When comparing Common Desktop Environment vs UKUI, the Slant community recommends UKUI for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like Desktop Environments for everyday users?” UKUI is ranked 14th while Common Desktop Environment is ranked 21st.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Stays out of your way
Has the drawer concept and the middle button on the mouse has a use again.
Pro Mature
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.
Pro Simplified MATE
Pro Nice feel
It's more like Windows 8 but besides that, it looks great.
Pro Stylish
Cons
Con Outdated UI
The graphical interface is very outdated and ugly.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.
Con Not fully translated
Con UI isn't optimized for lower end pc/laptops
Super slow UI that could take 3-6 seconds to popup. Gnome was slow but UKUI was very sluggish in comparison.
Con Looks like Windows 8
It just looks like Windows 8.