What are the best desktop environments for people migrating from Windows to Linux?

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11

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Considered

165

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Oct 9, 2018

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

7 Options Considered

Best desktop environments for people migrating from Windows to Linux	Price	License	Programming Language
89 Cinnamon	-	GPL	mostly C
84 Xfce	-	GPL, LGPL,BSD-2-Clause	mostly C
-- MATE	-	GPL	mostly C
73 KDE	-	–	–
-- Deepin DE	Free	–	–

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score 34 · Answer 1

Cinnamon

Top Pro

Designed for traditional desktops

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

Top Con

Crashes

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

Hypersphere's Experience

Cinnamon is still not ready for prime time. It tends to be buggy and unstable. For a stable conventional desktop, I recommend Xfce or MATE instead. See More

Specs

License:GPL

Programming Language:mostly C

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

Top Pro

Responsive developers

The community has a lot of say in how the product evolves. No ivory tower syndrome (plaguing other projects). See More

Top Con

Has been known to have issues with Steam even in the past year

Top Pro

Easy transition

It's easy to switch from Windows to Linux Mint. See More

Top Pro

Very customizable

From little things like folder colors to larger options like desklets. Unlike gnome and unity, there is an option for almost any desktop preference. See More

Top Pro

Simple and easy to get used to

KDE is too confusing for newbies, Mint is easy to install and intuitive 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 migrated to Cinnamon from Windows. See More

Top Pro

Fast, elegant and stable interface

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

Linux Mint Cinnamon has been the most successful OS in the past 3-5 years, and for good reason

It was the first distro to make all codecs and proprietary software, run flawlessly out-of-the-box. While customizable, it is one of the few that look great out of the box too. See More

See All

score 24 · Answer 2

Xfce

Top Pro

Very stable

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

Top Con

Very slow developement

XFCE tends to be extremely slow in it's development. It has been two and a half years since its last release with the next release still remaining unknown. See More

Hypersphere's Experience

"Raw" Xfce can be ugly, but the Linux Mint implementation is beautiful and functional. I have been using it productively for years after using both Windows and Mac OS. See More

Specs

License: GPL, LGPL,BSD-2-Clause

Programming Language:mostly C

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

Top Pro

Lightweight

For users with netbooks, tablets and older computers where not a lot of system resources are available. 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

CooperativePtah's Experience

I always go back to Xfce. Ease of customisation and how lightweight it is results in something I like the look of without it drain a lot of resources. See More

Top Pro

It has perfect balance between simplicity and usability

The Xfce components are only 287 MiB, all of this without losing any functionality. See More

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

TirelessHasameli's Experience

Very stable and costumizeble See More

Top Pro

Classic and familiar

Xfce works very much like the classic Gnome & Windows desktops, taskbars (panels) and desktop icons, letting you get your work done without being frustrated. Xfce embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of a number of components that provide the full functionality one can expect of a modern desktop environment. They are packaged separately and you can pick among the available packages to create the optimal personal working environment. See More

Top Con

Unsupported by Canonical, crappy dist-upgrades

Top Pro

Very customisable

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. 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 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 Pro

Best for newcomers

Any one new to Linux feels comfortable using it. 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

HiDPI display support

It has HiDPI support, but requires adjusting settings. In Settings Manager → Settings Editor → xsettings → xft DPI can be adjusted. Setting it to around 180 should work well for "Retina" screens. See More

Top Pro

Designed for productivity

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

Low resource usage combined with flexible configuration

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 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

See All

score 15 · Answer 3

MATE

Top Pro

Easy on resources

Barely going above 220MB of RAM use out of the box See More

Top Con

No official forum

Instead of having an official forum, users are redirected to their distributions support forums. See More

Hypersphere's Experience

MATE is my second choice after Xfce. It is a stable conventional desktop. Owing to its intuitive design, it is easy to configure and use. See More

Specs

License:GPL

Programming Language:mostly C

Widget Toolkit:GTK+

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

Top Con

Unfriendly and hostile developers

fabricio lujano's Experience

Amazing Desktop Environment. It looks amazing. Some default theme are a bit outdated but there is A LOT of GTK3 modern themes, icons, docks like plank, is very customizable. Is lightweight, easy to use daily. Just Amazing. The application set included are super nice!! See More

Top Pro

Very stable

Code base is very stable and virtually bug-free. 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

Mark Shepherdson's Experience

Runs good See More

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

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

Distraction-free environment

Top Con

Issues with changing users permissions and access

Top Pro

Modern experience at low-cost resources.

