When comparing XGnome Enhanced vs Papirus, the Slant community recommends Papirus for most people. In the question“What are the best gtk3 themes?” Papirus is ranked 3rd while XGnome Enhanced is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Papirus is:
All icons look pleasing, especially with the Arc theme.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports many versions of Gnome Shell
XGnome Enhanced supports Gnome Shell versions going all the way back to Gnome Shell 3.6.
Pro Offers PPA for easy install on Ubuntu
There is an optional PPA for easy install on Ubuntu.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/themes && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install xgnome-enhanced-gs
Pro Designed to be modern and minimal
The XGnome Enhanced theme is deigned to be modern and minimal. It is a very dark theme with clean lines.
Pro Sharp, flat, and fresh
All icons look pleasing, especially with the Arc theme.
Pro Familiar
Used on Lubuntu and BunsenLabs, for example.
Pro Active development
Cons
Con PPA does not work
For example, you'd get errors like "Unable to locate package xgnome-enhanced-gs."
Con Under GNU GPL3
This limits the use elsewhere.
Con Contrast issues / No border around icons
It makes the the fast and makes it simple to add more icons(since you can simply scale them) however the contrast is lost in some situations.
Con No Ideas
It just copies the icon-syle from a different system.
Con Just another material style copy
Con Lacks icon for backintime
Backintime tray icon doesn't display on the panel because Papirus lacks the icon.
