What are the best desktop environments for Arch Linux?

One of the best aspects of KDE is that it gives you Lego-like tools called widgets. You can combine the widgets in the way that better fits you and get a Mac OS desktop layout, a Gnome 3 desktop layout, a mobile device desktop layout or a completely new desktop layout that works for you. See More

KDE Plasma Desktop

Top Pro

Very customizable

Top Con

Certain releases are frighteningly unstable while offering a myriad of desktop effects of questionable value

's Experience

With the performance optimisations it has gotten over the years, KDE is pretty much the main desktop environment i will recommend to anyone. See More

Specs

License:GPL, LGPL

Programming Language:Mainly C++

Widget Toolkit:Qt

The design of the three built-in desktop themes; Air, Breeze, and Oxygen, are very beautiful to some. See More

Top Pro

Looks beautiful

Top Con

Compiz integration destroyed

The KDE developers seem to pride themselves on destroying previously working features with each release. Plasma 5 is terrible because Activities and Virtual Desktops are completely separate now. VD's in Plasma 5 can't even have separate wallpapers let alone widgets. Activities don't integrate with Compiz and KDE well at all (no cube, different keyboard commands). Using Activities and Virtual Desktops together gets confusing real fast. Combined with the fact the developers have no interest in fixing this at all KDE users are just running away to new desktops that are borrowing old perfectly good KDE code. See More

ExuberantVanapagan's Experience

very customisable with nice themes, gave me a chance to do some digging to learn how the widgets work and customise them to my preferences, you can add cool window graphics like windows explode when closed. You have tons and tons of themes to choose from, i found i lost a couple of days picking how i want it all to look . See More

Top Pro

Fast and efficient

Looks great! Dolphin file manager is without a doubt the best fully functional and easy to use and multitask with. See More

Top Con

Breeze theme is ugly

Breeze theme gives some wow effect at first with all it's transparencies etc. But when you get used, you start to notice lackluster icons and oversimplified look of ui elements - there is just nothing to look at and it looks lazy You can install other themes, like numix and aero glass. You are not locked to it. See More

PhilosophicalRanaNiejta's Experience

I really have mixed feelings about KDE, but I think it deserves to be one of the best DEs ever... it is customizable, beautiful and gives the user a lot of control.... But away from the positive, the experience is terrible on hard drives, especially compared to other DEs like gnome and XFCE , has a crap ton of bloatware and it is prone to weird bugs and crashes.... Though, far from placebo, KDE on Wayland has been very good, but again, still slow on hard drives but might work quite well on newer hardware See More

Top Pro

Low system resources consumption

Not as lightweight as XFCE, but pretty close (like +100MB in real use). See More

Top Con

Add-on installation can be tricky

Adding themes and widgets can be tricky. See More

RodJLinux's Experience

KDE has been my exclusive desktop environment for about six years now. The configuration options are just awesome! If you don't like how it looks "out of the box" just change it to suit yourself. Real freedom! 10 out of 10 for me. See More

Top Pro

Enjoyable to use

Thanks to looking awesome, and being customizable and flexible. See More

Top Con

Difficult to turn off some transparency

Some of the transparency settings for Plasma can only be removed by changing away from the standard theme altogether. A bit disappointing as so many other things are configurable to the deepest detail and transparency in the wrong place can make reading menu entries for example difficult at times. See More

EncouragingZhurong's Experience

Customizable. Runs well. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard friendly

Nearly all actions can be driven with keyboard commands. Window management, including effects such as desktop overviews, can be triggered with a keyboard control (or mouse gesture) and some even support filtering results (such as windows shown) by typing. The KRunner tool (default keybinding: Alt+F2 or Alt+Space) provides searching local files, online sources, unit conversions, math and more all from a keyboard driven interface. See More

Top Con

Drains your battery

There is a lot of stuff on KDE the will drain your battery more quickly than on other desktops. For example, it uses many SVGs which have to be rendered before display, kwin also needs a working compositor. See More

PassionateUkeMochi's Experience

really good See More

Top Pro

Integration with mobile devices

KDE Connect allows integration of the computer and mobile devices on the same Wi-Fi network. See More

Top Con

Not for production

May be extremely buggy and there are unnecesary configurations which takes away time to do actual work. See More

PerceptiveKurunta's Experience

It was an amazing experience with KDE Desktop in Arch, which was installed in my 15 year old PC. And also, it consumes only 500-600 MB of RAM when idle, which saves 400 MB when compared to KDE in other distros. These are the reasons for recommendation :) See More

