Ubuntu?

[deadbinky]

windowmaker?
oh lord.
I really liked KDE when I went though my desktop over window manager phase

I liked BB (and some of its clones)

I liked E17 except for its extreme inflexibilty and like 7 year development phase...

[120]

WM and xfce are the best, by far. GNOME and KDE are for people who are Windows users, and are just using Linux "because they want a change." E17 bugs me for some reason, but I haven't tried BB yet.

[deadbinky]

disagree

maybe it's cus I'm past the need to go minimal and prove that I can run my computer without X at all... or maybe I'm just getting old and I need more practicality.

kde and gnome are for people who need desktop environments ... perhaps people who are on a job. Sometimes a window manager is not enough for that kind of thing. When I've been working on freelance projects and I need a window for my code, a window for inkscape, a window for gimp, several browsers open, etc etc, a window manager usually doesn't have what it takes to do it for me... and if it does, it's usually because it's modded up to all hell and is a pseudo DE anyway

I won't lie, if you install all of KDE, that's a big wad of bloat you don't usually need, but core stuff is usually okay.

If you're just using it as a home system, sure, whatever... but just like distro, it's all up to preference. Maybe you need eye candy or oganization (KDE) or maybe you need speed (Ion, BB, XFCE)