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GUI KDE GNOME Linux

Which Linux Desktop Environment is the Best? (tomshardware.com) 205

Posted by EditorDavid from the gitchy-gitchy-GUI dept.
Tom's Hardware "put five of the most popular desktop environments up against each other in a no-holds-barred, seven-round face-off. We've rated GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, Awesome and Regolith on a 10-point scale based on Installation, Applications, User Experience, User Documentation, Performance, Extensions and Configurability."

It's a good read, with a detailed and thoughtful 3,700-word analysis, especially about memory performance: When you use the standard desktops, Gnome and KDE, you will likely notice that you are using a lot of memory... If you haven't noticed yet, try running htop in a separate window while you try out your choices. You should see a substantial difference with Awesome, i3 and, if you are elite, dwm. The difference in memory footprint is staggering when you start measuring. GNOME starts with somewhere in the region of 3GB at boot. This can be trimmed down by serious tweaking, but not very much. In comparison, the Awesome window manager weighs in at around 600MB... You can put a lot of eye candy and daemons before you weigh down your system as much as the others...

Getting the advantage comes at a cost, though: you need to learn a few new habits to use Awesome desktop environment.
Among GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon, the article ultimately calls KDE "the most polished... decorative and versatile of the bunch. This comes at a cost, though." Cinnamon has the best balance between extensions and ease of use, while it is also fast and responsive. At the same time, it is not that heavy on resources. You can also add a wide range of extensions in the shape of widgets that send you ongoing and updated information.

Regolith requires a bit more training, but it does set itself up for you so you can continue as you did with GNOME. Adding extensions and other gadgets is a bit more tricky, however... With Awesome you have to set up and practice to use it! It's easily the hardest in the group to get started with. When you are up and running, Awesome does deliver the most benefits from a resource point of view...

Overall Winner: Cinnamon...because of its strong combination of user experience, performance and customization.

Click through to read reactions and share your own thoughts. (And to see a short list of some of the article's other highlights.)
A few more excerpts from Hot Hardware's analysis:
  • Cinnamon has replaced Gnome packages with its own, making the install small.
  • KDE has the most robust extension ecosystem, but GNOME and Cinnamon aren't far behind.
  • GNOME has the most through documentation of any Linux desktop environment.
  • GNOME has a lot of nice eye candy and its extensions serve you with the weather, mail notifications and, almost anything you need from the internet.
  • GNOME, Cinnamon and KDE all score 9 out of 10 for user experience.
  • The three largest Linux desktop environments (GNOME, KDE and Cinnamon) all have strong application support.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Which Linux Desktop Environment is the Best? More

Which Linux Desktop Environment is the Best?

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  • Gnome 3 is such a heavyweight (Score:4, Informative)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:43PM (#60044424)
    I use Gnome 3, mostly because more applications support it well, compared to the others. It is has always been large, but it is really becoming a monster. I also use KDE for certain applications that work there. I'll have to look at Cinnamon.

  • XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tanimislam ( 1452305 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:53PM (#60044488) Homepage
    XFCE or LXQT. They hit the sweet spot in functionality, memory usage, and reliability.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lady Galadriel ( 4942909 )
      Was on Gnome 2, but whence Gnome 3 started messing up things, I moved to XFCE and never looked back.
      • My thoughts exactly. When I read what Gnome 3 was going to be like, I knew it wasn't for me. Not only was it expected to be a memory and resource hog, it was going to be very hard to customize, without third-party extensions that might stop working at any time and without notice. Not only that, the default desktop was nothing at all like what I wanted to use. I did a bit of looking around and migrated to Xfce before Gnome 3 was released and I've never regretted it.

      • Re:XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)

        by davecb ( 6526 ) <davecb@spamcop.net> on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:42PM (#60045442) Homepage Journal
        Desktops used to be similar enough to not be a problem to migrate between. Then Gnome and KDE and Windows 8 started an effort to invent something new. What they succeeded with was to made them hard, idiosyncratic or just odd. So I use the XFCE spin of Fedora.
    • I use XFCE, but on FreeBSD, not Linux.
    • Yes. Definitely XFCE. Lightweight, minimalist, functional.

  • None (Score:4, Insightful)

    by usu4rio ( 1115041 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:54PM (#60044490)

    There isn't an absolute best DE. It depends on your personal preferences, way of working, etc.
    I personally use one which suits me best but I doesn't mean it's the best.

