What are the best UNIX-like Desktop Environments for noobs?

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

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

Top Pro

Fast, elegant and stable interface

Top Con

Ugly

For some users, Cinnamon's appearance, especially on Linux Mint can look "ugly" or "dated" due to the fact it doesn't update regularly. Linux Mint is famous for being a tradicionalist distro, so Cinnamon could look too "old", especially for new Windows users that are used to Windows 10 appearance. 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 Con

High memory usage

Cinnamon is based indirectly on Gnome and some of the memory leaks of Gnome exists on Cinnamon. So, memory usage will be high over time, even though you close everything. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed with useful new features in each release

E.g vertical panels are now there. See More

Top Con

Crashes

Despite Cinnamon being on its stable third version it still crashes occasionally, ranging from plugins all the way to drivers. See More

Top Pro

Stable DE

Top Con

Few themes

Rather than using actual GTK theming, Cinnamon appears to vye for its own strange infrastructure that isn't compatible across any other desktop. See More

Top Pro

You can easily get it to look like Windows

You can get it to closely look and behave like Windows with considerable ease. This is a good thing for those switching from Windows, because it gives them a familiar environment, cutting down on the learning curve a bit. Among the popular DE's this is the one that gets you closest with great ease. See More

Top Con

Uses GTK

Nowadays, GTK is designed with GNOME, and only GNOME, in mind. Non-GNOME applications which attempt to utilize it suffer as a result. 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 Con

Not Standalone

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

Top Pro

Very well supported

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

Top Con

Shell-style ≠ widget-style

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

Top Con

Cumbersome main menu

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

Top Con

Sound Settings not automatic

On Windows, for example, you can unplug a speaker and it will switch back to the laptop-speaker. In Cinnamon, you have to do it manually. See More

Top Con

Needs more choices for useful panel applets

Cinnamon still lacks some useful choices for panel applets. For excellent management of panels and a rich choice of useful panel applets, I rely on Xfce. See More

Since Xfce is still based on GTK2 there is no HiDPI support (scaling UI elements). See More

score 10 · Answer 2

Xfce

Top Pro

Low resource usage combined with flexible configuration

Top Con

No HiDPI support

PleasantSamshinHalmoni's Experience

The whisker menu in xfce acts almost the same as the start menu worked in windows vista/7; it allows for searching in the programs after you hit the Winlogo key (depending on the distro that'll open the whisker/start menu) See More

Specs

License:GPL, LGPL, BSD

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

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 Pro

A true UNIX Desktop Environment

Top Con

Looks dated

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 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. Even after its total switch to GTK3, it uses very low resources. 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

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

Takes huge time to update and when it happens updates are very small

Not a very updated DE. Good for old computers. 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

Non-existent support for Wayland

It lacks compatibility to Wayland See More

Top Pro

Designed for productivity

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

Top Con

Lack of useful tools

Top Con

Missing some basic functionality for a desktop environment

Xfce is missing essential functionality like a file-archiver or a polkit-client, so you have to find alternatives for those applications (eg: by stealing them from MATE or GNOME, however, this adds additional dependencies that will bloat Xfce). 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

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

Top Con

Terrible project infrastructure

The whole project is split across various sites so contributing is really hard. You also need to register on every site separately. See More

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

score 13 · Answer 3

KDE Plasma Desktop

Top Con

Too complex

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

ConscientiousHasameli's Experience

Poor UI design See More

Specs

License:GPL, LGPL

Programming Language:Mainly C++

Widget Toolkit:Qt

Compared to Nautilus/Nemo, Dolphis is slow when searching a file. See More

Top Con

Searching a file takes more time on Dolphin

Top Pro

Looks beautiful

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

Kalav's Experience

Multiple-monitor stability (using display port) is aggravating. Loss of second-screen panels and widgets is common and a good reason to avoid their use. See More

Top Con

Dolphin often crashes or gets laggy

When you open a folder full of videos or images, the thumbnails also takes a good amount of time to appear See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

There are many customization options and possibilities to tweak the desktop, including widgets. See More

TirelessBelobog's Experience

In-built personnalisation. See More

Top Con

So complex and full-featured that makes you feel lost easily

The fact you have tons of options to customize the DE makes it more confuse and complex, so you can get lost easily. Questions like: Where the X thing is? How to disable the single-click? It can make somebody that is used to the simplicity of Gnome or Xfce very confused. See More

