Toying around with Plasma 5.2 at the very moment, gotta say, very clean and elegant design.
I am somewhat bored of setting up all my hotkeys again (to the ones I use in Gnome, as I know those blindly ofc), but I have to say, I'm impressed with it. Maybe I'll use this for a while.
Beauty of Linux ^^ edit the .xinitrc file and have what ever experience you desire :D
XFCE for DE, BSPWM for TM
I'm using Gnome because thats what came with Fedora, though I wanna try some WMs. Coming from Windows Gnome is really nice. Like mentioned above it just gets out of the way. All I see is my apps and stuff, not looking at an eyesore interface.
It depends on what I'm using it for. I like KDE 4.13 for business. KDE 5 for my personal laptop. KDE 4.13 on my Ultra-Book that runs my 3D printers (Soon to be KDE 5). Gnome 3 (generic and Cinnamon) for multimedia and on PCs to help Mac users make the switch to Linux.
I have tried MATE, XFCE, Gnome, KDE and Enlitenment.
I have only been using KDE 5 for 2 days and I have to say it is my favorite so far.
Just last night I used KDE for the first time on OpenSUSE. I love it. The interface can be altered to your design standards, it's very reminiscent of Gnome 2 in some cases, I finally got the zoom effect working, and Kdenlive doesn't look like a GTK 2 program like it did on Gnome. I just wish the text was sharper. Maybe I'll jump on Tumbleweed then install KDE 5 later today...
I used unity for a while because I like HUD a lot, but now I use i3. Plasma 5 has me thinking about switching to KDE though.
I REALLY like how GNOME3 looks, just can't get past the lack of task bar with all current Windows open. I don't want to hover over that or even alt-tab sometimes. (I like my task bar icons--don't hurt me for it :^) ) With that I like XFCE. Fast, clean, simple.
i3wm.
i3 is a no BS window manager that doesn't waste any screen space, is very snappy, has great multi-monitor support, carries low overhead, and is cutomizable to my will. I mostly program, browse the internet, and do occasional gaming.
I love Unity on Laptops, and Gnome3 on desktops. I have no clue why people bash Unity so much, as I find that it works fantastic for me. Can I customize it in a trillion and one different ways? No, but I'm perfectly fine with slapping a theme on it, and calling it a day. My only real complaints are that the search function is somewhat slow sometimes, and I feel that there are a lot of unnecessary sub-categories and icons within the search function.
bspwm:
Is a tiling wm, does not come with a (stupid?) configuration file that would end up being deleted anyway, has a complete documentation (man bspwm), can be scripted using any language, thus, supports gaps and on the fly gaps/padding opperations.
(this means adding and reducing space between windows and on the "outer window").
I'm considering to add more of those to my setup, as I would like to change the padding so that I could have a "centered" workspace, with just my text editor centered on the screen and the compiler/interpreter below. I also am considering to add a quick notification system for my music, a sort of bar that would "pop out" at the bottom of my screen when a keybinding is pressed and tell me all I need to know about the currently played song.
As you can see, bspwm is very extensible...
I like gnome simply because it's mostly what I've always used. In comparison, I believe KDE works better for lower spec configurations, as it's usually the choice for light-wight distros. However they both seem equally configurable and is mostly preferential.