My Favorite Linux Desktop Environment and Why

With so many desktop environments designed for Linux, there is something for everyone. There are also window managers, but in this article I will talk about desktop environments. Also, please keep in mind that this is about my personal preferences and can vary quite a bit from person to person.

I have been using Linux for a while now, and during my first year, I did a lot of distro-hopping. This gave me a chance to see different desktop environments with different looks from the distro vendor. Some of them had useful plugins, different wallpapers, etc., so there is even variance within the same desktop environment. However, they have core features that doesn’t change so much, kind of like main characteristics of the environments. For example, Gnome doesn’t have desktop icons. There have been several drafts of desktop icon plugins, but they can’t maintain the native feel of desktop icons on XFCE or Mate. In fact, Mate is a fork of Gnome 2, and it also had desktop icon support. However, during the development of Gnome 3, desktop icons were removed.

Gnome vs. XFCE

Gnome may not have desktop icons, but that can’t be the only reason not to prefer it. In fact, Gnome is my second favorite. However, Gnome has a faster development cycle, so if you prefer to use a rolling release Linux distribution, even the latest stable releases of Gnome may have bugs compared to, let’s say, XFCE. Gnome does have Wayland support, though, compared to XFCE. XFCE still doesn’t officially support Wayland as of this writing. Also, Gnome does not have quad window placement when you drag a window to the edge of the screen, while XFCE has it by default, so even though it is a very small thing, it annoys me.

Mate

Mate is a continuation of Gnome 2 and it also has a slow development cycle, just like XFCE. Mate also has official support for Wayland. Mate also has applications based on Gnome 2’s applications. For example, it uses a text editor called pluma, which is based on gedit 2, the text editor that was made for Gnome 2. Personally, I think that Mate has a more specific user base like people who used to use Gnome 2. I haven’t spent that much time with Mate other than installing and trying it out, so I don’t have that much experience with it.

KDE

As for KDE, my first desktop environment when I first installed Linux was KDE because it has the best customization and the best look and feel. It has native support for blur effects with its KWin compositor, and that is well implemented in themes and the overall desktop. Blur can be achieved to some degree in other desktop environments, but KDE’s blur comes out of the box. KDE also seems to have extensive customization support with customizable panels, desktop widgets, and more. It also supports native desktop icons and quad window placement. Only, with its extensive support, it also has a lot of bugs. I’m not sure how much has changed, but I tried KDE on an Nvidia machine and the experience was a nightmare at best. I barely used the machine because every time I closed my laptop lid, it would log me out due to a crash in the desktop environment. It wasn’t a great start to Linux for a newbie by any means. I managed to fix some of the major bugs at the time, but once I ran Ubuntu with Gnome in a virtual machine and did some tinkering, I realized that there were properly working desktop environments out there. It also worked fine on my Nvidia machine at the time. There are more reasons for this experience, such as better Nvidia support from Canonical and such. However, I tried KDE again later, and I still think it is too buggy to be a desktop for some who just expect things to work. When was it fun to get annihilated by a black screen in the middle of a meeting?

Cinnamon and Pantheon

Cinnamon is based on Gnome 3, but is heavily modified and doesn’t look like Gnome 3 at all. I haven’t had much experience with it, but from what I’ve seen, it’s great. I find it very similar to Elementary OS’s Pantheon desktop environment. They are unique, but the base they use is not comparable to something like Gnome or XFCE. They also have specific distributions that come with them. I would prefer to use something more generalized with lots of resources on the web, but I do like the look and feel of Cinnamon and Pantheon though. Especially when I’m bored of Windows and Linux, I run Elementary OS with it’s Pantheon desktop so I get a different experience.

In summary, my preference is for XFCE. It has the best features and stability in my opinion. Beside all that, it can also quite customizable. I think that if XFCE came with a more attractive look, it would catch a lot more attention. However, most of the people who use XFCE already know what they want and what they will get. XFCE supports panel-based customization, just like KDE. It has a central settings application where all customizations can be managed. However, it doesn’t have a theme installer application like KDE does, instead relying on a package manager and themes that can be installed manually, which is how it should be. It has very well managed startup application settings, similar to the Windows task manager, and has manual settings. It’s desktop applications are simple, lightweight, but to the point and just get the job done. I’m one of those who think software should be simple but right on the purpose. Simplicity makes a program work better, and developers should admit that they can’t think of every detail. So just keep it simple. For these reasons, I prefer XFCE. It is safe to say that my second choice would be Gnome.