Top Pro

Integrated advanced search

Plasma Desktop comes with an integration search system that makes it easy to find local files, emails, contacts, events and more. The file manager supports tagging and rating files as well as full-content searching and the KRunner command window and the Milou desktop widget makes searching for files, emails, applications and other content by name, subject, category, tag, fulltext, etc. very simple. It does this with essentially no noticeable interference with day-to-day usage of the computer, thanks to the scheduling built into the backend system (Baloo). See More

Top Con

Weird behaviour of PowerOff/Restart/LogOff buttons

No matter what button you press you get the same screen where you actually have to choose what you want to do. See More

OpinionatedBunbulama's Experience

great See More

Top Pro

Great for developers

Provides its own IDE for C++, Qt, HTML and through workspaces allows better organisation of work. See More

Top Con

Sometimes taskbar doesn't appear

ElatedTiamat's Experience

Functional ! :) See More

Top Pro

Simple by default, powerful when needed

For the new Linux users (coming from windows), they'll find everything easy and simple to use! But for old and experienced linux users, they can customize the interface as they want! That's why Plasma KDE, Simple by default, powerful when needed! See More

Top Con

Poor support of 4K screens

Even scaling doesn't help. Many places keep small font or icons. See More

Mahmoud ahmad's Experience

Customize to the core! You can change around each and every panel, each and every widget, every color, every icon, everything! The ultimate customization IDE, and my personal favorite. Super customizable, yet still easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Easy-to-use software center

Apt, snap, and packagekit all show up in the built in software center. Updates show as an icon in the system tray from all sources. See More

Top Con

No easy way to backup & restore all settings

Most crashes cause loss of settings - panels vanish, all favorites and launchers missing, icons lost, wallpaper back to default, theme changes, activities present but not active, etc. The configuration is held in a multitude of places, the changes are applied automatically even after a crash, all without a tool or clear way to recover. See More

JoyousEros's Experience

easy to use but the problem it taking more and more memory from your PC See More

Top Pro

Great Desktop integration with KDE apps

KDE offers a lot of apps, they integrate very nicely with the DE as a whole. See More

Top Con

Some applications warn when running as root

This can be distracting to the user. See More

Top Pro

Has a file manager that provides a good balance between power and simplicity

The included file manager provides several icon, list and detail views to choose from along with features such as tabs, bookmarks, tagging, previews and metadata, network file access, bluetooth file transfers to/from devices and excellent removable storage integration while remaining fast and easy to use. See More

Top Con

Too complex

Shows too many options at once often time, making it more complex than simplistic. See More

Top Pro

Not based on GTK

A lot of users don't really like GTK's style and way of doing things. See More

Top Con

Stability problems

Under certain conditions, most of KDE's components can be highly sensitive to race conditions, which leads to KDE applications frequently crashing, and, on rare occasion, kdeinit itself locking up. See More

Top Pro

You can chose available Icon/Cursor/Workspace themes right in settings

Top Con

Just as fat, bloated, and slow as Gnome, Cinnamon, and Mate since 1.1 days

Only if you install the bloated version though, on Fedora netinstall it doesn't come with bloat. You can debloat it. The package on clearlinux is pretty much minimal. See More

Top Pro

Innovative

Has a lot of good features preinstalled (Android integration with KDEConnect, etc.), and comes with lots of improvements and new features with new releases. See More

Top Con

Difficult to use on virtual machines on version 5

KWin compositing is restricted to xrender on virtual machines which makes the default booting process difficult as 3D graphics needs to be turned off from the VM itself. See More

Top Pro

Many coherent applications

What make plasma so nice is the galaxy of apps, sharing same look and feel, configuration and behaviour. This helps with making for a uniform looking desktop. See More

Top Con

High RAM usage

Top Pro

Adheres to standards

Standards adherence allows for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops, with similar Wayland support being worked on. Applications not written with Plasma in mind work very well in Plasma as a result. The development team has also been instrumental in standard creation and adoption such as NETWM, X11 clipboard, icon themes, mimetype handling, application menu standardization, system tray protocols and notifications and more. See More

Top Con

HiDPI support is spotty

The log in screen as well as some other components of the OS do not scale properly under HIDPI. Some things in the log in screen will be displayed too small, such as the mouse pointer. It can also be difficult to get full scaling to work properly in the DE itself with things such as icons, text and window borders. See More

