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
You can use live isos. Some distros, such as Manjaro or Fedora spins, has several isos, one per DE.
I find sometimes installing a bunch of different DEs can cause weird cross-issues, so I tend to just make VMs to try out new things. I have a bunch of them on an external drive like little specimen jars lol.
Also as a side note, I keep a VM that’s as close to my current setup as possible, so if I get the urge to try something weird I can do it there first and see if it breaks anything.
You can install them like any other package from dnf/apt and then run them with startX (if its X11) or start them via their name if they are Wayland compositors (all this in the tty, the black screen with just letter outputs)
If the only thing you need to do is test out the different DEs, you should be able to just install each one and use something like lightdm to easily switch between them upon logging out.
therr are utilities to install lots of isos ona live usb, flash distros that use the des that uou wanna try and you can hotswap them