Based on gtk3 makes it compatible with modern theming and still lightweight making your system use the resources in the apps not in the desktop environment. See More

Top Con

Dated look and feel

Outdated aesthetic. 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

Not very likely to have new features

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

Top Pro

Decently customizable

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

Has window borders

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

Top Pro

Has menu icons

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

See All

score 25 · Answer 4

KDE

Top Pro

Highly customisable

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

Top Con

Perceived clunkyness and slowness

Compared to other options, KDE is still perceived slow. Especially, the desktop takes a few seconds to login. Mouse pointer can feel sluggish, or laggy, on older systems See More

Hypersphere's Experience

KDE is bloated, buggy, and unstable. It can also be confusing for new users. Linux Mint will be dropping KDE from its lineup and keeping Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. The only reason I would recommend KDE is if you have a multiple monitor setup and want to use the center or right-hand monitor as your primary screen. With KDE FolderView you can do this quite easily. However, I find that the negatives of KDE outweigh this one advantage. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

KDE is awesome but it is overcomplicated for newbies for sure

Way too many options for newbies to digest before the learning curve is over. See More

ExcitedPan's Experience

No problem for my mom, neither any client I ever migrated (with a lot o fear from their part before using for the first time), the first impression is always: WOW! So fast!... See More

Top Pro

Looks beautiful

The design of the three built-in desktop themes; Air, Breeze, and Oxygen, are very beautiful to some. 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. Everything in the log in screen will be displayed too small, as well as some areas of the OS. See More

Top Pro

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

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

Poorly named app menu with too many apps starting with "K"

This is better in KDE Neon with minimalist apps, which indeed in itself points out the problem. 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

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

KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model

KDE 4 is a great evolution on the classic Win95/Gnome/XFCE approach. It's moving in innovative directions while respecting the classic metaphors. See More

Top Con

Interfaces are inconsistent and ugly in 4.x

While parts of KDE in 4.x can be very good looking, a common opinion is that the style is too hobbled together with inconsistent icons and styles clashing with each other. See More

Top Pro

Active development

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 Pro

Integrated components

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 Pro

Bunch of coherent applications

What make plasma so nice is the galaxy of apps, sharing same look and feel, configuration and behaviour. See More

Top Pro

The search with the Windows Key is as awesome

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 Pro

The session manager works perfectly

This is a much better session manager compared to solutions from other Linux desktop environments. 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

See All

score 2 · Answer 5

Deepin DE

Top Pro

Can be made to look like Windows easily.

You can easily make it look kinda like Windows by right-clicking on the dock and selecting "Efficient mode". See More

Specs

Price:Free

Programming language:Qt, Deepin Tool kit, C++, Golang

Available for:Deepin, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Archlinux, Gentoo, Fedora, Sparky Linux, Puppy Linux, Pardus, Antergos, Manjaro

Top Pro

Includes quality programs

It has some of it's own programs which are quite beautiful. See More

Top Pro

Stable

Top Pro

Quite lightweight

Top Pro

Easy to use

Deepin DE is very simple. See More

Top Pro

Very beautiful

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

See All

score 6 · Answer 6

Budgie

Top Pro

Minimal and gorgeous

Top Con

Less light weight than you would expect

Budgie has a nice and simple style, but the memory usage is quite high after booting. See More

TrustworthyCastor's Experience

Budgie is more like Windows 10 desktop environment, i like it more than Cinnamon See More

Top Pro

Built from scratch and integrates into current technologies

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

Very lightweight

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

Top Con

Does not properly support multi monitor

Top Pro

Can emulate Gnome 2 desktop look

The Budgie desktop can emulate the classic Gnome 2 look. See More

Top Con

Sometimes buggy

Budgie can sometimes be buggy. 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

Package manager is hard to use

All systems that use anything other then dpkg or RPM are just useless since you can't install external apps e.g. TeamViewer by clicking and must use stupid commands or extraction tools that don't work See More

Top Con

Very hard to install

Installing in distros that are not ubuntu based can be hard. See More

Top Con

Not a desktop environment

It's just a replacement for the GNOME-shell and you still need a GNOME-desktop installed at the same time. See More