Top Pro

Familiar interface for transitioning Windows users

Top Con

Kirigami is buggy

The newer QML based interface is too much tied to the breeze style. So if you use another style(like Qt's default Fusion) you will have a mixed desktop interface of fusion and breeze. It also fails at certain points to set the correct color in a widget so if you use a dark theme you will often face dark text on dark background issues. See More

Top Pro

No crude RegEdit clone needed

Configuration is stored in plain text files. See More

Top Con

Held back by dedication to emulating Windows

One of KDE's pros is that it works similarly to 90's-era desktop environments such as Windows. However this holds it back from being able to present something that works intuitively for people who aren't familiar with how computers back in the 90's worked. See More

Top Pro

Touchscreen support

Works good with touch devices and allows customization of gestures for them. See More

Top Con

Shell-style ≠ widget-style

The Plasma-shell is unable the use the current Qt style for its interface thus making it hard to get a consistent user interface. See More

Top Pro

Comes with a suite of powerful applications

Plasma Desktop generally comes packaged with a full set of applications to get users started, including a file manager (Dolphin), advanced file manager and browser (Konqueror), image and document viewers (Gwenview, Okular), the Calligra office suite, CD and DVD authoring (K3b), and dozens more. The desktop can be installed and used without these applications, but they add significant value for many people. See More

Top Con

No native package manager frontend

KDE discontinued all of its native package manager frontends like: Kynaptic, Muon or Kpackage and fully relies on PackageKit, however PackageKit was mainly made with the RPM(Red Hat Package Manager) in mind and does not support all the features of more advanced package managers like dpkg or emerge/portage. See More

Top Pro

Activities (evolution of multiple desktops)

You can really separate your work environment from personal environment. Applications can be 'pinned' to a single Activity (spreadsheet for work, game for personal) or shown on all Activities (web browser, for instance). See More

Top Con

Perceived clunkyness and slowness

Emphasis on perceived. It's a myth from the days when SSDs, gigabytes of ram and cpus above 1GHz and more than one core were a fantasy. On anything semi modern (i5 2500k, 8 gb memory and 256 gb ssd is total overkill and that's a 5 year old system) it's as fast as anything. See More

Top Pro

Multi-device "Convergence"

Plasma Desktop provides seamless "zero config" integration of your Android device with your laptop and desktop machines via KDE Connect. Phone calls, SMS messages, cross-device copy and paste, media remote control, cursor control and more are supported. The technology that Plasma Desktop is built on, simply called "Plasma", also provides interfaces for phones, tablets, netbooks, and media centers in addition to the desktop. These additional interfaces use the same underlying frameworks and therefore work well together and have a unified feel to them. They also support a common set of applications across them which adapt to the input methods and screen sizes. See More

Top Con

Swollen look out of the box

In default theme elements are extremely large, which makes screen feel smaller than it really is. Some of the things are not easy to fix - even compact main menu still has awful huge paddings and header font size in calendar is ugly. See More

Top Pro

KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model

KDE is a great evolution on the classic Win95/XFCE approach. It's moving in innovative directions while respecting the classic metaphors. See More

Top Con

Kinda slow

Slow when running on a low-end system like a small Raspberry Pi, otherwise it's fine. But it can even knock out good systems when doing something heavy elsewhere, it can completely hang for up to 20 minutes! See More

Top Pro

Powerful window management with configurable rules

Hiding a particular window's decorations, automatically or with a keyboard shortcut, showing a window on selected or all desktops, and lots of other rule-based features are easily configurable directly from the window manager's UI without scripting. See More

Top Pro

Separate LTS version

KDE has an LTS version for people expecting stability. See More

GNOME has a well-rounded set of features meaning that any user will be able to get around it and not miss anything from other desktops. See More

GNOME

Top Pro

Very polished

Top Con

Heavy on performance

GNOME tends to use a lot of resources, such as RAM or battery. See More

's Experience

Uses lots and lots of resources but is pretty stable and fun to use both for beginners and oldgoers See More

Specs

Said a million times already by the other cons but the design is for tablets, even though the primary usecase is on laptops. See More

