It’s in the eye of the beholder, of course. But it would be great to see some solid recommendations.

  • pelotron@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Garuda Hyprland edition. All the neon-RGB styling of Garuda gamer on top of Hyprland’s smooth UI.

    • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I don’t like some of the other decisions in Garuda, but it’s become hard to get away from it when even regular non-technical people who see it are like “Whoa, what is all that” and you literally just finished installing it and didn’t even change the wallpaper. It’s a very different feeling from what I’m used to with Linux and I’m into it.

    • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 months ago

      Upvoted. I forgot about this distro. I don’t like its neon style at all but it’s something different and pleasing for some people.

      • pelotron@midwest.socialEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        It’s finally an opinionated distro I agree with. Of course you can get anything to look like anything but I just like how they picked a path and went so far down it to make their own unique out-of-the-box experience.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 months ago

    Hmm there is stuff like Archcraft (maybe it has a different name now idk) that is made specifically for visuals. In terms of usable distros I’d say Xero is the best I know. It seems to be discontinued though. CachyOS has some nice WM setups too but the appealing visuals can’t be consistent in that case because they are not full DEs and the unreasonably tiny calendar pop-up window from Xfce always ruins everything.

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    0·
    4 months ago

    The distribution doesn’t to too much, its mostly the desktop environment. I like the look of KDE Plasma the most. But usually I craft my own look after a while.

    • BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br
      0·
      4 months ago

      Agreed. I think it’s not about distros we should have pay attention, but desktop environments.

      And about “most appealing” DE I think it’s subjective. Surely KDE has the most flexible structure and may be exactly what you want, but Gnome is also appealing for some people (myself included).

      Again, there is no right or wrong, just personal preferences

        • BaalInvoker@lemmy.eco.br
          0·
          4 months ago

          Good for you that you like your XFCE environment

          I would like to see how your desktop is, if you don’t mind

          However, again, it’s personal preference

          • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
            0·
            4 months ago

            Can’t. feddit.de can’t upload images and in browser i suddenly get a server error(?) with my lemmy.ml account.

            Well uh, left bar with virtual desktop overview bottom, window buttons top, autoexpand
            right bar with network and systemload bars top, sensor numbers bottom, fixed size
            top bar Android style with left hand clock and date, whiskermenu (symbol view) as the empty space in the center (title only and whitespaces as title), right hand systray with mail and connman-gtk, pulseaudio plugin. Bars are on intelligently autohide, theme is Adapta.

            This is on my notebook with touchscreen.

            Nice thing is, XFCE can pin bars to specific displays or main display. Meaning, if i plug my ultrawide in, the top bar stays on notebook while left and right bar switch to the ultrawide, a center bar with Wiskermrmu with list view for desktop usage appears.

    • twinnie@feddit.uk
      0·
      4 months ago

      Somebody needs to tell me what they’re doing to Plasma to make them like it so much because when I install it with Breeze it just looks like Windows 2000.

      • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
        0·
        4 months ago

        Windows 2000 looks nothing alike KDE Plasma with Breeze theme. But besides that point, you don’t have to like what others like. It’s just taste.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
        0·
        4 months ago

        I don’t really care how it looks precisely, so long as its semi-professional and consistent in its style.

        Like, I change the font to Fira Sans, because Noto Sans gives me depression, but the rest of my customizations are all just to carve out my ideal workflow.

    • BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      4 months ago

      I took it as a question of which distro looks nicest out of the box (like, which distro manager has made real effort to make something particularly nice looking).

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
          0·
          4 months ago

          Absolutely. GNOME often looks better, but it just doesnt work. Basic things everywhere are removed or not added.

          • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
            0·
            4 months ago

            I have given in to GNOME. Set dark mode, install the extension “Tactile” and never touch the setting again.

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
              0·
              4 months ago

              So you mean…

              • editing images (in the viewer, screenshot tool)
              • being allowed to customize the UI of any app
              • changing the login screen (gdm) background
              • creating a textfile from the filemanager
              • editing .desktop entries graphically
              • …

              ?

