What is the best Linux desktop environment for old hardware?

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

See All Specs

Top Pro

Rock solid stability

Top Con

Poor support

It can take years for the devs to answer to bug reports. 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

Will become more interconnected an less modular

Isn't as modular anymore as it was 10 years ago. In the future (4.16) they will also introduce GTK Client Side Decorations to all setting dialogs so you will have some problems with using a different Window manager or when using xfce components outside of Xfce/GNOME. 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

Has become a GNOME2/MATE clone

It has lost its way since 4.4 and is now just another GNOME2-like desktop. See More

Top Con

Xfwm theming is limited

For example, unlike metacity/marco/miffin it does not support different styles for window types. See More

Top Con

Configuration is stored in a database

All configuration is stored in xfconf or dconf which is like the WIndows Registry very hard to edit with simple tools. See More

Top Con

Very slow developement

XFCE tends to be extremely slow in it's 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

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

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

Top Con

Uses many custom GTK widgets

Xfce is using many custom-made GTK widgets(like an custom pathbar, GtkDialog headers, Xfceiconview and more), while this makes it different to other GTK desktops it also breaks certain GTK styles that don't have workarounds for those widgets. See More

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score 4 · Answer 2

LXDE

Top Pro

The most lightweight desktop environment

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

Top Con

Deprecated

Development has moved to LXQt. See More

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

Simple and straightforward menus

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

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

score 8 · Answer 3

LXQt

Top Pro

Utilizes Qt

Top Con

Ugly

@Con: Well, have a try with Kvantum. See More

Specs

License:LGPL, GPL

Widget Toolkit:Qt

Even the programs/apps shipped with LXQt are from the KDE project. They don't have their own projects yet. It's pretty similar to Budgie that depends on Gnome for almost everything. @Con: Not quite true; very few KDE Plasman dependencies. See More

See All Specs

Top Con

Depends too much on KDE

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. @Con: Not quite true: using kvantum, LXQt looks like a charme. See More

Top Con

Very limited in customization

Very few themes available, especially modern themes. You've got to use Kvantum, then it's all right. See More

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

score 1 · Answer 4

Enlightenment

Top Pro

Lightning fast

Specs

License:BSD

Programming Language:C

Widget Toolkit:Elementary

Great for laptops. See More

See All Specs

Top Pro

Fast and good with battery life

Top Pro

Easy on ressources

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

Top Pro

Beautiful interface

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

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 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

Virtual desktop previews

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

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

score 1 · Answer 5

Lumina

Top Pro

Does not depend on toolkits

Top Con

Poor support by distributors

It is unavailable from the most distributions so you have to build it from source. See More

Specs

License:BSD

Widget Toolkit:Qt

It's fast and responsive. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Unthemeable for usual users

As all Qt desktop environments themeing is hard since you need to know C++. There is a workaround using qss, however, it's not as powerful as GTK/CSS, Enlightenment or Windows theming. See More

Top Pro

OpenSource with no Copyleft

The whole desktop is licensed under 3-clause BSD license which gives you complete freedom for any reuse. See More

Top Pro

Modular

Since there are no toolkits all applications are just GUIs to common *NIX applications. See More

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

score 1 · Answer 6

TDE (Trinity)

Top Pro

Traditional desktop experience

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

Specs

Programming Language:C/C++

Widget Toolkit:TQt3

Available on:*nix, BSD

Top Pro

Works fine on old computers

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

Top Con

Slow development

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

Answer 7

Common Desktop Environment (CDE)

Widget Toolkit:Motif

The most Distributions don't ship Equinox so you have to build it from source. See More

Answer 8

Equinox

Top Con

Poor support by Distributors

Top Pro

Lightweight

Equinox only consumes and needs tiny memory space. 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

Answer 9

MATE

Top Con

Issues with changing users permissions and access

Specs

Programming Language:mostly C

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

MATE requires an additional XML file for wallpapes to store metadata like effects (for slideshows), its author, license and translations. See More

Top Con

Unfriendly and hostile developers

Top Con

Requires XML for wallpapers

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 your 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