Top Pro

Libadwaita + GTK4 apps

Top Con

Designed for tablets before desktops

PhilosophicalRanaNiejta's Experience

Gnome is still very well my daily driver... It has good support for apps written in gtk, especially when maintaining a very standard UX when switching themes. I personally had problems with theme switching making KDE, XFCE e.t.c. look really weird, but gnome has very good global theme support. It is also very simple and most of the tools come installed out of the box unlike DE's like KDE and XFCE. Also, their solution to the hamburger menu is quite beautiful in it's own regard. The only problems are there isnt much customization like something like XFCE or KDE and there isnt much you can do with the dock when right clicking an activity. Otherwise, I recommend this DE to anyone.... Simple to setup, relatively lightweight (in my experience), supports 3d accelerated animations (gnome 40 and higher) and is the most stable DE I have ever used, being that it's never actually crashed See More

Top Pro

Lots of apps

Dozens of great apps are made specifically for GNOME. See More

Top Con

Standardized

The desktop layout is not as modifiable as some other options, and certain settings require additional software (such as Gnome Tweak Tool) to reasonably modify. See More

ExcellentAsherah's Experience

Coming from Plasma, this DE is not customizable enough See More

Top Pro

Dynamic workspaces

Setting provides for effortless workspace management. See More

Top Con

Hides many settings

GNOME sometimes reduces the whole interface to the absolute minimum, a few examples: GNOME hides many advanced options/settings in its interfaces Toolbars can't be edited without external tools Menubars have been removed in favor of a hamburger menu Newer GTK versions remove icons inside popupmenus and menu mnemonics See More

EnthusiasticAnuket's Experience

Although heavy on preformance it's still very unique looking and easy to set up. It also provides a nice user experience See More

Top Pro

Extensions

They provide the user with a plethora of customizations and tweaks. See More

Top Con

No tray support by default

An extension has to be installed to get tray support. See More

Top Pro

Trackpad gestures

Trackpad gestures is supported in recent versions See More

Top Con

Not much customization options

You can't customize the DE the way you want (for the most part) unless you install third party apps etc. See More

Top Pro

Activities overview

Grid-style app menu. See More

Top Pro

GTK >=2 is written for GNOME

GTK is now a GNOME project so the desktop will be compatible with the latest versions. See More

If you love looks, go for deepin. But it's functionality isnt straight out of the moon. It is quite resource extensive, especially on hardware including slow hard drives, low video memory e.t.c. But if you have an absolute mega-chad system and just want something for it's looks, Deepin is the way to go... It is easier to setup and configure than other DEs and it is quite stable... See More

Deepin DE

Top Con

Can be heavy on older machines

Top Pro

Stable

PhilosophicalRanaNiejta's Experience

Specs

License:Mostly GPL

Programming Language:Mostly C++

Widget Toolkit:Qt, Deepin Tool Kit

Top Con

Not the most customizable DE in the world

Top Pro

Very beautiful

Deepin DE has some blur designs which make it very beautiful. See More

InventiveTeshub's Experience

very very convenient. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Many features do not immediately work. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Deepin DE is very simple. See More

JovialTaraxippus's Experience

Its fast, minimal and with enough configurations for a everyday use of a developer See More

Top Con

Poor translations

Top Pro

Quite lightweight

ConfidentHemera's Experience

never see any de this modern See More

Top Con

Not installable on Ubuntu/Debian

At least, not easily, and not without potential problems. If you Want Deepin DE, use Deepin Linux, or grab Manjaro's DDE spin, or install manually on Arch Linux, Antergos, ArchLabs or similar. See More

Top Pro

Includes quality programs

It has some of its own programs which are quite beautiful. See More

Top Pro

Available for a lot of distros

Deepin DE is currently supported on Deepin OS, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Fedora, Sparky Linux, Puppy Linux, Pardus, Antergos and Manjaro. See More

Top Pro

A modern DE for Linux

Deepin is the first DE for Linux which looks and acts like a modern environment. Basically, Deepin succeded where Gnome 3 failed. See More

Top Pro

Includes "Laptop mode" for saving energy

DDE 15.7 includes "Laptop mode" which extends battery life by 20%. See More

Top Pro

Has a Windows-like and Mac-like interface

Easily switchable between the two, as well! See More

Top Pro

Touchscreen friendly

Top Pro

Option to turn off mouse acceleration in the settings

Cinnamon uses a traditional desktop userflow that most computer users are familiar with. See More

Cinnamon

Top Pro

Fast, elegant and stable interface

Top Con

Not Standalone

It still uses many GNOME applications to make it a complete Desktop Environment. See More