Top Pro

Fast and efficient

Dolphin file manager is fully functional and easy to use and multitask with. 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

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

Enjoyable to use

Thanks to looking awesome, and being customizable and flexible. 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

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

Looks dated/ugly out of the box

Top Pro

Low system resources consumption

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

Top Pro

Familiar interface for transitioning Windows users

Top Pro

Very customizable

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

Top Pro

Many coherent applications

What makes 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 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 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

Since Ikey left the project, the Budgie devs seem to be "lost" and they have apparently given up on switching to Qt. Very bad move I must say. See More

score 5 · Answer 4

Budgie

Top Pro

Modern design

Top Con

It has not switched to Qt as promised

Specs

License:mainly GPL

Available On:*nix (GNOME)

Widget Toolkit:GTK

Top Pro

Windows users will feel at home

Top Con

Very dependable on Gnome

It depends so much on Gnome. The removal of desktop icons done by Gnome team has affected Budgie in a bad way, so it had it desktop icons removed as well, due to the fact it depends on Gnome so much and uses Nautilus as the official file manager. Everything Gnome does can affect massively the way Budgie works and this is bad. For these reasons some distributions shipped and old version of Nautilus or changed the file manager to Nemo as an alternative to keep the desktop available. See More

Top Pro

It's minimal and gorgeous

Top Con

Lacks some basic features

Many things you'd take for granted aren't available in Budgie, like an option for showing windows from all workspaces when alt-tabbing. See More

Top Pro

Built from scratch and integrates into current technolgies

Budgie is built from scratch to integrate with the Gnome stack, this way hopefully having more stability by utilizing technologies that have a lot of community work already behind them. See More

Top Con

Still in development

Budgie is still young and in active development, so it may not be as stable as many other desktop environments. See More

Top Pro

Many large distros support it out of the box

Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and Budgie's own Solus all support Budgie. See More

Top Con

Less lightweight than you would expect

Budgie has a nice and simple style, but the memory usage is quite high after booting. Thankfully, the lead developer is working to remedy this. See More

Top Pro

Available from a PPA for Ubuntu

Budgie is available from an official EvolveOS PPA for Ubuntu and its derivatives. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:evolve-os/ppa sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install budgie-desktop See More

Top Con

Sometimes buggy

Budgie can sometimes be buggy. See More

Top Pro

This is how Gnome should have been

Customizable DE based on Gnome, modern and has a classic approach. See More

Top Con

Less lightweight than you would expect

Budgie has a nice and simple style, but the memory usage is quite high after booting. Thankfully, the lead developer is working to remedy this. See More

Top Pro

Very lightweight

Runs well on low-end hardware and gaming PC’s alike. See More

Top Con

Sometimes buggy

Budgie can sometimes be buggy. See More

Top Con

Does not properly support multi monitor

Having two monitors works, but it's not perfect. See More

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

score 7 · Answer 5

Deepin DE

Top Con

Poor translations

Top Pro

Very beautiful

Specs

License:Mostly GPL

Programming Language:Mostly C++

Widget Toolkit:Qt, Deepin Tool Kit

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

Easy to use

Deepin DE is very simple. See More

Top Con

EULA sucks

The worst EULA ever. Sad people do not pay attention to it. See More

Top Pro

Quite lightweight

Deepin 15.7 has been optimized and now uses less than half the system resources of prior editions. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Many features do not immediately work. See More

Top Pro

Stable

Top Con

A lot of bugs

Contains many bugs. 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 and Pardus. See More

Top Con

Not very customizable

Top Con

Chinese software

Use it at your own risk See More

A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place. See More

score 3 · Answer 6

Gnome 3

Top Pro

Powerful search

Top Con

Extension system is weakly integrated into the environment

Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment. See More

TirelessBelobog's Experience

Hostile toward Windows and Mac newcomers. See More

Specs

Widget Toolkit:GTK

Type:stacking

GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages. See More

Top Pro

Simple and easy to use

Top Con

Heavy on RAM

It is the DE that needs the biggest amount of RAM. See More

Top Pro

Clean UI

Every aspect of GNOME 3 has been crafted to fit together as a harmonious whole, so that it offers a consistent and integrated experience. See More