    So stop worrying, try some of them, and just use the one you like.

    And also Betteridge's Law says so ;-)
    And also also, can we moderate the OP as flamebait?

    • There isn't an absolute best DE. It depends on your personal preferences, way of working, etc.

      Oi, your logic and common sense is not welcome here.

  • Emacs (Score:5, Funny)

    by ardmhacha ( 192482 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:55PM (#60044492)

    Though you will probably need to add an editor to make it fully usable.

  • Cinnamon (Score:5, Informative)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:06PM (#60044542)

    all of my computers currently uses cinnamon for the desktop. my second choice is KDE. I actually like the look and feel of KDE better than cinnamon and used it on and off over the years but there were some features I just don't like. I used gnome too but never really liked it. Never tried the others.

  • XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EkriirkE ( 1075937 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:11PM (#60044562) Homepage
    I used to be a Gnome guy until they forced that menuless fullscreel-only many years ago. Then tried KDE for a day until they copied the idea before I found XFCE and haven't moved since
    • Agreed. I was using Gnome 2 until it was not supported by my distro any more. Found that XFCE was absolutely the best for me, (fast, low memory footprint & has everything I need).

      Sometimes I wish Gnome 3 had been called Gnome, the next generation. And that Gnome 2 had continued more or less as is. But, most of the time, I bloody well wish I had moved to XFCE years before.

    • >"I used to be a Gnome guy until they forced that menuless fullscreel-only many years ago. Then tried KDE for a day until they copied the idea before I found XFCE and haven't moved since"

      Indeed Gnome 3 sucks. I won't ever use it. First thing I did last week on a new CentOS 8.1 installation was to turn off Wayland and install XFCE.

      But KDE never forced the "menuless fullscreen" crap. It is what I have used at home for eons and I know it well. I like it fine for a heavyweight desktop. But I use XFCE on

  • Mate with compiz on Linux mint. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Voice of satan ( 1553177 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:13PM (#60044570)

    Mate with compiz on Linux mint. Pretty , comfortable and not too top heavy. Mate on Ubuntu MATE comes close second. No wobbly windows but easy to use presets which give it the look you want. XFCE comes third i guess. You can customize XFCE to death but it is work.

    Pure personal preferences of course, Try many and keep the ones you like. :)

    • KDE uses almost half the latent memory of MATE with Compiz and Emerald on the same Arch back end. I couldn't believe it. MATE was around 3gb and KDE around 1.8Gb

    • This. Although one VM I was allowed to use at work only had pure Ubuntu "blessed" by the folks distributing the software I needed it to run. So I fired up a Mint live disk and ripped off the dconf entries. Installed Ubuntu, installed teh ubuntu-mate-desktop packages, and imported Mint's dconf settings.

      Oh if anyone else needs/wants a reason to hate on Gnome3 (the full screen tablet interface got me), Gnome3 is the package/package set that is responsible for foisting off systemd on the rest of the distribut

  • Probaby Enlightment (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Delifisek ( 190943 )

    As Pain In Ass grade Linux Zealot in my youth. I use various linux desktops back in day (1998 - 2008)

    From my point of view Enlightment is the best linux desktop. It was represeting different aproach than the other much more popular windows clones.

    Anyway.

    One day after upgrading Ubuntu to new verison and getting sick of the configuring dual montior setup. I gave up Linux Desktop.

    More than 12 years I do not have any problem with windows with 2 or more monitors and I'm still not so sure for any Linux distro.

    An

    • That problem has been solved about 8 years ago.

      With xrandr and Xorg's autoconfiguration, it's trivial to do even crazy stuff nowadays. Like a desktop that spans several displays with one of them being an upside down projector with anamorphic pixels and a different DPI, and three being only in green and black and with a custom transform.

      The problem back then was Nvidia's and AMDs shitty non-standard multi-head and screen-spanning implementations, caused by a Windows way of thinking, aswell as other people to

    • I was also a diehard enlightenment fan in highschool. Ran it on top of slackware 3.4.

      What a pain in the ass it was to build too, but worth the effort.