PhilosophicalRanaNiejta's Experience

Overall, it feels like if you put something like LXDE or LXQT over a gnome shell... It is just gnome with a taskbar, and maybe this was just me or how I configured it, but at the time it was quite buggy and crashed usually. One prop I'll give to it is decent multi monitor support See More

Specs

Intended for large-screen, non-touch devices that extend traditional concepts with functionality and good looking aesthetic. See More

Top Pro

Designed for traditional desktops

Top Con

Not much customization

Doesn't let you change many things standalone from the DE See More

Mahmoud ahmad's Experience

Solid overall experience. Functional desktop that doesn't compromise on performance and easily runs on older machines. THE desktop environment to go with if you want something that just works out of the box. It's also a bit customizable, but not too much (at first glance) which makes it a great pick for the average user, who just wants something that will work without having to tinker for hours. A great desktop environment to start out with for Linux! See More

Top Pro

Addon manager integrated

It includes an addon manager for themes, widgets or plugins so you don't have to manually download them and place them in the theme directories. See More

Top Con

Looks outdated

The DE looks straight out of 2007 See More

HappySnotra's Experience

I love it. I've tried other desktops and keep coming back to cinnamon. Easy to navigate without extra clicks of the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed with useful new features in each release

E.g vertical panels are now there. See More

Top Con

Conservative design and UX choices

Tries to be too much like traditional Windows (XP, Vista, 7). See More

Top Pro

Very easy to customize

It's very easy to customize using the built in theme and applet tools. It automatically installs themes and desktop/panel applets for you, so you mostly won't have to go search online for them. See More

Top Con

Cumbersome main menu

Main menu takes a lot of space and is cumbersome to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Traditional desktop with the recent features

Cinnamon is a modern desktop that has the latest features, but at the same time it sticks to its way as a classic desktop and ignores trends/hypes like client side decorations or popovermenus. See More

Top Pro

Stable DE

Top Pro

You can disable overlay scrollbars

Cinnamon has a GUI option for that. See More

Top Pro

Very well supported

Has a great community and is very well supported through Linux Mint website. See More

Top Pro

Best for users coming from Windows

Will look familiar to windows users making the transition easier. See More

Top Pro

Cinnamon provides control of icon placement on multiple monitors

Cinnamon provides control of the placement of desktop icons on multiple monitor setups. This feature has been buggy, but in my testing of Linux Mint 19, this feature appeared to be stable. Thus, Cinnamon joins KDE and Windows in enabling this capability. For example, in a setup with 2 or 3 monitors, you can put the desktop icons on the right-hand monitor. With other DEs, the icons always move to the left-hand monitor. See More

Top Pro

Supports Widgets

You can place widgets on the desktop like a calculator or the weather. See More

Top Pro

Pretty design

Top Pro

Can run apps meant for any other desktop environment

Cinnamon can run any app meant for any other DE, meaning the user can have apps for XFCE and KDE simultaneously and they will run as smoothly as if they're being run in the corresponding DE. See More

Top Pro

Nice themes and extensions

Very easy to make this desktop your own both in terms of looks and functionality. See More

Top Pro

Lots of downloadable free themes

Plenty of themes, ready and free to be downloaded and applied with just a couple of clicks in a few seconds, with the file sizes mostly around 0.5 - 1MB. See More

Top Pro

The keyboard shortcut design is very friendly to users with Windows background

Your win+E, win+D etc are still working after migrating to Cinnamon from Windows See More

Top Pro

Vertical panel already available

Dwm is a low-resource window manager that is entirely simplistic in design. See More

dwm

Top Pro

Simple and small

Specs

License:MIT/X Consortium

Programming Language:C

Type:Window manager

Initial Release:July 14, 2006

Configuring dwm is straight-forward thanks to its config.h file (though it will have to be rebuilt for the effects to take place). See More

Top Pro

Easy to configure

Top Pro

Minimalist

Small and easy to digest source for those who want to patch it. See More

Top Pro

Many and unique patches available

Thanks to the small codebase, many users contributed patches to the suckless website. They offer unique functionality, e.g. swallow or fakefullscreen, that is not seen in many other WMs. See More

Openbox is a lightweight window manager that uses a little over 100MB RAM upon boot. See More

Openbox

Top Pro

Extremely lightweight

Top Con

No support for HiDPI

There's no support for HiDPI, and requests have been rejected. Current workaround is use some of few HiDPI themes. See More

InterestingNiamh's Experience

If you want a fast, highly customizable desktop and are not afraid to dig into the engine of Openbox, then this is the ideal setup for you. See More

