Hi
I ran Fedora on a desktop computer for years, up to Fedora 34. When I bought a new notbook I switched to Ubuntu because the management of an external monitor connected to the notebook seems to be much easier than with F34. But I am unhappy with Ubuntu and would like to migrate to F35. So the questions is: any recommendation for a certain spin that makes it easy to manage notebooks and external monitors? With F34 I used MATE, but was not happy when running F34/MATE on the notebook.
GNOME and KDE are well developed/stable, contain all contemporary features in stable states (such as external (second) monitor), and there is much support and documentation/guides for both. If you are unsure, I suggest to stick with one of these two. As you have used Ubuntu, you may feel “home” with GNOME.
Concerning Notebook: if you have a low performance notebook and thus, want to save resources, you may try Xfce (also very mature). lxQt and lxde have a comparable save-resources-purpose, but I have no experience with lxde. lxQt with its features are (as of today) far away from being as mature/stable (including far less user documentation/guides) as GNOME or KDE, although I like it. I have no experience/knowledge about the other DE.
I run Fedora 35 Mate (because I like Mate better than Gnome) on a notebook and connecting to an external monitor is just a matter of plugging it in. Earlier I ran Ubuntu and Manjaro and they worked well too (when it came to external monitors) but I like Fedora better and it works well when I connect my very old notebook to my my very old (not so smart) TV for streaming videos or my TV-providers play-programs. I guess it is not due to Mate and that any spin you favor will do.
I’m a newbie who settled in the default GNOME desktop for multi-purpose workflow. I know it is not a spin per se, but I fell for its uniqueness, ‘on its own feel’ rather than deja-vu look-alike desktop. Identity & feeling of ‘making sense’ matters to me rather than familiarity.
GNOME runs without sluggishness on the modest-specced Lenovo ideapad (4GB RAM and slow CPU). I have two more cheap laptops that run GNOME desktop and no problems connecting with 4K Ultra HD monitor and UHD TV.
Apart from GNOME, I use i3 windows manager in GNOME login (I can toggle it on login), which is also packaged as i3 tiling WM spin. I use i3 WM for text-heavy workflow, so I can force myself to write without visual distractions.