      It was just so unique, full animations when starting a session, or when expanding control boxes etc. The only thing i didnt entirely like about the setup was how some of my favorite apps just didn't look natural in the otherwise sureal visual experience. It was even more impressive at the time, because the only other graphical desktops i had used at the tim

    • I never used it myself, but one of my co-workers used to use it back in the late 90s. I'd look over and see him with all this eye-candy translucency. Enlightenment was undeniably pretty to look at. I've always preferred minimal distraction for my own desktop. It was like rainbow colored hair. I enjoy seeing that on other people. I enjoy seeing other people who can be productive while using a desktop that makes them look like they're in The Matrix or something.

  • console (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:14PM (#60044582) Homepage

    I can do everything on 5 virtual terminals

  • Their list was ok, but regolith and awesome? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Schoenlepel ( 1751646 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:21PM (#60044612)

    I do not understand why they added regolith and awesome to the list. Aren't those actually less commonly used?

    I would have expected (not in a particular order):
    - KDE
    - GNOME
    - MATE
    - CINAMON
    - XFCE4

    I encounter people talking about these all the time. Regolith? Haven't heard about it. Awesome? That's not a desktop environment! It's a window manager.

    • Yeah, i was a bit surprised to see those on the list as well. And while i live in a hole, I would have expected gnome, kde and xfce.

      That is to say i knew of cinnamon, but just recently heard of mate during discussion on another story poated here. Literally never heard of the other two.

      Its cool though, a few more to check out, i think i agree with others posting that all should be encouraged to try different desktop environments out to see what they personally like.

  • Just my $0.02 (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:25PM (#60044626)

    I'm partial to Ubuntu MATE.

  • I wish... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:48PM (#60044706)

    I wish GNUstep/WindowMaker had taken off more. I liked the mac/NeXT model of application v. window management. I also thought the theory of Services being provided between applications was nice, though I never saw much apart from the spell checker try.

    GNUstep applications allowed applications to be explicitly designed around it, and WindowMaker did an admirable job of bringing other applications roughly into the fold even though they weren't designed that way.

    Unfortunately, it didn't garner enough application support and ultimately other window managers gained passable automatic window grouping by application, which was considered good enough by the masses.

    Also ROX Desktop offered a pretty neat approach to application packaging.

    Now I go with KDE. It seems to best support a customizable and powerful desktop and embraces the good parts of a compositing window manager. I wish I could have the gnome3 alt-tab (switch application) behavior in addition to the alt-above-tab behavier (switch window in application), but other than that quite pleased.

  • KDE is not only mature and bug free; it uses half the memory of MATE with compiz and emerald.

    I stopped using linux without rolling updates long ago, Arch is my favorite because I never have to reinstall.

  • LXQT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aglider ( 2435074 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:51PM (#60044720) Homepage

    But the way to a finished DE is still rather long, while very promising.

  • ...because we'll finally be able to get a definitive, objective answer to this issue.

  • It's been disappointing trying to find any with decent support for a slate device w/o a keyboard - Dell 7285

    Either the on-board keyboard is crap, or it's not at all smart for when a text entry field has been selected. And gestures for right click, middle click, and scrolling are wildly inconsistent.

    Windows does a pretty good job at this.

  • LXDE (Score:3)

    by hduff ( 570443 ) <hoytduff@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Sunday May 10, 2020 @02:02PM (#60044772) Homepage Journal

    I don't need a resource-heavy, fancy DE, so LXDE does well for me. I find KDE and GNOME just annoying to use
    .

  • I generally favour minimalism (using the minimum possible packages, as long as functionality is not impacted).

    KDE was my desktop for over a decade. Then I switched to XFCE, as in Xubuntu.

    The few things that are missing are not worth the bloat. I intentionally did not go deep in using KDE applications, so that I have the freedom to switch. Things like contacts, calendar, ...etc.

    It is worth the effort of switching. If you already run another Ubuntu distro, you don't even have to re-install. All you need to sw

    • If you like minimalism try Elementary OS (or just its DE, Pantheon). I like it because it's one of the few desktop environments that doesn't try to mimic Windows (Mate, KDE, Cinnamon), it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel by turning it into a square (Gnome3), and it doesn't get cluttered with ugliness to make it functional (XFCE, LXDE). It kind of copies OS X but for me that's a feature, not a bug. It's like OS X with more minimalism.

      XFCE was my former favorite. I liked how it has an OS X-ish dock and is pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kbahey ( 102895 )

        Thanks for the tip.

        But that way, I am not on Ubuntu's repositories. They have everything I need and are well maintained. Going to another distro will risk delays and such.