Top Con

Some settings are not where the user would expect it

E.g. it is not possible to change the keyboard auto-repeat delay or rate from the usual All Setting > Keyboard like, for example, in Unity. Many settings are considered "tweaks" and require installing a separate utility to adjust. Further still, some settings are buried in a dconf database. See More

Top Pro

It just works

You don't ever "need" tweaks. Unless your device is too outdated, it just works out of the box. Touchscreen, 4k TV, anything just works. See More

Top Con

Longtime support is hard since every few years GNOME changes its own standards

Everytime something is complete GNOME breaks itself: Icon naming changes almost every 3 years : once gtk icons were named stock_edit then gtk-edit then edit-edit and currently edit-edit-symbolic App icons change also every few years currently they get renamed to an android like scheme eg: org.gnome.Photos.svg instead of gnome-photos.svg however this breaks all common standards esp. since filenames on linux are case sensitive. GNOMEShell extension also break on almost every release. Currently Gtk3 has been stabilized however they are already working on GTK4 and 5 so in the worst case your desktop will need to run and support 4 GTK-toolkits at the same time. See More

Top Pro

Touchscreen friendly

It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard. See More

Top Con

Continuous customization and extension issues

They need to sort out their continuous customization and extension issues, which are why many people still prefer KDE or other Desktop environments. See More

Top Pro

Wayland support

Gnome is the first desktop environment that uses Wayland as default instead of X server. X server is only optional currently. See More

Top Con

Hefty (lots of dependencies)

Gnome 3 in the current state is heavily weighed down by having a lot of functions as requirements, rather than options. You MUST have their email client, calendar, and more installed as the environment relies on them directly for basic functionality. Which is absurd as most other DEs don't require a specific calendar program just to tell you what day it is. See More

Top Pro

macOS alike

It is hiding many options from you. See More

Top Con

Limited customization

To modify anything beyond the wallpaper requires third-party software. See More

Top Con

Minimalistic, but "huge" in size

It has some of the minimalist approach, but at the same time Gnome is huge in size, in memory usage, in CPU and GPU usage. Gnome is just too big for what it offers: almost nothing in matter of customization and complex features, you can see it just by using Gnome apps like Gedit. Lacking basic features and being huge in "size". See More

Top Con

Slow

GNOME 3 desktop environment is kinda slow on some Linux distributions See More

Top Con

Some GUI controls are much larger than on other desktops

This is wasting screen space on non-HiDPI monitors. See More

Top Con

Extensions can break whole Gnome desktop

Gnome extensions have a lot of freedom to customize the desktop, and it means, that extensions can break your desktop leaving you unable to yous your computer. Also extensions can significantly slow down whole desktop. See More

Top Con

Tightly coupled to its window manager

If you're looking to run an alternative window manager, like XMonad, you're pretty much out of luck. See More

Top Con

Gnome + NVIDIA + Wayland sucks

If you use NVIDIA and Wayland under Gnome, you'll be screwed up. See More

Top Con

Customization is only "Gnome Tweaks" and "Extensions"

Nothing much to do, especially if you use Vanilla Gnome. If you want Gnome to has X and Y feature you would need an extension for almost everything you want making it bigger and bigger. Also, you can't change the shell theme easily without an extension, you can't change the application and icon theme without an application like Gnome Tweaks (unless you use the terminal and that is not user-friendly). See More

Top Con

Poor 'drag and drop into application' capability

Difficult to drag and drop a file into an open application. See More

Top Con

Full screen start menu

This may be fine if your screen is really small, but on modern fullhd desktop it looks ugly and distracting. In addition to very ineffective display of items on screen - much more could be placed on one screen if there were less empty space around and between icons See More

Top Con

Android-like desktop

If you want a desktop and you see Gnome for the first time, you will think it was something created for tablets or smartphones. The way the 'desktop' works is something very different from what macOS and Windows users perceive as a desktop. See More

Top Con

No support for fractional scaling

Unlike Qt, GTK has no support for it. See More

Top Con

Not truly tunable

Customization is very limited. See More

Top Con

You can't put icons on the desktop

Top Con

Depends on systemd

Some people don't like systemd but it is part of most modern distros anyway. See More

