Arch Linux’s pkgstats data provides one of the few large-scale, opt-in snapshots of how real users configure their systems. While not a perfect census (participation is voluntary), the long-running dataset offers a clear picture of how desktop environment and window managers’ preferences have shifted across more than a decade.
At the same time, the data (to some extent) also reflects a broader trend for one key reason: as you know, a default Arch installation gives you only a base system, and you build everything else according to your own needs and tastes. In other words, there’s no predefined desktop environment that users are locked into, unlike most other distributions.
That means these statistics give us a very accurate look at which desktop environments and window managers Arch users actually choose to install and use. But enough talk, let’s move on to the data.
the KDE Plasma desktop at 38.36%, nearly doubling the share of GNOME, which sits at 19.84%
Then xfce at ~11% and cinnamon, mate, etc. to round it out.
That feels about right. I know that when I go to set up a desktop system anymore, KDE is usually my default go to. It just works and doesn’t tell me no for the few customizations that I want to make. XFCE and the others are absolutely vital for lower power systems. But if you want a low-friction daily driver with plenty nice to haves and easily replicable, it’s hard to beat KDE.
Xfce is very replicable. Moving my install to a new system usually involves little more than copying the config files between home directories.
Does XFCE do Wayland yet?
Sort of.
Everything is Wayland compatible but there is no XFWM for Wayland. So, you use a Wayland compositor like LabWC with the rest of XFCE running on top of it. This is the default XFCE config on SUSE Leap for example.
XFCE is not quite as far along on portal support as GNOME or KDE though. Depending on your use case, you may still prefer running on Xorg.
You can run the XFCE apps on any Wayland desktop.
Oh absolutely, it’s just missing some of the integration and features that KDE provides. I was speaking more of KDE in terms of hyperland or sway. Granted, it’s just copying over configuration files after you’ve futzed around getting things exactly how you want. Though that’s a bit much for me. Typically with KDE, I just set it to dark mode and that’s largely it.
I use KDE Plasma, btw.
Arch users: “Well now I’m definitely not using KDE”
Did you check the wiki to see which one it says to use??
KDE works and Arch is easy to install.
KDE because it was recommended with cachy os, and i don’t really know enough or care enough to use something else 😅
I3. No desktop. Just me and the bash.
Expected it
Does this count steamOS instances? Because that would really tip the scales in KDE’s favor.
Niri. I know it’s not a DE, but it’s currently my fav.
yup. I was tempted to give Hyprland a try but noped out for political reasons.
political reasons?
Most projects have codes of conduct, even if it’s something as simple as Wheaton’s Law.
The original creator of hyprland behaved in a way that made people leave the project (the “political” part comes from the creator’s discrimination). It was basically a good example for why projects should have codes of conduct.
There’s Hypr, which is the X11 version of it (of which I tested a bit on my own time).
deleted by creator
I am also loving Niri
I’d use Gnome if it had tray application icon support. I just cannot do without my tray icons for Dropbox.
If you want to try something fresh, give mangowc a try. It is a tiling wm but also has built-in support for scrolling layouts like Niri (even vertical).
Bash
The premise of the question is wrong, since it assumes a general preference.
If you’re asking 👉 this 👈 Arch user, the answer is “NONE”.
EDIT: The majority of users, especially experienced ones, don’t enable pkgstats. So such stats always end up in some form of self-selection (biased towards users who would use a DE in this case).
The majority of users, especially experienced ones don’t enable pkgstats.
Why would an experienced user not enable pkgstats? Anyways the biggest bias here is that arch inherently caters to power users which are going to have very different needs and likes than regular people.
experienced user not enable pkgstats?
well I’ve never heard of it and I’ve been using Arch for well over a decade. I see it’s actually a package of its own, rather than just a feature of pacman that you can enable.
Wouldn’t that mean the opposite - that you are actually not very experienced, or knowledgeable at least about arch? I’ve been using arch for a couple of years and “heard” of it just fine.
Ok bit of a smarmy response. Congratulations are what you’re looking for? In any case, I think it’s just an entirely optional package that is not of interest to many Arch users.
Congratulations
Thanks. But in all seriousness i was trying to convey that your initial argument - experienced users not enabling pkgstats didn’t make much sense. It’s just funny in this case because you’ve been using arch for a decade and yet don’t know this basic thing.
Not knowing about opt-in telemetry doesn’t convey lack of experience, or lack of (relevant) knowledgeability. Especially considering the fact that Arch purposefully keeps the existence of it low-key to avoid the possibility of pissing off anyone.
I was already an Arch user when that opt-in telemetry was introduced. And only heard about it because I was relatively active in Arch communities back then (relatively young, relatively new to Arch). If pkgstats were introduced two years later, I would have never heard of them. Because believe it or not, Arch is just a reliable OS, where you don’t have to interact with anything other than reading the odd announcement every other year. It’s not a “community”, or a “way of life”, or anything in that bracket.
Waiting for a tiling window manager with nice animations
I think you have to code those yourself. I heard Niri had some nice animations, despite being a scroller. Hyprland has good animations if you put some time into it.
I do also understand if that was sarcastic. I’ve learned…
Not sarcastic, animations add greatly to the understandability of what’s going on which is helpful anyway and especially if you fat finger something.
But yeah I don’t especially want to put loads of time in either heh
I really love gnome but my friends keep pushing me for KDE and I really just don’t like the windows style of desktop.
You should use what you like.
COSMIC may offer a middle ground if you did want to try something else though.
And KDE is very configurable. It does not have to look like Windows.
KDE, beautiful and flexible