Specs

License:GPL 2.0 (or later)

Programming Language:C

Available on:ArchBang, CrunchBang, Lubuntu, Manjaro

Type:Stacking

Openbox does away with many traditional desktop elements, like menu buttons, bars, etc. and places everything in the (insanely customizable) context menu. If any of the missing pieces are desired, they can be added through others apps (e.g. tint2 for taskbar). See More

Top Pro

Uncluttered

Top Con

Default configuration is lacking basic features

When booting Openbox for the first time, the user won't even know they have actually booted into a window manager as there will be nothing of note on the screen other than a right mouse action. See More

WiseGlooscap's Experience

Its good! See More

Top Pro

Highly configurable with a moderate learning curve

Configuring Openbox is very easy to carry out, simply by editing its few config files. There are programs that allow for an even easier means of editing these files by doing so in a UI. See More

Top Con

Unfamiliar configuration method

Beginners can be daunted by the configuration as it is just a couple of text files, which is unlike the graphical methods to customize environments they have experienced. See More

HappyMamaQuilla's Experience

Fastest, easy to configure. See More

Top Pro

Stable

Openbox is used as a default window manager in few desktop environments so it offers more testing, more bugfixes, and more stable behavior. See More

Top Pro

Defaults easy to quickstart

Openbox's set of defaults are easily editable to the user's liking. See More

MATE is a solid serviceable choice for a DE. It is reliable and easy to customize. However, it lacks the icon placement in multiple monitors found in Cinnamon, KDE, or Windows. See More

MATE

Top Pro

MATE is a serviceable choice

CoherentMehen's Experience

Old lookin See More

Specs

MATE is customizable from every aspect. And very much stable compared to another Desktop environment. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

Top Pro

Full and fast

Scales better, full compliment themed applets, easily customization. App/Place/Sys menu and other menus, Mint version set at bottom for new Linux users. OPTION for panel background or follows system(with "controls") for theme matching. See More

Top Pro

Very stable

MATE is initally based on the very stable GNOME 2 codebase that was for years the defacto enterprise desktop for every Linux system. See More

Top Pro

Traditional desktop experience

MATE uses a traditional desktop layout with panels that can be extended through plugins. It also disables some GTK3/GNOME3 features like: client side decorations and overlay scrollbars. MATE applications have also not introduced touch based ui elements like: popover menus and switch buttons. See More

Top Pro

Works great on old machines

It uses a traditional Interface and less eye-candy/bling bling than KDE for example which results in very low system requirements. See More

Top Pro

Full HiDPI support

All MATE 1.24 components are ported to GTK3 and fully support HiDPI. See More

Development has moved to LXQt. See More

LXDE

Top Con

Deprecated

Top Pro

Uses Openbox

Specs

Most of the configuration of LXDE is read from files. Consequently, you can store and manage these files in the same way you might manage other dotfiles, meaning that you can setup LXDE to your liking on a new machine very quickly and easily. See More

Programming Language:C

Widget Toolkit:GTK+ 2

Top Pro

You can setup LXDE with the same look across different machines easily

Top Pro

Designed for cloud networks

LXDE works well on lower end devices such as cloud computers or netbooks. it is able to do this because of its low CPU and RAM requirement. See More

Top Pro

Nicely balanced between speed, stability and features

Top Pro

Energy saving and extremely fast

LXDE is a simple desktop without a lot of bells and whistles, this allows it to remain lightweight which helps conserve battery power and maintain its speed of use. See More

Top Pro

Simple and straightforward menus

LXDE utilizes a XP like menu which is straightforward and familiar to many users. See More

Top Pro

The most lightweight desktop environment

LXDE is by far the most lightweight desktop environment, even topping XFCE. See More

Awesome is highly configurable, allowing the user to change anything they see fit in order to make the WM work for them and their workflow. See More

awesome

Top Pro

Highly configurable

Top Con

Messy configuration file

The config file is too long. The heavy reliance on modules (which you don't what each one does) makes it confusing for the user. And it is written in Lua. Combine these three things together and you get a ghastly monster of a configuration file. See More

WiseParjanya's Experience

A very good experience but you do need to remember a few key binds great for more technical users See More

Specs

License:GPL 2.0

Programming Language:C / Lua

Type:Tiling / Dynamic

Initial Release:September 18, 2007

Awesome was the first window manager to be ported to use the asynchronous XCB library instead of XLib, making it much more responsive than most other window managers. See More