Top Con

Has several dead userspace features that are supplemented by community supported extensions

Has several dead projects that are supplemented by community supported extensions. Unfortunately, the gnome updates often break these extensions. Example: GSConnect. See More

Top Con

Icon scalability and sorting

The icons in the "apps view" area don't have any additional sizes, the current ones are much too large to be effective for the screen space they use. Also, there is no native way to sort them in Gnome, only a very limited extension. Which means you're pretty much always better off using the search bar if you can. See More

Top Con

Default alt-tab behaviour is cute but extremely annoying for fast keyboard users

Top Con

Rather insane method of wallpaper slideshows

Most DEs and WMs allow the user to simply point to a directory, and use pictures from there. Gnome 3 requires the rather asinine idea of building an XML file to accomplish the same thing. See More

Top Con

Native Gnome dock isn't scalable

The native Gnome dock isn't scalable, which means if you want to change its size you have to download a customized theme for the shell and hope it has the appearance you want. Honestly again just like the icon issue it wastes way too much of the screen on high resolution monitors. See More

Top Con

Remove more features than add

The Gnome way of life. See More

Minimal LXDE uses less than 100 MB of RAM. Normal LXDE uses 100 ~ 200 MB of RAM. LXQt uses 250 ~ 350 MB of RAM which is pretty similar to Xfce. See More

score 2 · Answer 7

LXDE

Top Pro

Lightweight than its successor (LXQt)

Top Con

LXDE is deceased

Development stopped and the focus is LXQt which nothing more than the Qt version of LXDE. See More

Specs

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

Widget Toolkit:GTK+ 2

Top Pro

Energy saving and extremely fast

Top Con

Development has slowed

LXDE is slowly reaching End of Life, but will still receive new updates as long as GTK +2 is in 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 Con

No compositor

In order to keep the system light weight and CPU/GPU non intensive LXDE forgoes a compositing program, because of this there will be screen tearing. Though a compositor like Compton can be added for those that want it. See More

Top Pro

The most lightweight desktop environment

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

Top Con

Only halfway to GTK+3

Most of Xfce's components were built in GTK+2 and the upgrade process to GTK+3 was very slow due to the lack of manpower. See More

Since it's basically a fork of Gnome 2, and it's created to satisfy Gnome 'purists' it's very unlikely for it to add new features more in line with modern DEs. See More

score 5 · Answer 8

MATE

Top Con

Not very likely to have new features

Top Pro

Traditional desktop experience

The goal of MATE is to maintain the look and feel of Gnome 2, while maintaining compatibility with Gnome 3. To that end, it has also forked and renamed many of Gnome's core applications. It benefits from the years of work and polish that have gone into Gnome project, and has already been adopted as one of the default environments for Linux Mint. See More

nicwow's Experience

Very sleek and easy to use UI. OS when testing: Trisquel See More

Specs

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

Outdated aesthetic. See More

Top Con

Dated look and feel

Top Pro

Very stable

Code base is very stable and virtually bug-free. See More

Top Con

MATE lacks customized desktop icon placement on multiple monitors

MATE does not permit placement of desktop icons on the monitor of choice in a multiple monitor setup. For example, with 2 or 3 monitors, with MATE you cannot place the desktop icons on the right-hand monitor -- they always move to the left-hand monitor. By contrast, you have control of desktop icon placement on multiple monitors with Cinnamon, KDE, and Windows. See More

Top Pro

Fairly simple UI

Looks very similar to Windows. See More

Top Con

No official forum

Instead of having an official forum, users are redirected to their distributions support forums. You might get help at the Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint forums but they are still mainly for distribution specific issues. See More

Top Pro

Many new featurrs

The MATE team added plenty of power user features that were perviously rejected by the GNOME team. See More

Top Con

Unfriendly and hostile developers

Top Pro

Pays its developpers

Thanks to the Patreon page, money is collected to pay for the developpers maintaining and adding new features to MATE See More

Top Con

Not really user friendly

Some apps have really rough edges, for example: Caja: by open an SVG-file and get a Dialog with 4 Buttons(Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel & Run) at least two of them make no sense. You can also right click on them to choose the application, however you default application for that filetype is not on this list. Panel: Empty panel applets are about 1px wide so you really cant resize or move them to organize your panel. See More

Top Pro

Multiple panels work great across multiple displays

This is very simple, but it is something much appreciate: the panel's window list is per display. So if you move a window over your second display, it gets transferred to the window list on the second display's panel. Multiple display support works very intuitively, right out of the box, with minimal tweaking. See More

Top Con

Issues with changing users permissions and access

Top Pro

Has window borders

Other than GNOME, MATE has not introduced OSX-alike Client Side decorations See More

Top Con

Requires XML for wallpaper slideshow.

