I’m planning on moving (back) to Linux from Windows, but I’m not sure which desktop environment I want to use. What’s the easiest way to try them all out? Just do a bunch of dnf/apt installs? Is there a distro or project out there that makes this easier?
Looking to try out kde, gnome, budgie, cinnamon, xfce, others
VMs are a way, but Live USB sticks are better because you will see how it actually runs on your bare metal machine, and if there see any hardware quirks, without comitting to an install
Ventoy is a godsend in that case. If you have a big enough USB stick, you can just put all distros you wanna try on it
You can install them all on any distro I believe. I use Arch and installing Plasma is just a single command, same with Gnome and the others. After install you can pick which desktop to use after the graphical login screen loads.
There are some annoyances, like for example if you have both Gnome and Plasma installed, and you type Files to open a file app, you get the Gnome file app even in Plasma since it’s named Files. To use the Plasma file app, you have to type Dolphin instead.
Same with settings app, I often open the Gnome settings app instead of the Plasma settings app by mistake since it’s called Settings.
But these are not bugs per se, it’s just because I’m used to typing something…
Why not install a live disc type image to USB and try out different varieties? Linux Mint offers three live images with Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE.
I quickly found this article on installing them to USB: https://itsfoss.com/linux-mint-live-usb/
Many popular distributions offer live images so you can try before installation.
NixOS or fedora ostree
Gentoo used to have a live CD with almost every DE / WM in it. Not sure if it’s still around though.
The last one is from 2017, alas. The current Gentoo GUI ISO only includes KDE and fluxbox ( full package list, just in case someone’s really bored and wants a look).
