wallpaper, you're the master of what gets there:)
Now I guess I would just ignore the topic but I think it needs to be stressed, that one's choice of using Linux DEs or WMs is pretty much a choice made of how for we want to get into programming it ourselves. And since GNU/Linux is by definition opensourced, we CAN change everything we want. Don't like a panel or [censored] Launcher? Change it. Don't like window borders? Paf! gone. Want 25 virtual desktops switchable by trackpoint middle button? Five minutes of work. And so on, and so on.
For me the reasons to choose Notion (and then set upon modifying it) were:
- it takes 0 resources (I think like 200kb of RAM).
- it is 100% keyboard driven (why I love it? look at this Forum's name).
- it can be a tiling WM, automatic or manual, so things like windows taking halves of the screen (new in W10 or Gnome) makes i3/Notion people facepalm, they had it like 15 years ago:)
- possibility to mod it just like peple mod their thinkpads - each program's behaviour (custom mods e.g. for gimp, firefox, whatever).
- a 'scratchpad' window, accesible at alt+space, which toggles it on/off. It always reappears where you've left it, is always on top, regardless of which desktop you use, when pressing alt+space it pops up. you type that one command, or check something (okay I just gave out I have a terminal there:)) then press alt+space again and the window is gone. A programmers dream when you have your source opened, want to compile quickly and go back to youtube...
- a no-nonsense approach, similar to thinkpad. Has everything you want, but you need to turn it on/create it. By default, it looks like a japanese Zen garden - nothing there, but kind of beatifully empty...

regards
(btw. I've used win, kde, gnome, unity, xfce, awesome, i3, ratpoison, icewm, openbox, fluxbox... I won't say nothing beats Notion, because I don't generally see it as a competition: it's a win/win situation, use what you want. I admit Awesome comes close to Notion, even if it's a bit bloated. But hase an active userbase, and nice hacks written).

[sdi-p]

Mate ... I use it for all the distros I use. Primarily Debian based, some Arch based.

I got my feet wet with Gnome2. I do try the other desktops, but Mate fits me and my work style.
I put LMDE Mate on my wife's T61 a year or two ago, she is fine with it. (she not a power user, she cares not a whit... she just uses the apps, all in shortcuts in the upper panel for her. I doubt she has ever used any menus)

LMDE Mate (and Mint Mate) add many fine points, but I despise their new default panel arrangement (similar to Cinnamon). Thankfully I am able to quickly rearrange it in to the Traditional Gnome2 style in just a few minutes.
always thankful that we have choices

[evening_hunger]

That's the beauty of Linux!
By the way my wife is very comfortable using xfce, she loves it. Mate is quite close aesthetically, after all it's a gnome2 offspring, so...

[EvoT61]

openbox, i3 ... now im testing awesome.
awesome is harder to config due to lua language ( im no programmer ) but i more prefer to i3 , even im using only for few days but already fell in love with it