As described on Gnome 3, Mate being a fork of even older GNOME technologies requires for (some unfathomable reason) to create a curated XML file for a desktop slideshow, instead of the more logical and modern systems used by other DEs, which consists of simply pointing at a folder and the DE figures the rest out. See More

Top Pro

Has menu icons

MATE has icons in every popupmenu which makes navigating through them very fast. See More

Top Pro

Distraction-free environment

Top Pro

Decently customizable

Can customize a lot of its aspects, and using a window manager like Compiz. See More

Top Pro

Works great on old machines

Because it's older codebase is based on Gnome 2 which was the champion for desktop environments for a long time, it's very stable and has plenty of features which work perfectly for old machines. See More

outperforms other "lightweight" DEs like XFCE, LXDE, and many Openbox setups. Still delivers a full-featured & modern desktop experience if you want it to. Runs on even the oldest machines. See More

score 3 · Answer 9

TDE (Trinity)

Top Pro

Highly performant and efficient

Top Con

Slow development

Two years from one patch release to another and instead of fixing bugs it adds new ones. See More

ToughAsteria's Experience

lightweight, fast, modular and full-featured. this DE/WM just has it all. Try out Q4OS-TDE Live CD to see its features and most popular themes. Feels like modern KDE without the fluff or bloat of modern DEs. Can be installed and used as simple WM like Openbox. See More

Specs

Programming Language:C/C++

Widget Toolkit:TQt3

Available on:*nix, BSD

Top Pro

Traditional desktop experience

As a fork of KDE 3.5 Trinity is designed for Unix-like operating systems, intended for computer users preferring a traditional desktop model. See More

Top Con

Huge and obsolete codebase

Trinity is based in Qt 3, which is unmaintained by upstream. The KDE 3 codebase is also unmaintained. As new technologies like Systemd become a new standard the lack of developers make Trinity more incompatible and error/bug/security risk prone. See More

JayJay The Fifth's Experience

Has all the features missing in so called "light weight" DEs and still uses less system ressources than them. Outperforms even Openbox, XFCE, LXDE and others. Very fast and efficient. Without all the bloat from Qt4 or 5. Highly modular - Can be installed as a WM only, without other KDE3-components (minimal installation). Very stable and fully featured desktop experience that runs even on the oldest PCs. Good compatibility to modern Qt4+ and GTK 3+ Apps. Still gets updates and fixes from TDE and OpenSUSE (KDE3/qt3 team and mailinglist). No security bugs found for a long time. See More

Top Pro

Low resource usage

Top Pro

Highly configurable

Trinity is every customizable, almost every aspect of the GUI can be changed to look like you want. Need a button in the toolbar? You can add it. You want a specialized toolbar in a certain part of the screen? You can add it. You can configure the GUI in the setup before the first run too. See More

Top Pro

Works fine on old computers

It is very responsive in 7+ years old computers See More

Top Pro

Stable system that does not change everything every 6 months just for the sake of it

Top Pro

Looks the way you want

Has many themes, including themes that look like Windows 95-XP, Vista, and 7 (see Q4OS for comparison) See More

Top Pro

HIghly modular. Minimal installation and WM-only installation possible

Use it as a pure WM if you want. Like Openbox or IceWM. No need to install other KDE3-components. See More

Top Pro

Looks like Windows XP

Top Pro

Many themes by default

including themes that look like Windows 95 and Windows XP See More

Enlightenment allows for virtual desktop previews within its desktop widget for switching desktops within its thumbnails. See More

score 1 · Answer 10

Enlightenment

Top Pro

Virtual desktop previews

Top Con

Ugly default theme

The default theme is rather ugly so it's necessary to apply a new theme as soon as you install Enlightenment. See More