Top Pro

Low latency

Top Con

Configuration uses Lua (Programming Language)

It is time-consuming to make changes to configuration. Though Lua is a good language, a plain text file to configure things would seem to be a better approach. See More

Top Pro

Fully extensible with Lua

Awesome can be skinned, configured, and extended with Lua, a language with a programming model similar to the ubiquitous Javascript. Learning resources for Lua are fairly abundant, as Lua is a popular extension language, often used for scripting in games. See More

Top Con

You should have some skills to configure it

Awesome, like most window managers, is targeted at advanced users. Though is has sane defaults and easy to read documentation, it is still a far jump from the more common graphical UIs found in computing. See More

Top Pro

Any window can be full screen

Select the window. Hold ALT+SHIFT and press SPACE until the window takes up the entire screen. See More

Top Pro

Some mouse tiling support

You can rearrange and re-size [some] panels via the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Stable

Awesome always works as it should: it is very stable and reliable. See More

Top Pro

Good default configuration

By default, you'll have a status bar (hidden in some modes), an application launcher, automatic fullscreen, manual fullscreen shortcut, etc. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard friendly

Awesome is really keyboard friendly and you can do almost anything with keyboard shortcuts. See More

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs. See More

Gnome

Add Video or Image

Emacs

Top Pro

Lisp customizations

Top Con

Not for all usecases as DE.

Specs

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza). See More

Top Pro

Total customizability

Top Con

Takes a lot of effort to configure to fit your needs

It definitely can be configured (and even programmed) according to anyone's habits, needs and preferences. For example, imagine a text editor which can handle typesetting and displaying English, Russian, Japanese and Sanskrit text, supporting LaTeX publishing workflow, Common Lisp development workflow, Javascript development workflow, writing down thoughts and to-do tasks and also having a full-featured command line. But you will to configure/program it, and it'll in no way be either fast or pleasurable. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir. See More

Top Con

Learning curve is long

While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Top Con

Documentation is not beginner-friendly

Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, I have after four years of Emacs as my primary editor not figured out how to actually make use of it, and rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help. See More

XMonad is a very minimal and efficient window manager, especially if the user is familiar with Haskell. See More

Xmonad

Top Pro

Efficient to use

Top Con

Requires a lot of Haskell dependencies

XMonad depends on GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler) which can take up about 700 MB or disk space. See More

Specs

License:Modified BSD (3-Clause)

Type:Tiling / Dynamic

Technology:Haskell

Top Pro

Highly configurable

If you enjoy programming, you can even add features to XMonad to make it your perfect desktop environment, and the Contrib modules give you most of what you need to do exactly that. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve for uninitiated users

Like a lot of tiling window managers, the learning curve for XMonad is quite steep. See More

Top Pro

Edit configuration and reload on-the-fly

Configuration is compiled into the WM, and it can be changed/updated on-the-fly, without requiring a full reload. See More

Top Pro

Very stable

Use of Haskell, in conjunction with smart programming practices, guarantees a crash-free experience. See More

Top Pro

Fully extensible with Haskell

XMonad is written, configured, and fully extensible in Haskell. This means that users aren't limited to a small set of pre-programmed layouts and actions: anything can be programmed into the configuration. It's simple to modify basic settings, and the example config has lots of comments to get you started. Haskell keeps this code clean, concise, and readable, and its type system keeps you safe from any serious mistakes. This makes it fast and light, even on very small and slow systems. See More

Xfce will never be the cause of your crash. See More

KDE

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Xfce

Top Pro

Rock solid stability

Top Con

Bad multi monitor support

Multiple monitors are treated as a single connected screen, which causes multiple issues with workspaces and panels. See More

AffableMinthe's Experience

i use it everyday See More

Specs

License:GPL, LGPL, BSD

It just looks like a 20 year old desktop in its stock form. However, it is possible for you to to give it a more elegant look using themes, icons and other customizations. See More

Top Pro

Low resource usage combined with flexible configuration

Top Con

Looks dated

IngeniousAengus's Experience

Most stable de i've ever experienced. See More

Top Pro

Low system resource consumption

Not just helpful for older computers where few system resources are available, but also simply for those who want to get the most out of their systems. See More

Top Con

Lacks modern design and effects

No support for transparency, effects in opening or closing a file browser, or other effects like cube or cylinder, unlike, say, KDE. See More