  • Awesome. That's what I'm using just now. Because infinite configurability and flexibility. And no icons on desktop.

  • Can any of them cope with mixed monitor DPI? (Score:3)

    by roskakori ( 447739 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @02:32PM (#60044896)

    I have a laptop with about 100+ DPI and a monitor with about 70 DPI. I found it impossible to use the GUI settings to tell Gnome or KDE that they should scale windows differently depending on which monitor they show.

    At least more recent versions allows fractional scaling like 1.25. For the longest time even Ubuntu offered only to scale by 1x or 2x.

    I'm sure there is some kinky terminal voodoo to achieve this, but we are talking desktop environment here, and the intended target audience expects the mouse to perform essential configuration.

    • Scaling is always a shit show. On my work laptop with a 4k display its funny to watch the cursor shrink as soon as its over a Slack window. Move it out of the window and its normal size again.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      X is not designed to handle different scalings on different monitors. I've set mine up to at least get it right if I switch to a different monitor, so it looks right on my big 4K monitor, a big 1080p monitor, or the tiny 4K built-in screen, dynamically changing the scaling based on the first active monitor. This uses a script that watches for changes and adjusts the scaling, but it can't rescale existing applications, only new windows that are opened after the change.

      Another problem is that there are seve

  • I don't understand. If you are limited by RAM on your machine, sure. But if not - what difference does it make how much RAM is occupied by a DE?

    Measuring performance should be about quick response, fast operation of the menus, toolbars, widgets, etc. One way to achieve this it to keep them in RAM. I would gladly trade 3GB of my cheap RAM for a fast DE. Small footprint and fast response is ideal, but of those 2 features I care less about the footprint.

    Browsers are also huge RAM guzzlers, but that is

  • pffft Cinnamon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @02:34PM (#60044912)

    Eye candy and "new features" seem to be that writers fetish.

    MATE for the win, mature simple UI without bloat, needless features and eye candy, gets the job done.

    • Eye candy and "new features" seem to be that writers fetish.

      That is as much of a fetish as the missionary position. The reality is wanting a functional bloat free UI makes you some kind of freak in the computing community.

      I wanted to continue this comment with some reference to your ideas being against the IT religion and angering computing Jesus, but I think Stallman agrees with you so the joke wouldn't really work.

  • Why put them against each other ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AncalagonTotof ( 1025748 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @02:35PM (#60044916)
    You can have them all. Not at the same time, but all can be installed. You just have to chose on the login screen.

    You can have your preferred one by default.
    And you can give a chance to the other ones when you have time.
    And then go back to your preferred one, because it's preferred for a reason ;-)

  • Still using Windowmaker (Score:3)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @02:46PM (#60044956)

    My work laptop uses Mate, which I think is Gnome 2ish. That's what my wife uses too.

    Gnome and KDE seem to be designed for people who want to pretend they're not using Linux for some reason; I've never had any interest in their offerings.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lenbok ( 22992 )

      Fellow windowmaker user here too (since about 0.18). Over the recent years I have tried cinnamon, mate, whatever-ubuntu-used-to-ship-with (and if we go back further, fvwm, afterstep, enlightenment, ratpoison, kde). But windowmaker is fast, lightweight, and gets out of the way. Optionally slap on compiz and a nice launcher like synapse and you are done.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lenbok ( 22992 )

        Typo there, I meant compton (if you like drop shadows, transparency etc), not compiz.

  • >"GNOME starts with somewhere in the region of 3GB at boot. This can be trimmed down by serious tweaking, but not very much. In comparison, the Awesome window manager weighs in at around 600MB... "

    Now try XFCE or LXDE (especially because some of us think "tiling" window managers like Awesome suck)....

  • Just imagine if there was a Linux car brand. Once you drive off the dealer in the Linux car, it turns out that it has a primitive 1980s style 3-speed automatic transmission. Next you need to go to a transmission shop and decide which transmission you want to install, which brand, type: CVT, automatic, or manual with or without locking differential. And note that each brand of transmission has its own driver interface, and they all kinda have not been tested with your car. So you first get a new transmissio

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ELCouz ( 1338259 )
      Haters are gonna down mod you but in fact you just described in a analogy how new users feel lost in Linux world.