Specs

License:BSD

Widget Toolkit:EFL

Type:stacking, tiling

Enlightenment offers a beautiful interface with eye candy: it can be themed easily to the user's liking and includes an optional compositor. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful interface

Top Con

Sub-menu does not change direction when out of space

When you right-click for the menu in the right part of the screen but there is insufficient space for the cascading menu, you have to interrupt your selecting and move your pointer to touch the right edge of your screen - this manually moves the menu over to the left a little bit, so it has space. If there is a sub-menu, you have to once again move your pointer to the extreme right edge of the screen, for it to move over - and so on, for each level of sub-menu. Every other OS and app/program in the world today, simply changes direction to where the sub-menus cascade. Whether that be upwards because it's too close to the bottom (we see this in the selection menus in our browsers in forms, or to change sides as we are accustomed to in all programs). This is logical, universal, expected behavior. But not in e17. See More

Top Pro

No programming experience required to configure the environment

Configuring the environment of Enlightenment is done through a UI, so no prior knowledge of coding languages or editing of config files is needed. See More

Top Con

Non-tiling

Overlaps and spaces between windows are both pointless. See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable, easy customization

There's a ton of settings stacked into a quite compact settings menu that is easy to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Easy on ressources

Doesn't use much RAM and doesn't hog your CPU. See More

Top Pro

Lightning fast

Startup of e is lightning fast -- as it is during working with the WM. See More

Top Pro

Lots of themes available

There is a large selection of themes available for the Enlightenment window manager, meaning that customization to one's preference is very straight-forward. See More

Top Pro

Unique workspace set ups

You could have a screen cluttered with panels and another with none.. A feature that is easy with enlightenment. See More

Top Pro

Quick mouse-driven menus

Enlightenments menu is easily and quickly accessible by left-clicking anywhere on the desktop. See More

Top Pro

Fast and good with battery life

Great for laptops. See More

Top Pro

Havn't found a WM that beats e16 in 20 years.

I've been using e16 for about 20 years and tried quite some other WMs, but always returned back to e16. It's fast, doesn't use much resources, is highly customizable and is rock solid (I cannot remember it crashing). It's combination of simplicity and beauty is unmatched. The default theme on e16 is kinda disappointing. Try B-42 or Dark-One. Be careful if you enable Composite. It works flawless, but you can screw your menus when playing around with the transparent settings in the settings menu. Making a backup-copy of your .e16 preferences beforehand might save you some trouble. See More

The desktop works without Systemd, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit or even D-Bus See More

score 1 · Answer 11

Lumina

Top Pro

Does not depend on toolkits

Specs

License:BSD

Widget Toolkit:Qt

It's fast and responsive. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Pro

Filemanager Insight fully supports ZFS

As it was initially developed for BSD-systems its file manager "Insight" supports the advanced ZFS features other Unix file managers misses. See More

Top Pro

OpenSource with no Copyleft

The whole desktop is under licensed under 3-clause BSD See More

For the LXQT developers, lightweight is a synonym for missing features. See More

score 4 · Answer 12

LXQT

Top Con

Missing Features = Lightweight

Top Pro

Great for old and low-end devices

LXQt is unparalleled in its ability to run on the weakest of machines without a problem. See More

Specs

License:LGPL, GPL

Widget Toolkit:Qt

Available On:X11

If you like to customize your desktop, you will feel limited when using LXQt. If you want modern themes, it will be worse. See More

Top Con

Small quantity of themes available for LXQt

Top Pro

Lightweight emphasis

With a focus on being "light-weight", it is to KDE Plasma what XFCE is to GNOME: a familiar enough looking lighter alternative to the more fully featured environment that may work better on lower-end devices and for people who want as lean a system as possible. See More

Top Con

Unthemeable for usual users

As all Qt desktop environments themeing is hard since you need to know C++ , there is a sideway using qss however its not as powerful as GTK, Enlightenment or Windows theming. See More

Top Pro

Utilizes Qt

As the name suggests, LXQt takes advantage of the Qt ecosystem to provide a beautiful and performant user experience. See More

Top Con

A lot of bugs

This is a very disappointing desktop environment, it's very buggy. Although there still is hope that these issues will be resolved. See More

Top Pro

Modular

By taking advantage of the modular KDE Frameworks, LXQT is able to offer a modular architecture that allows the user to easily swap components. See More

Top Con

Not quite ready for open deployment.

