When comparing dwm vs Gnome, the Slant community recommends dwm for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop environments for Arch Linux?” dwm is ranked 7th while Gnome is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose dwm is:
Dwm is a low-resource window manager that is entirely simplistic in design.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple and small
Dwm is a low-resource window manager that is entirely simplistic in design.
Pro Encourages user modification
Dwm is part of the suckless suite of tools, and encourages users to extend and configure it by modifying the code itself. To this end, dwm is kept under 2000 SLOC, and is an exemplar of clean, readable code (C). This, while giving users all the flexibility they could ask for, also makes dwm as lightweight as possible, and means that users have a full understanding of how it works.
Pro XRandR/Xinerama support
Dwm has support for XRandR and Xinerama, allowing for multi-monitor support.
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.
Pro Sane defaults
Uses Master&Stack layout by default.
Pro Minimalist
Small and easy to digest source for those who want to patch it.
Pro Easy to configure
Configuring dwm is straight-forward thanks to its config.h file (though it will have to be rebuilt for the effects to take place).
Pro Fast
Feels even faster than others minimal window manager.
Pro Very customizable
The clean code and the patches allow us to configure dwm to be exactly what we want.
Pro Default keybindings and functionality are very useful and well thought-out
An example of this is the application of alt-tab to switch between two tags.
Pro No glitches
Imagine a window manager that works perfectly in every situation. No glitches, no delays, no slow downs, no focus problems. Even the best window managers out there have glitches but dwm. Dwm works flawless.
Pro Useful and informative status bar
The dwm status bar can be set to display all kinds of useful information, such as volume level, wifi signal strength, and battery notification.
Pro Application grouping with tags
Dwm's design paradigm is to use tags to group clients (applications) that can then be pulled into a view (workspace); this allows you to view multiple clients at once and to assign or reassign those tags and their related views on the fly.
Contrary to most other window managers, when you view a tag you are not ‘visiting’ a workspace: you are pulling the tagged windows into a single workspace.
Combined with rules in the config.h
, this makes for a flexible and responsive means to manage your workflow.
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.
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.
Pro Online account management
GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place.
Pro Adheres to standards
Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.
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.
Pro Great for high dpi displays
Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high resolution laptops and far away TVs.
Pro Powerful search
A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cons
Con No runtime config file
There is no config file that can be edited after the window manager is compiled: all changes need to be made prior to compiling.
Con By developers, for developers
Basic knowledge of C language, general programming, and compilation are all required.
Con The patch system breaks the code
To add features one has to patch the original code. That maybe easy to do with only one patch, but things can go down hill after 3+ patches, specially for those who don't know how to code on C.
Con More latency
It uses Xlib instead of XCB.
Con X11 only
X11 is outdated and insecure, there are Wayland clones such as Velox and dwl, but dwm still takes the cake.
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.
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.
Con Extension system is basically unsupported
Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment.
Con It tries to reinvent the wheel
It isn't a traditional interface. Very different to adjust to.