I don't think anyone in their right mind would choose OOTB looks though. I mean customization is one of the strong points of Libre OSes. I'd never (it's pointless for me anyway because I have "My Theme" which I pretty much setup on any distro). Functionality or philosophy will always come first. Most Debian users are more on the philosophy side, i.e. they tend stronger towards Libre than functionality, however they're willing to accommodate situations where people want/need to use closed-ware. I'm somewhere in the middle because I agree philosophically, but only because I value my privacy and vendor-user trust. I wouldn't care about FOSS if I didn't want privacy/trust, and control. Ubuntu users are more on the functionality side of things. It's nice to be "free" by their own definition, as in free of Windows, but they're more than happy to include closed-ware as a part of their everyday routine. Arch users are sort of hybrid, but a more hyper version. Their philosophy is complete control, simplicity (example: no unwanted managing of the user, no "helpful" installers), functionality/compatibility at all costs (they support less platforms to optimize this, they'll use proprietary software without blinking because Linux is a choice of OSS for functionality to them, not a philosophical protest against MS or Apple).
There are many more "types" and what I've written above is superficial at best. Someone here should do a distro version of a Myer's Brigg's test for OS-personality type. It'd be fun, lol.
Anyway, no, I don't think any experienced user would, but many newcomers and novices may. For newcomers, it's because a lot of them have the MS/Apple mentality of "this is what the OS looks and functions like" regarding the DE. So to them, a Kubuntu OS is a completely differentu OS to a Xubuntu or vanilla Ubuntu. Even though a vanilla Ubuntu can be stripped, configured, etc.
On the other hand, some, emphasis on some, novice users may be a little lazy because they don't have the experience to setup/customize their DE, so they may just choose whichever is closest to their needs OOTB.
The novices and newcomers are probably the only reason that the big distros offer different DE spins.
Anyone at intermediate level and up is going to want to control their DE. They probably would like a base to work with, so that's the advantage of distros offering several preconfigured DEs to choose from in the installer.
With me, when I started with pure Debian, I used to install only the base system, then Fluxbox -- and later XFCE. I avoided display managers like the plague because I liked starting an X session if and when I wanted to and I was OCD about "bloat". The world changed and so did I and I'm sure most users feel like this: install the preconfigured desktop and change it because installing things component by component is arduous and one reason I quit Fluxbox. These days IDC that LightDM gets installed, I just disable it (trying to purge it breaks things). I copy my backup of my old XFCE config onto my new install, then just fix whatever doing that breaks, smooth the rest out. The whole process is under an hour (I obviously install all my software beforehand). I do the same with all my applications' configs.
I think most others will agree here as well, but even if you had to choose a distro and only use the OOTB config of the DE, it's better to go for functionality/performance over eyecandy.
That's my
verbose take, anyways.
TheProf said:
I've been playing around with Manjaro XFCE edition in a VM. I find Manjaro did a really good job of customizing the XFCE theme... I compared it to the EndeavourOS XFCE install, the Manjaro version looks way better out of the box.
[...]
Btw, good work team Manjaro.
IDK, last Manjaro I used was 19 IIRC and their XFCE looked awful IMO. Someone recently showed me a screenshot of their Gnome DE and it looked really good. Ironically for me, XFCE default looks decent in Debian's preconfig, but Gnome looks hideous. Of course that is preference, too.
TheProf said:
Sorry, short post, probably fit for a tweet or something, but with all the Linux folks on here, figured I'd start a convo and get other folks opinion. Do some of you chose a distro mainly due to looks out of the box, or is more related to other things, like package managers, release types, etc?
Oh, I made up for that for you, man, lol.