In the current state, LXQT is a beta desktop that feels like a heavy alpha. A lot of the tools and underlying features are in a testing state, while the LXQT project itself has not had a gold (1.0.0) release as of yet. See More

Top Con

It lacks basic settings

Too imature, it looks like a bad implementation of Plasma See More

Good for people who want a plug and play simple Desktop Environment. But for a multitasking / entertainment / cutting edge or Gaming Rig this is not the answer. See More

score 4 · Answer 13

Pantheon

Top Con

Too simple

Top Pro

Looks amazing

Looks absolutely amazing. Very nice to use. Amazing UX. See More

nicwow's Experience

Absolutely Amazing UI See More

Specs

It is pretty bare-bones on a stock install, but further configuration options can be added through various official tweak tools. See More

Widget Toolkit:GTK

Languages:Vala

Top Con

Few configuration options

Top Pro

Simple, clean aesthetic

Nonintrusive and easy to overview workspace. See More

Top Con

Slow maintenance

Any significant updates come with new release, which usually takes 2-3 years. Hence gets obsolete with current software. See More

Top Pro

Great for minimalists

Although you cannot put icons on desktop, it comes with very low number of pre-installed softwares. See More

Top Con

Not ideal for enterprise environments

As it has no set release date, and no set support and/or EOL dates, that makes it a not so good choice for enterprises managing a number of machines where such dates are important to know before hand. See More

Top Pro

Smooth, subtle animations

Nearly everything is animated, but it's not over the top. See More

Top Con

No icons on desktop

Top Pro

Lightweight

Pantheon is light on system resources, giving it the advantage of being able run well on a multitude of setups. See More

Top Con

Limited to eOS-only

It means Pantheon won't work properly if installed on other distros. Manjaro has given up on trying since it works better on a LTS system and takes an eternity to realease a new version or add security updates. On Arch, Pantheon also doesn't work properly. People are trying it on Fedora, not sure how it works now. If you want to use Pantheon, better get to eOS. See More

Top Con

Uses GTK

Nowadays, GTK is designed with GNOME, and only GNOME, in mind. Non-GNOME applications which attempt to utilize it suffer as a result. Pantheon is no exception. See More

Top Con

Lacks complex settings

Its setting panel is too simplistic and basic. You can't do much with it. See More

Top Con

Takes a huge time to release a new version

Top Con

Limited support

This DE only officially supports Ubuntu and ElementaryOS. See More

Equinox only consumes and needs tiny memory space. See More

score 1 · Answer 14

Equinox

Top Pro

LIghtweight

Top Con

Ubuntu and Debian packages are outdated

The only way to get Equinox for Debian or Ubuntu is to build it from source because the package for both of these distros are outdated. See More

Specs

The control panel lets you customize Equinox through various applets with which you can customize everything from the wallpaper to the fonts to use. See More

Widget Toolkit:FLTK

Top Pro

Customizable through a user-friendly control panel

At the point of writing VirtualBox doesn't support Wayland yet. See More

score 2 · Answer 15

Liri Desktop

Top Pro

Virtual machine support for VMware and QEMU

Specs

License:GPLv3

Widget Toolkit:QT

Type:stacking

CDE was developed more than 20 years ago to work as a unified DE for all the various forms of commercial, proprietary Unix operating systems that dominated the market back then: AIX, TRU64, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX etc... Nowadays it's released as an open source Desktop Environment for Linux. It comes as a free tested, widely deployed and enterprise-level product even if it's recently re-release as FOSS for Linux. See More

Answer 16

Common

Top Pro

Mature

Top Con

Outdated UI

The graphical interface is very outdated and ugly. It's mostly for lower-end machines and for people who want to give their Linux machine a true UNIX feel. See More

Specs

License:LGPL

Programming Language:C, C++

Widget Toolkit:Motif

Top Pro

Useful for low-end devices

As Linux moves into low-end territory with the likes of Raspberry PI, CDE's level of consumption seems extremely small. When it was first developed, 128MB or RAM was a lot. See More