Can't thank you enough Ken. I've been a full-time regolith user for at least 6 years - that's crazy. What I value most is compatibility. I get the benefit of a stable deb/ubuntu platform and rich ecosystem while still getting to run and customize sway/i3. That's huge for me because I work with many developers running Ubuntu, so I can meet them in the middle on the platform while still getting to tailor things the way I like.

Thanks for maintaining Regolith for all these years. I have been using Regolith since version 1 over the last three work machine that I cycled through.

What stood out for me is how quick it is to get a tiling manager, working notification bar and gnome integration up and running. I have never used i3 or sway directly until recently i tried installing Sway on Ubuntu 26 which makes me appreciate how much Regolith has abstracted away those bare minimum setup. Like others mentioned the Gnome integration is a highlight for me because now in sway, I only realised there's no way to bring up gnome control manager ui.

Thanks for maintaining Regolith all these years. Like other folks mentioned, it's really a perfect middle ground between a desktop like GNOME and a more minimal/flexible environment like i3/sway.

i was torn on the "how important is GNOME integration" question because it's not that GNOME is specifically important to me, it's more that the integration with _some_ pre-existing collection of libraries/tools/etc helps keep Regolith and the end users from reinventing the wheel.

Thanks for the years of work.
I agree with Martin -- i3 and gnome-flashback (not that I have the sophistication to understand the edge cases or the work involved) created ease for the user. I used X11 and 24.04 on a x220 laptop and still do. I tried 26.04 with dms and niri on my desktop. Worked well, not to say it was all to my liking, just that it didn't demand very much of me.
Would dropping 26.04 for Debian only change the scope of your work?

First of all, thank you for all these years developing and maintaining Regolith!

What I love about Regolith is having an easy-to-install and easy-to-configure i3/sway tiling with a modern desktop environment that provides network, USB mount, and screen management out of the box. This is the perfect balance between the power of i3 for window management and the power of GNOME for a modern desktop experience. That said, I'm not married to GNOME, if another integration can provide the same kind of modern features, I'm happy to switch!

Personally, my choice of Regolith is based on the fact that it strikes the perfect balance between traditional desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, etc.) and the no-frills use of i3/sway with configuration files (dotfiles).
My switch from GNOME to Sway was complicated by additional, time-consuming, and unexpected configuration tasks (managing Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, setting up displays, etc.).
Regolith resolved my problem !

I think your killer feature is really the GNOME integration - it allows us to have at best of both worlds: tiling + a unified way to manage the desktop. For me, this combination is what makes this distro a true daily driver across my desktop and laptops.

Thank you for making and supporting regolith!

Thank you for Regolith, I'd suggest you create it for you more than anything and if people like it they can use it and contribute otherwise the enjoyment may disappear.