Linux

Okay. There's a difference between a Desktop Environment and a Window Manager. There are lots of Window Managers, but not that many DEs. Ive played around with a lot of them, and I thought I'd share my thoughts:

• Gnome my #1 since 3 hit, this is my home and where I always end up. It might be lacking in configuration options, but it's got a great look, coherent design, and a default workflow that feels like it was designed specifically for me.
• KDE Plasma Desktop is massively configurable, to an almost shocking degree. There's very little you can't do with Plasma. It's perhaps a bit less stable than Gnome, and you can break it depending on your settings choices, but holy crow, it's amazing.
• XFCE is my go to for older computers. It's light, fast, and has a lot of configuration options. You can get it looking pretty cool with some work. It's missing some of the fancier features, and development is slow, but that's by design. It's super stable. I kind of think of it as the Debian of DEs.
• LXQT even lighter than XFCE, but based on QT rather than GTK3. It's fine, but I think the GUI tools are kinda ugly.
• Cinnamon was originally a Gnome 3 fork. It's fine I guess, if you want your desktop to use the Windows workflow. Nemo is an excellent file manager, and there are a lot of fun ways to configure the look, but I just don't care for it.
• Pantheon is the official DE of elementary OS. It's pretty in a Apple sort of way, but it's tools felt a little dated and the theming outside of the official elementary apps was inconsistent at best. It want to like it, but it feels incomplete.
• Deepin has a similar problem - it's own apps look great, other apps look like they're from another planet. It's got a really nice look, though, and a good kinda feel to it.
• CDE the Common Desktop Environment. I tried it as a goof. It's... well, let's say it's nostalgic. It's been around for 30 years, and started out as a Unix desktop. It still looks pretty close to where it started, but it's up to date (the last stable release was like October last year I think). It's zippy of you can put up with the designed-for-EGA color palette, but really only good for a lark.

Hopping around to different DEs can be fun, but at the end of the day, the trick is to find one that has a workflow that works for you, or use KDE and make the workflow you need.

ETA: Somehow, I forgot to mention Mate. Basically, it's an updated version of Gnome 2, which, to me, is an uglier and more awkward to configure XFCE. It's not for me, but a lot of folks really love it. It's so cool that we have a choice, and can be different!

Also it’s difficult to find a clear list of all the available environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_Window_System_desktop_environments?useskin=vector#Desktop_comparison_information

how the heck do I find out more about DE’s and which distro they are compatable with.

All DEs can be run on all mainstream distros.

appear to be the same visually.

It's just the default theme + icon packs. You can configure any DE to looks very similar as other DE, if you use the same icon pack + themes + wallpapers.

I should mention that I have zero interest in the window manager or tiler or whatever they are called. To me, they are super ugly and very confusing to understand :)

Spoiler: all DEs using a window manager, so all DEs are super ugly for you…

Fluxbox is simple, flexible, fast, and beautiful. I've been running fluxbox/debian for like 20 years and couldn't be happier.

The DEs listed for a distro will be ones you can get out of the box, i.e. you install the distro and it already has the DE. However, you can then install pretty much any DE/WM on pretty much any distro. Most of the time, you'll also get a login screen where you can choose between different DEs, so you can try multiple on the same distro to see how you like them.

Most of the 'random desktops' will be window managers, there are just a few main DEs, which each have a window manager bundled in. If you take one of the separate window managers (which can be tiling, stacking, or a mix) you'll just have a bit more work to do to make it like you want, but they can have more customisation than full DEs. You can make most window managers look like pretty much any DE, but not necessarily the other way around. If you look at !unixporn@lemmy.ml, most of those are window managers. Saying they're confusing to understand and you don't want to have to customise them to make them look nice and add any separate programs you need for a full system is fair, but saying they're ugly is kinda nonsensical, since you can make them look however you like.

As for why some distros' Plasmas look different, that's just because it is itself quite customisable (from what I hear, the most customisable of the mainstream DEs). So if you install XeroLinux, you could customise it to look like stock Plasma, and vice versa.

Long story short, don't choose a distro based on their default DE or vice versa, don't disregard window managers out of hand (but do if you just want a full out-of-the-box environment), and look at different distros' customisations, as well as !unixporn@lemmy.ml and similar, to see what DEs can look like you want, but again you don't have to decide distro based on that.

Pretty much every window manager I've seen is highly configurable. You can find hundredths of ready themes or customize them yourself. Changing distros to get a nice desktop doesn't make sense. Just install whatever you like and customize it. If you're on a decent hardware just go with KDE or Gnome/Cinnamon/Mate. Default themes will vary but you get get to pretty much work/look the same. On a slower machine go with XFCE/Enlightement/Fluxbox or anything really. All or them will be configurable. Just look at some screenshots, find something you like and play around with it.

If you want to time travel a bit, OpenWindows / OpenLook was very clean.

How clean? Literally nothing on the desktop.

Everything was accessed through an easily (re)configurable context menu.

By default there would have been absolute necessities on there but precious little else. It was up to the user to edit the config to add programs to it. Kind of like a forerunner of the Quick Launch toolbar or the Dock.

That said, I seem to recall it was possible to put launcher icons on the desktop too, although that is also where programs minimised to in icon form (Windows 3 used to do that too), so maybe I'm wrong about that.

There's also a lesser known Enlightenment-based Moksha desktop. From what I understand, they rolled their windows manager and a set of applications. The creators went all-in on eastern religion terminology. Try Bodhi linux to get full experience, even though I think the UI is quite a bit off and ugly.

IceWM. Just the bare minimum I need. But nothing more.

Some decent lists on the Arch Wiki:

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Desktop_environment
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Window_manager
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland

The site Repology may help checking distro packages.

Check unixporn screenshots too.