              Hahaha, I disagree

              • dallen@programming.dev
                0·
                4 months ago

                Yea, none of those things matter to me.

                Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of fun customizing DEs but I don’t really need that on my daily driver. I also have more of a terminal based workflow so perhaps shell customization scratches that itch for me.

                To each their own :)

                • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
                  0·
                  4 months ago

                  This is not about customizing. What app do you use for editing images, or dont you do this at all?

                  On GNOME either using Gwenview (KDE) or GIMP, Krita, Kolourpaint, Pinta would work. Which are all very big programs.

          • pukeko@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            The thing I’ve learned in the many years of watching this fight is that the things Gnome people (of which I am one, though I have immense respect and appreciation for the KDE project) don’t like about KDE tend to be the things KDE people like about KDE and vice versa.

              • pukeko@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                4 months ago

                It seems to still be strongly gnome-adjacent, which fits with the softer, “calmer” aesthetic Pop has, but with functional tweaks that are more aligned with Win11/KDE (absolutely intended as a positive statement, as far as moving the ball forward on UX design). I worry that team KDE won’t like the “sane defaults” simplicity that it appears to have inherited from the gnome days, but that might just be the part of me that experiences terminal choice paralysis every time I fire up KDE. :)

            • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
              0·
              4 months ago

              These projects are almost diametrically opposite. GNOME tries to provide a very simple, solid but not very configurable desktop with good accessibility and stability while KDE tries to make a very configurable and powerful environment that can be customized to anyone’s needs. I don’t like KDE because it’s unstable, way too powerful for my personal needs (their “simple by default; powerful when needed” concept doesn’t really work) and I just don’t like the UI. Though KDE’s better performance is an objective advantage.

              • pukeko@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                4 months ago

                I tend to agree. I mean, the gnome workflow is more appealing to me (though I have since moved to a WM), but my dislike of KDE comes down to (a) too many options everywhere and (b) it looks too “sharp”. If KDE had an “I’m done fiddling” mode that hid most of the options and I found a softer theme, I’d probably like it fine.

                Absolutely nothing I just said should take away from others’ preference for KDE. I’m glad we can like what we like.

  • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    elementary! It’s macish, but I still think pantheon is my favorite DE

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      0·
      4 months ago

      I tried their icons on KDE (there is a theme) and these old, very detailed icons just dont make sense. Too much color, very incoherent style and way too much detail that you cannot see anyways.

      But I have not tried it, as I was too dumb that you need Javascript to have the payment download button work.

  • edric@lemm.ee
    0·
    4 months ago

    As one comment mentioned, it depends more on the DE. But out of the box, I’d say Peppermint, Elementary, and Mint.

    • Baggins@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I loved Peppermint. Has it been updated/does it work?
      Used to use it but it crapped out on me and last couple of versions haven’t worked or had printer issues.

  • Everett@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    The new COSMIC desktop by System76 and Pop!_OS is very promising. I’ve been running the pre-alpha, and have been very impressed.

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
    0·
    4 months ago

    You mean Desktop?

    Distro, I think Lubuntu does LXQt better than Fedora LXQt.

    But LXQt is a huge mix of mostly KDE Theming.

  • WhiteBerry@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Honestly, whilst I would not recommend this at all, I find CutefishOS (you could argue it doesn’t even need to be a distro) incredibly visually appealing.

    Perhaps I will get downvoted for being a sucker for modern visuals, but the theme is consistent, simple and easy on my eyes.

    Although I like GNOME, the consistency bothers me and some of the design choices are inconsistent and don’t make for a great user experience, looking at Nautilus for example.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    4 months ago

    You’re asking about the desktop environment and its default settings, which may or may not be the same on any given distro.

    But I have a tie between Plasma and Cinnamon (mint’s DE). They both take only minor tweaking to get where I want them, and I can use them both out of the box with zero complaints.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      0·
      4 months ago

      Many distros customize the colour schemes and theming of their desktops. The out-of-the-box XFCE in EOS looks nothing at all like vanilla XFCE for example.