Neowin's 2026 GNU/Linux Desktop Thread

[Barney T. Administrators]

Welcome to the 2026 GNU/Linux Desktops Thread

Posting Guidelines

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- The moderators of this forum reserve the right to edit or remove your posts as necessary so they may comply with our Community Rules and so that this thread remains on topic.

- In the interests of keeping the thread on topic it is strongly urged that you format your posts in the following order:

Themes: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice).
Wallpaper: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice).
Icons: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice).
Programs: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice).

For finding mystery wallpapers, consider using Google Images Reverse Search or Tineye.

[Apollo13]

CachyOS with KDE Plasma Orchis Dark Theme / Tela Circle Dark Icons / Qogir Cursors

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Never used Cachy, but looks nice!  

[Farchord]

Very Macesque, but I like it like that!

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Country roads, take me home...
To the place I belong...

[devHead]

Fedora 43 Workstation.  Still working like a champ.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

On 09/01/2026 at 06:05, Apollo13 said:

I'm curious, what is the widget on the bottom centre?

[Apollo13]

It's called Kurve. It's a CAVA plasmoid for KDE.  Enjoy!

[brian997]

Slackware current bottom toolbar is a mouseover popup

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I have a second screen, but its just where I put the browser.

Running Debian Testing (Forky)

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Wallpaper - https://www.deviantart.com/artursadlos/art/Cyberpunk-City-683952796

[energie10]

On 25/01/2026 at 15:47, Mindovermaster said:

Running Debian Testing (Forky)

Nice, very nice! I can't wait for the official release of version 14.

[+Gl1tterUnic0rns Subscriber²]

here is mine.     nothing special 

 

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Never used Cosmic before, but looks good.  

[+Gl1tterUnic0rns Subscriber²]

On 08/02/2026 at 09:43, Mindovermaster said:

Never used Cosmic before, but looks good.  

it's great - not without it's faults,  but it will only get better from here.  

[energie10]

Also looking forward to installing Kde Plasma desktop on Linux Mint on VM Ware.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I decided to give CachyOS a go on my Dell XPS 15 (2023).

[Steven P. Administrators]

Time for me to chime in after 25 years of running Neowin 😛 

This is my test rig: TITAN, that I've used to test SSDs, memory, GPUs and most recently GeForce NOW on Linux with which NVIDIA gifted an Ultimate subscription 😎

Edit: Forgot to mention this is Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Good job, @Steven P.!

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

After switching over to Linux two months ago, this is my desktop on Fedora Kinoite:

• Background - I randomly found this online a very long time ago and have used it ever since
• The Konsole theme is Edna-Light, found in the built in theme browser
• A few of the pinned icons were customised with the KDE Menu editor
• I'm using the KWin Script: Remember Window Positions which essentially does as the title says, remembers the position of the window when you close / open an application 

Other than that its a pretty much stock KDE setup, the defaults seemed pretty nice to me

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 07/03/2026 at 16:15, InsaneNutter said:

After switching over to Linux two months ago, this is my desktop on Fedora Kinoite:

• Background - I randomly found this online a very long time ago and have used it ever since
• The Konsole theme is Edna-Light, found in the built in theme browser
• A few of the pinned icons were customised with the KDE Menu editor
• I'm using the KWin Script: Remember Window Positions which essentially does as the title says, remembers the position of the window when you close / open an application 

Other than that its a pretty much stock KDE setup, the defaults seemed pretty nice to me

Ditto. Default is good enough.  

[Apollo13]

Got tired of KDE so I switched things up with this:
Arch Linux with CachyOS Kernel, Hyprland + minimaLinux dotfiles.

 

 

https://github.com/Echilonvibin/minimaLinux/tree/main

 

Edited March 13 by Apollo13

[remixedcat]

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (6C12T @ 3.9Ghz /5.2Ghz)//AsRock B650E Steel Legend//32GB Gskill Trident Z5 DDR5//500GB Seagate Firecuda 530 NVME/16TB Seagate Exos X18 HDD//SuperFlower Leadex 3 750w//Montech Air 903 Max//Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE      

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 04/04/2026 at 10:21, remixedcat said:

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (6C12T @ 3.9Ghz /5.2Ghz)//AsRock B650E Steel Legend//32GB Gskill Trident Z5 DDR5//500GB Seagate Firecuda 530 NVME/16TB Seagate Exos X18 HDD//SuperFlower Leadex 3 750w//Montech Air 903 Max//Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE      

That looks killer, Remixed!  

Same CPU, yay! 😛

[Nick H. Supervisor]

On 13/03/2026 at 10:53, Apollo13 said:

Got tired of KDE 

Sorry, only just seen this post. Can I ask what made you tired? I love KDE and its customisation, and obviously to each their own, but I'm curious why you decided to switch?