I have used many desktop environments and window managers. Most of the big names: KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, XFCE, i3, GNOME… and some of the lesser-known, or lesser-used ones, too: FVwm, dwm, Openbox, Mango…
And, as I recall, each was serviceable and effective. Out of all real issues, I can only cite meaningful graphical errors when I experimented with KDE Plasma while using proprietary NVIDIA drivers. Still, KDE Plasma worked well, while fulfilling multiple values that I appreciate in a desktop environment. Nonetheless, some desktop environments fulfilled these values more than others, and some managed even to fulfill values I did not know I was even looking for.
But each was serviceable and effective—reflecting the ability of modern Linux desktop tooling to often "just work" and fulfill all the basic interfacing needs of their users.
This brief essay is an analysis of two of these tools that have stood out to me in my time using Linux: GNOME and MangoWC.
As of this my writing this, Mango's GitHub repository calls itself "practical and powerful […] dwm but wayland," which I find perfectly succinct, and true (and false!), in only the best ways.
The compositor is totally lean, like dwm (or dwl per the project page, which I haven't tried myself, to be honest). It builds and rebuilds rapidly; it absorbs few system resources; it runs snappily and rarely falters without user error; etcetera. These are the ways in which the repository description is correct. Additionally, it boasts richer out-of-the-box graphical capabilities alongside a more robust "tags" philosophy (opposed to workspaces) and—most interestingly—a "scroller" window layout that can be dynamically used with more traditional tiling layouts, like the "monocle" layout. These are the ways in which the repository description is (humbly, to its praise) incorrect.
Some key features that I appreciate are Mango's integration with Waybar (a highly effective taskbar solution for Wayland) and its ability to hot-reload keybinds and such, meaning that sessions do not have to be restarted for most configurations to be realized—a massive convenience over my past experiences with its author's yardstick, so to speak, dwm.
Anyways, all of these attributes culminate into the perfect solution for my desktop whenever my preference happens to be something more lightweight and do-it-yourself, which I can especially appreciate when I have the time on my hands to dabble with creating and optimizing my own workflow solutions… something I find very fun. This do-it-yourself philosophy that Mango appeals to is great when I want something that simply gets out of my way and does what I need it to, which is a generally tentative feature in other desktop solutions that provide their own applications, and so on and so forth.
A brief aside: let me clarify that I appreciate the raw and "suckless" minimalism that defines dwm, despite all of my coexistent appreciation for Mango's small improvements and optimizations over dwm for the end-user. It's obvious that comparing Mango and dwm is not an apples-to-apples comparison; still, they are philosophically similar enough, and they both ultimately aim to provide an interface for window management—and ultimately, in my case, the former surpasses the other in enjoyability and usability.
But what if I am interested in something less lightweight and do-it-yourself? Something more "out-of-the-box" and feature-complete? After all, I often find myself rotating between the two preferences depending on my mood.
Enter GNOME, which, understandably, really divides people. The entire desktop environment is opinionated from the ground up, relative to something like KDE Plasma which unequivocally offers more "sane" defaults and significantly more standard customization capabilities. And just look at me: I've only managed to write a handful of sentences about GNOME and I've already mentioned KDE Plasma. Can you blame me? The battle between the two can be fiece; it's impossible to mention one and not the other soon afterwards. They're easily the two most popular primarily-floating-window desktop environments available. It seems like you're either in camp-GNOME or camp-KDE, and both camps want nothing more than to prove their superiority over the other through mortal combat. (I guess they're more like vicious tribes.)
But maybe the "opinionated" nature of GNOME and the "sanity" of KDE Plasma's defaults deserve a reframing: GNOME isn't opinionated—it simply knows want it wants—and KDE Plasma isn't more sane—it simply appeals to conventional desktop paradigms.
GNOME's confidence in its image is most obvious through its visual language, which is mostly defined through the GNOME HIG ( https://developer.gnome.org/hig/), and it is simply the most striking feature that most GNOME desktops hold over, for example, those of KDE Plasma or XFCE. The consistency among GNOME apps (which are bountiful and generally adequately robust, though I admit I tend to still prefer using the terminal) is something that other desktop environments, in my experience, can hardly hold a candle to.
GNOME's workflow is also extremely efficient once the user recognizes how to properly use it. The desktop's features encourage a keyboard-centric workflow where every major need can be met with the super key, (usually) alongside some other intuitive combination of keypresses: simply press the super key to see the overview, where the pinned apps—the most meaningful ones—can be quickly accessed, or begin typing the name of an app to quickly open it after pressing return, or access new workspaces, which are dynamically created and sorted to only the extent that benefits the user.
I'm going to recommend THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO, which goes over the basics of an ideal, intended GNOME workflow.
I feel that, for most people, the efficiency speaks for itself if you simply let it. And for myself, this workflow is far more superior to a taskbar-centric, mouse-based workflow like you see in standard KDE Plasma or Windows desktops.
Under construction!