  • i3 (Score:3)

    by bool2 ( 1782642 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @03:43PM (#60045172) Homepage
    Sure it's not for everyone but for me, following a mild learning curve, this is the best. Fast. Simple. No nonsense. Great productivity because it gets out of the way and lets me work.
  • It's a strange article. It reads like an essay written by a student in that very halting manner. Much of what it says doesn't make any sense and it's a mess to read. The scores aren't sensible and they contradict the writing. the author may as well have just stated their preference.

    This is a shame because I was interested. I'm waiting on a new laptop and I've been testing distros and DEs in a VM. Switching from Mac back to Linux after 10 years.

  • Xfce (Score:3)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:14PM (#60045312) Homepage

    I like Xfce. Does what I need, but is relatively lightweight and unobtrusive.

  • That way I can have all 5 installed but use Windblows too.

  • MATE for me on CentOS (Score:3)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:38PM (#60045418) Homepage

    The transition from CentOS 6 to 7 was beautifully smoothed out by MATE, so that made me a big MATE fan. Imagine my huge disappointment when CentOS 8 came out and dropped all of the desktop environments of its previous versions except by far the worst of them, GNOME 3!

    Luckily, I found an unofficial MATE repo [fedorainfracloud.org] for CentOS 8 (and XFCE belatedly turned up the EPEL repo too), so I've happily rocking that ever since. For some inexplicable reason, neither MATE nor XFCE featured in this comparison, yet 2 DE's I'd never heard of until today - Regolith and Awesome - did, which devalues the comparison significantly, IMHO.

  • Don't really care (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:50PM (#60045486) Homepage

    Okay you got me, I do have a preference. But you could drop me into Gnome, KDE or Cinnamon and I'd get by. I feel like there's way too much effort given to the desktop environment as opposed to the applications. Like 20 years later

    Microsoft still owns the business desktop
    Microsoft owns 95%+ of the gaming market
    Photoshop is coming to the iPad before Linux
    If you want something simple get a Chromebook

    It's neat if you're a coder or otherwise wants to get nerdy, but that's pretty much it. And of course if you want to run your own server, but that's a different story. I hoped either Apple or Google would kick the hornet's nest before Win7 went out of support but... *crickets*.

  • These are all good in their own ways; Budgie is great for getting things done by getting out of the way.

  • For my time/effort TDE is the best one out there. I used to use KDE 3.5 but when KDE upgraded everything with the 4.0 version and started slowing my system down and giving me headaches I looked for an alternative.

    TDE is a fork of the KDE 3.5 and keeps the basic look and feel of KDE 3.5, but without all the resource hogging eye candy.

    it can run on top of most GNU/linux distros available and was a piece of cake to install. And all the apps I need/want run on it..

    My 2 Yen. YMMV

  • Fvwm (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @05:33PM (#60045690)

    Seriously, none of these pathetic "modern" excuses for a proper window-manager even comes close. XFCE is tolerable.

  • I used to use GNOME 2, but when they foisted GNOME 3 on us, I fled to XFCE. Now I've been using Mate for a few years and find its sufficiently customisable to meet all my needs.

    In fact one of the Mate developers was kind enough to increase the maximum number of virtual desktops from 16 to 36 at my request.

    I found GNOME 3 to be a Triumph of Fashion over Functionality! I hate thus 'Don't worry your tiny little mind, we know best mentality'!

    This applesque mentality is behind Microsoft's Metro disaster, Ubunt

  • Isn't it the point of a Linux desktop to emulate Microsoft Windows? ;-)

    Also RIP Lindows

  • They all fundamentally feel broken, laking features and integration that most paid for OS's figured out 2 decades ago

  • My experience is that there will always be something in the Desktop du jour that just doesn't work as well as in a competitor's product. I really like i3, but I'd never recommend that unless I knew exactly the skill and comfort level of the user. Maybe, if you have space available, set up a VM and plug in a distro that offers several DEs and give each one a run. Many of them are actually pretty good.

  • WindowMaker FTW (Score:3)

    by freedom_surfer ( 203272 ) on Sunday May 10, 2020 @10:53PM (#60046454) Homepage

    someuser 1934 0.0 0.0 86788 0 ? S Apr29 0:00 /usr/lib/WindowMaker/wmaker
    someuser 1935 0.0 0.0 95704 1312 ? S Apr29 0:05 \_ /usr/lib/WindowMaker/wmaker --for-real

    Gotta love the classics...

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