Top Con

Issues with proprietary drivers and Mutter

Mutter causes issues with screen tearing and microstuttering in most applications especially with NVidia GPUs. See More

See All

score 8 · Answer 7

Gnome

Top Pro

Easy to use

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 Con

No taskbar by default

GNOME doesn't have a taskbar by default, and might be confusing to people migrating from Windows for that reason. It is however possible to install it through http://extensions.gnome.org. See More

ProductiveDumakulem's Experience

Just the best and at least we are away from the windows UI. Something different that works. See More

Top Pro

Very productive

With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome 3 is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer. See More

Top Con

Extension system is basically unsupported

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

Top Pro

Great for high dpi displays

Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high resolution laptops and far away TVs. See More

Top Con

Some areas are unpolished and lack features

Some aspects are still unpolished and lack features - the gnome design team works well, but seems to not be taking input from the outside world. See More

Top Pro

Does not get in the way

GNOME 3 lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications. See More

Top Con

It tries to reinvent the wheel

It isn't a traditional interface. Very different to adjust to. See More

Top Pro

Adheres to standards

Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops. See More

Top Pro

Online account management

GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place. See More

Top Pro

Powerful search

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

Top Pro

Customizable with easy-to-install extensions

With the right plugin enabled in your browser (comes with Firefox by default) you can browse and install with two clicks the many Shell Extensions available from http://extensions.gnome.org. These are listed automatically based upon the version of Gnome Shell you currently have installed. 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 Pro

Keyboard friendly

It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard. Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting. There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9. See More

Top Pro

Easy theming

Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk). individually for each user. Mostly its installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool. There a lot of really good theme on deviantart. See More

Top Pro

Fallback mode offers a classic look

For people looking for older, more classic looks, Fallback mode offers just that. Ubuntu users can have this option by installing a package called "GNOME-Session-Fallback." In the future to be released GNOME 3.8, the Fallback Mode will not be included, so this is really not a long-term solution. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 8

Peppermint Linux OS

score 2 · Answer 9

KDE Plasma

score 9 · Answer 10

7 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Cinnamon

My Recommendation for Cinnamon

Designed for traditional desktops

Crashes

Responsive developers

Has been known to have issues with Steam even in the past year

Easy transition

Very customizable

Simple and easy to get used to

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

Fast, elegant and stable interface

Lots of downloadable free themes

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

Linux Mint Cinnamon has been the most successful OS in the past 3-5 years, and for good reason

My Recommendation for Xfce

My Recommendation for Xfce

Very stable

Very slow developement

Lightweight

Looks ugly out of the box

It has perfect balance between simplicity and usability

Looks dated

Classic and familiar

Unsupported by Canonical, crappy dist-upgrades

Very customisable

Lacks modern design and effects

Low system resource consumption

Best for newcomers

Adheres to standards

HiDPI display support

Designed for productivity

Works on a wide variety of platforms

Low resource usage combined with flexible configuration

Does what it's meant to do easily and efficiently

A true UNIX Desktop Environment

My Recommendation for MATE

My Recommendation for MATE

Easy on resources

No official forum

Works great on old machines

Unfriendly and hostile developers

Very stable

Requires XML for wallpaper slideshow.

Traditional desktop experience

MATE lacks customized desktop icon placement on multiple monitors

Distraction-free environment

Issues with changing users permissions and access

Modern experience at low-cost resources.

Dated look and feel

Multiple panels work great across multiple displays

Not very likely to have new features

Decently customizable

Not really user friendly

Has window borders

Has menu icons

My Recommendation for KDE

My Recommendation for KDE

Highly customisable

Perceived clunkyness and slowness

Open source

KDE is awesome but it is overcomplicated for newbies for sure

Looks beautiful

HiDPI support is spotty

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

Poorly named app menu with too many apps starting with "K"

Keyboard friendly

Stability problems

KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model

Interfaces are inconsistent and ugly in 4.x

Active development

Integrated advanced search

Integrated components

Bunch of coherent applications

The search with the Windows Key is as awesome

Adheres to standards

The session manager works perfectly

Multi-Device "Convergence"

My Recommendation for Deepin DE

My Recommendation for Deepin DE