Hi, Long time Mac user here, recently switching my personal devices to Linux. My work unfortunately does not support this, mandating work be done on the provisioned device and it has to be Mac or Windows. So, I’m finding it a bit hard to get up to speed when coding on Linux. I’ve tried GNOME, KDE, Hyprland and find no obvious heaven in any of them. I have two external 27" monitors fwiw. My personal PC has Arch and KDE for gaming reasons, but I’m also looking to code more on open source tools to avoid personal vendor lock-ins.

In other companies I’ve visited I’ve seen varied policies, one runs stock Ubuntu, one mandates Fedora with user choice for DE/WM, many use Macs but allow for Linux if desired. So, I’d want to run a small survey. Keeping in mind all the aspects of using a device at varied software work, so coding, email, chat, managing servers, having online meetings, sharing screens, making presentations: if you use Linux for work,

What DE or WM (and distro if relevant) do you use for your actual, professional work?

Was this a choice by you or pre-selected by the employer? Do they allow you to work on your own device if desired? (Excluding freelancers obv.)

Do you need to balance stability vs. customisability? Or is that a no-brainer for you? (=“Have you ever had to cancel a meeting because an Arch update broke your screen sharing?”)

How much time do you find reasonable to put into maintaining/developing your setup?

Did distro choice (or lack thereof) impact your choices for DE/WM?

Do you feel like your code editor, language stack, or job profile has an impact on the choices? For example, is your profile very specific (“I go to dailies and turn tickets into code / I work alone for weeks at a time researching stuff”), allowing you to optimise the setup further?

Anything else you’d want to highlight about this?

Edit: Takeaways so far

  • Immutable setups ftw
  • Arch is stable enough though
  • Type of work affects distro choice more so than DE choice (I do backend webdev, my deliverables are very platform independent, so I didn’t think about this much)
  • Plenty of XFCE users out there!
  • Zero mentions for Hyprland!
  • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
    2·
    16 hours ago

    What DE or WM (and distro if relevant) do you use for your actual, professional work?

    I use both a MacBook and a Linux desktop running NixOS + Sway. I use the tmux + Helix editor on both. It’s not uncommon that I will use my MacBook as a thin client for coding over SSH on my desktop. But the MacBook is actually quite snappy for building Rust code.

    Do you need to balance stability vs. customisability?

    While NixOS can be bleeding edge, I also quickly notice breaking issues and I can easily revert to a previous working boot image (there is a history of boot images saved in the boot loader).

    How much time do you find reasonable to put into maintaining/developing your setup?

    I think it’s reasonable to spend a few days just getting to a working state, assuming you are starting from scratch. The long tail of maintenance should thin out quickly to the point where you are never really touching your config anymore.

    Did distro choice (or lack thereof) impact your choices for DE/WM?

    No.

    Do you feel like your code editor, language stack, or job profile has an impact on the choices?

    Not really. One time I did need to get a Windows VM running just to test out one of our Windows builds. A bit painful, but now that it’s done, I don’t really have to worry about it anymore.