AmiableInuus's Experience

Seems to fit better to arch, but looks dated out of the box, and uses gtk. Lightweight and stable compositor. I use kde with arch because it looks better out of the box. See More

Top Pro

A true UNIX Desktop Environment

Xfce adheres to the UNIX philosophy, which means it strives for being modular, minimal and expandable. This makes it very much customizable. You can make it as minimal as you want and as heavyweight as you want depending on the features and modules/plugins you use. See More

Top Con

Looks ugly out of the box

Out of the box, Xfce is the one of the ugliest if not the ugliest DE out there. It definitely can become the most beautiful and gorgeous DE after a bit of tinkering and theming, but the default theme is not that good. See More

TrustworthyCoyolxauhqui's Experience

YES See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Xfce offers plenty of settings, and even things like theming XFWM is a simple task (it's just a handful of images.) Many possible permutations of window colors, borders, fonts, etc. Compositing can make it look downright sexy. See More

Top Con

Very slow development

XFCE tends to be extremely slow in its development as it has been known to span years between major releases. While this means there are not many disturbing changes to the DE, it also means that new features that are requested take some time to appear. See More

RationalBenthesikyme's Experience

Xfce may not be the best looking desktop environment available for Arch, but it sure is one of the lightest, fastest and most stable environments. See More

Top Pro

Designed for productivity

It loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources. See More

Top Con

Outdated

Development is often too slow and unable provide necessary functionalities. See More

's Experience

Very customizable but the default ui looks very-very bad and xfce apps in themselves are... Weird, to say the least. See More

Top Pro

Does what it's meant to do easily and efficiently

XFCE is a desktop environment first and foremost, it does not waste time being overly flashy or by being bloated with features. See More

Top Con

Does not support HiDPI

Xfwm, for example, does not support scaling. See More

EncouragingXipeTotec's Experience

Good DE. HiDPI support could be better in some areas. See More

Top Pro

Best for newcomers

Any one new to Linux feels comfortable using it. See More

Top Con

Screen tearing issues

The built-in compositor for Xfce does not handle VSync, meaning that it does not address screen tearing for those with Intel integrated graphics. A third party solution will have to be used for those that do want VSync such as using Nvidia proprietary drivers to handle VSync or installing a third party compositor such as Compton. See More

HumorousIshum's Experience

Less resource intensive than GNOME or KDE. I've had great experiences with XFCE. I've used it exclusively as my Desktop Environment for many years now. See More

Top Pro

Easily customizable as compared to other DEs

Top Con

Too lightweight

Feels too lightweight and doesn't have enough packages and applications. See More

HappyAdrestia's Experience

Lightweight See More

Top Pro

Works on a wide variety of platforms

Xfce can be installed on several UNIX platforms. It is known to compile on Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Cygwin and MacOS X, on x86, PPC, Sparc, and Alpha. See More

Top Con

Doesn’t have window animations

Xfce doesn’t include any window animations, like minimize and maximize. See More

SApcPro Sergij Aleksovski's Experience

Xfce is stable, lightweight and customizable. Definitely recommend it. See More

Top Pro

Manages multiple displays with choice of monitor for desktop icons

Top Con

Sessions cannot be disabled

There is a known bug where sessions keep getting saved involuntarily. So even when you try to clean your saved session it will be reproduced the next time you login. See More

IntellectualBirrahgnooloo's Experience

Rapido e facil de configurar See More

Top Pro

i3 integration available

There is an integration for the i3 tiling window manager. See More

Top Con

One pixel wide window borders

The non-configurable, one pixel wide window borders make resizing difficult. Work-arounds exist but those are clunky at best. See More

Top Pro

Easy to export or import configurations

Top Pro

Well defined Session Manager

Top Pro

Easily customizable as compared to other DEs

Top Pro

Excellent panel management and selection of panel applets

Xfce provides excellent management of panels and a rich selection of panel applets. See More

Top Pro

Adheres to standards

A priority of Xfce is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops. This interoperability is particularly significant for users looking to, e.g., run alternative window managers. See More

Top Pro

Has a convenient launcher and a Genmon plugin

Top Pro

HiDPI support

After release 4.14 Xfce supports HiDPI. See More

Top Pro

Window manager (XFWM) is a compositing WM by default

By having a compositing WM as the default WM makes way for a lot of visual tweaks and tricks that can and do make Xfce look great. You can adjust the transparency, shadows, borders, etc. and many other advanced tweaks are also available. See More