It just happens that I tried to install a few of them the last 2 days.
Niri: Installation worked, but I don’t like that the task bar on top can’t be interacted with the mouse. I don’t know if it’s a bug, but it annoyed me. Pressing the Super Key did nothing, I expected to be able to select an app to launch. Frustrating. - Reinstalled again
i3: The installation took a whopping 2.5 hours. After the restart I was greeted with “login username: _” and no DE. Pressing CTRL+ALT+F1, F2, F3 didn’t change anything. So the installation was just broken. - Reinstalled again
Cosmic: Installation worked, the default cachy Software Center did not. “Cosmic Marketplace” or how it’s called, was an icon in the start bar, but the icon was empty and on mouseclick nothing happened. No program started. Always when I executed something that required admin rights, I just got an “Authentication failed” and was unable to type in the password field. - Reinstalled AGAIN!
That time with Ubuntu 25.10 and it worked, except selecting the default program for .txt files (I wanted to use Kate, but it throws an error)(“Find new application” > Error > Failed to execute child process “gnome-software” (no such file or directory)).
All in all, it’s nice to get an overview of what may be possible, but to test all of this is nearly impossible. I selected most installer options out of the box. Always chose disk encryption if possible. Over half of my installations in the last 2 days failed.
It just happens that I tried to install a few of them the last 2 days.
That time with Ubuntu 25.10 and it worked, except selecting the default program for .txt files (I wanted to use Kate, but it throws an error)(“Find new application” > Error > Failed to execute child process “gnome-software” (no such file or directory)).
All in all, it’s nice to get an overview of what may be possible, but to test all of this is nearly impossible. I selected most installer options out of the box. Always chose disk encryption if possible. Over half of my installations in the last 2 days failed.