Linux Desktop Environments Roasted: Every DE Userbase Suffers Differently
Description
A vertical meme compilation roasting various Linux desktop environment userbases. From top to bottom: Hyprland users suffering a grand mal seizure trying to make their Nvidia GPU work (shown with a seizure medical diagram). LXQt users slowly coming to terms with the fact that a single core Celeron is not cutting it anymore in 2025 (Intel Celeron Inside logo). Cinnamon users trying to decide between using a 30 year old display server or having their wayland session crash every 30 minutes (meme showing 'bad' and 'somehow even worse'). i3 users starting to see screen tearing in real life (distorted face). XFCE users giving up the last 20 years of UI improvements just to see a 1.5% performance jump (Cinebench screenshot). The Budgie userbase consisting only of their developers (showing r/BudgieDesktop with 29 visitors and 0 contributions per week)
Comments
37Comment deleted
Linux DE users are like Pokémon -- each one has a unique type weakness: Hyprland is weak to Nvidia, Cinnamon is weak to Wayland, i3 is weak to VSync, and Budgie is weak to having actual users
The Linux desktop is the only place you can choose between a UI from 1998, a compositor that doubles as a seizure-inducing light show for your GPU, or a window manager so minimal you start seeing screen tearing in your own eyeballs. We call this 'freedom'
Remember when we dreamed Wayland would fix everything? Turns out the real abstraction layer is coping strategies per desktop environment
After 20 years of arguing about the year of the Linux desktop, we've successfully fragmented into 47 different desktop environments, each with their own unique way of failing to render a window properly - but at least we can all agree that systemd was a mistake while our Wayland sessions crash in perfect harmony
This perfectly captures the Linux desktop paradox: you can have stability, modern features, or performance - pick one, maybe one and a half if you're lucky. Hyprland users are basically running a perpetual integration test against Nvidia's proprietary drivers, LXQt folks are discovering that 'lightweight' doesn't mean 'time-traveling CPU architecture support,' and Cinnamon users face the classic X11 vs Wayland trolley problem where both tracks lead off a cliff. Meanwhile, i3 users have stared at tiling layouts so long they're experiencing compositor-induced PTSD in meatspace, XFCE devotees are cosplaying Windows 95 for that sweet 1.5% performance gain, and Budgie's entire ecosystem is basically a very elaborate personal project. It's 2025 and we're still debugging display servers - truly, the year of the Linux desktop
Choosing a Linux desktop in 2025 is basically CAP theorem for graphics: with Nvidia you can pick Wayland features or stability under Xorg, but not both; meanwhile the XFCE crowd trades two decades of UX for a 1.5% Cinebench bump no one notices once vsync is on
Wayland promised to fix X11's tears, but delivered crashes instead - because in Linux desktops, CAP theorem now means Consistent Crashes, Always Painful
Linux DEs follow their own CAP theorem: with Nvidia you can pick any two of ‘Wayland works,’ ‘no tearing,’ or ‘a community larger than the dev team.’
it just works ™️ Comment deleted
Somerthing like number 4 happened after i played games on a gpu with completely stopped fan for several weeks. Comment deleted
GNOME and KDE, the goat of just works. Comment deleted
when I last tried KDE (about 5 years ago), a clean install with no configuration annoyed me with notifications of something constantly braking, shutting down and so on. Comment deleted
Gnome currently: oh, you're using that full-featured app that just worked? well, that sucks, we've replaced it with something worse but FaNcY (or "for modern audiences") samples: - gedit replaced by gnome-text-editor - gnome-terminal replaced by Console Comment deleted
distros (at least ubuntu and fedora) are replacing Console with Ptyxis though and it has more feature parity with gnome-terminal Comment deleted
fight me. Comment deleted
GNOME is "just works or a highway" Comment deleted
ELI5 what's budgie and what's wrong with it? Comment deleted
idk, I've been using hyprland on 1650 at my work almost for a year, and didn't have any issue Comment deleted
this gonna start a war Comment deleted
As far as I can judge, the gnome devs don’t care about their users and often make things worse. Comment deleted
any examples..? Comment deleted
On Wayland you have to make window decorations yourself when developing, cause gnome decided that you don't need default ones, when every other DE provides default ones Comment deleted
What UI improvements in 20 years? Comment deleted
don't get the XFCE point though. using xfce for already like, 10 years, only notable change was embedding of file search utility into file browser. everything else is just replacement of some libs through other libs — but it looks and feels just like before 🤷♂️ Comment deleted
Ragebait isn't meant to be accurate Comment deleted
I thought maybe somebody knows what they are talking about. may be there was some known case. Comment deleted
The author probably refers to the lack of fancy animations and transparency effects. Comment deleted
ah. actually xfce4-terminal supports transparent background and it supports themes with transparency level of interface. but animations — yes. but like, when you are deep into working, you don't need no animations. when I've still been using gnome I even disabled animations through gnome-tweaks or how this thing was called. Comment deleted
I've been rocking XFCE for about 8 years now. It just does what the DE needs to do without slowing my work down. Comment deleted
'xactly Comment deleted
even though I'm somewhat proficient with things like i3 or dwm, but for a multipurpose work I will still choose xfce only when I know, I will 99% of time spend in a terminal on this machine, I take those other two. Comment deleted
You can swap to a compton fork and have your xfce be all funny and blurry transparent Comment deleted
but do I need that? Comment deleted
another thing, that may be not Gnome's fault, is that since fedora 40 or 41 terminal app stopped supporting transparent background. And also there are two terminal apps now, two image viewers and two text editors, idk how or why Comment deleted
Mint seems to try and keep some sanity Comment deleted
GNOME sucks, that's it Comment deleted
LXDE to the rescue! 🤓 Comment deleted