Top 10 Linux desktops

[simonlang]

The Linux desktop is one of the most important things about your Linux experience, aiding or supporting your workflow and tasks in many ways. We look at the top ten available for various distros right now to try and help you decide?[/size]

KDE (Plasma 5)

The beautiful desktop has just received a major upgrade that reflects more modern aesthetics

Best for: Home leisure

Associated distros: Kubuntu, openSUSE, Mageia

Workflow: Uses the traditional desktop metaphor, with a window bar and program menu. Files, folders and widgets can be organised on the desktop as well

 

To us, KDE has always been the desktop that has had the best aesthetics. Everything is uniform and beautiful. However, the designs sometimes get stuck in the time they were made in, and KDE Plasma 4 looks a little bit dated in 2014. However, that?s all about to change as Plasma 5 has launched with a brand new look and a slightly different workflow.[/size]

KDE versus GNOME was the desktop battle of the previous decade, with sides apparently leaning towards GNOME but with plenty of reasons why you should check out KDE. In the end, neither really won and, while still very popular, they?re no longer in the zeitgeist like your Cinnamons or Unitys. Plasma 5 may not be quite the spark to get the old rivalry going again but it?s definitely an interesting update to the desktop environment.

Firstly, the workflow is roughly the same: a mouse-led workflow for organising windows on the desktop and on the bottom panel, listed in the traditional method. KDE popularised widgets on the Linux desktop and they remain in the latest version of the desktop, including the interesting folder view from Plasma 4. While this is not activated by default like the previous KDE, it can be added like any other widget to better organise your files and desktop.

The new aesthetics for Plasma 5 are really very nice. Crisp, clean straight lines of modern computers and extremely well-labelled in the process. It?s absolutely wonderful to use when it?s working and reminds us of using Cinnamon for the first time when that was the king of design, and KDE 4 before that.

It is still a touch buggy, though, and doesn?t play nicely with other installations of KDE 4 on the same distro. It?s also not readily available through repositories yet, so you?ll have to go looking on Google for instructions on how to install it ? for major distros this usually involves downloading installation files, or adding a repository/PPA to your system and then installing it from there. Otherwise you need to look into compiling it from source.

Plasma 5 is definitely one to keep an eye on as it matures over the next six months, and we?re interested to see if new usable features will be added rather than design overhauls.

 

 

GNOME

The veteran desktop environment is forging a new path of its own that not everyone agrees with

Best for: Development, touchscreens

Associated distros: Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Workflow: The system is designed for both touchscreens and keyboard-heavy navigation via shortcuts, reducing the emphasis on the mouse

 

 

The GNOME desktop is probably the most well-known desktop in all of Linux, in no small part due to its extreme popularity during the last decade. It was the desktop of choice for a lot of distros, although there wasn?t as much choice as there is now, meaning most Linux users active in the Noughties will have encountered it at least once in their lifetime.[/size]

Things change, though, and GNOME received a radical overhaul in 2011 that didn?t go down so well with several vocal members of the community. The all-important workflow of GNOME 2 was dropped for a brand new design that relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts along with mouse control. Over the intervening years, features have been added that imply a touch- focused interface reminiscent of the way you?d control running apps and windows on a smartphone or tablet.

The current philosophy behind GNOME seems to be a drive towards simplicity. Many native apps only contain the bare minimum features for the task they perform, such as the GNOME browser and the network managing tools. When maximised, windows lose the ability to be exited via the classic x symbol in the corner. In fact, normal windows do not have a maximising or minimising button. Toolbars are accessed from the top panel in an effort to keep things neat and tidy, to possibly increase screen real estate, and generally give the whole desktop a more smartphone-esque appearance.

There are a number of issues that this can cause. As the design goes against the traditional ?desktop metaphor? seen in most desktop environments, it can take some time for people to adjust ? especially if you sometimes need to go back to more traditional desktops in the meantime. The reliance on keyboard shortcuts also means that mousing around the desktop requires many more actions than before.

With a bit of practice and know-how, learning the new workflow and switching out the default apps can lead to an excellent desktop with advanced search capabilities. It will still have a few quirks about it, and there?s no real way to use it on a touchscreen just yet, but it may well be a forward- thinking move if technology does go that way.

 

 

Unity

Ubuntu?s desktop environment is part of a distro and device- spanning concept

Best for: Family computer, media PC

Associated distros: Ubuntu, LXLE

Workflow: Use of search and the HUD to perform actions as well as regular browsing

of the side bar to click between apps. Good for touchscreens

 

 

One of the most controversial desktops to date, Unity is part of Canonical?s grand vision for an overarching Linux distro ? in this case Ubuntu ? across several types of devices. Being familiar with the desktop means you should be able to get started straight away on the phone interface as well, or at least that?s the theory. Launched in 2010 and becoming Ubuntu?s default desktop in 2011, Unity is a graphical shell that sits on top of GNOME and was originally implied as an alternative to GNOME 3 when it was released (to divisive reception around the same time).[/size]

Unity takes the search aspect of modern desktops and tries to split it up into categories for easier navigation, which is particularly handy if you?re not sure exactly what you?re looking for. What kind of music are you feeling in the mood to listen to today? Maybe you should scroll through the music tab to find out. Even if you do search, you can then easily drill down between these lenses and even add more as you see fit. The launcher on the side acts as a quick launch and a way to switch between open applications, with a focus on application-switching rather than window- switching by default.

There are also some extra minor features like the HUD, a way to access items in the toolbar of any open or in-focus applications instead of mousing through menus. It?s an interesting system but, as a lot of workflow is based on muscle-memory or only remembering the vague description of menu items, it?s not always helpful.

It?s very much one of the more touch-friendly desktops, so much so that it almost makes the mouse seem like a hindrance to the operation of the desktop. Much like GNOME it can be keyboard-heavy in a lot of senses, however it generally feels a little more usable than the current GNOME shell because the mouse isn?t completely obsolete.

While Unity is heavily tied to Ubuntu it is open source and said source is available for you to use. It?s not regularly packaged in repos, though, so you will have to find a third-party repository or build it from scratch.

 

 

Cinnamon

The former GNOME fork that has emerged as one of the more powerful and flexible desktop environments

Best for: ??Office, everyday computing

Associated distros: Linux Mint, Antergos

Workflow: Traditional desktop metaphor relying on mouse navigation with windows on a taskbar but with extra keyboard shortcuts to facilitate navigation

 

 

Linux Mint has been around longer than the GNOME shell or Unity, and in fact used GNOME 2 as its default desktop for a time. Like Ubuntu, once GNOME updated the desktop to its current version, the team at Linux Mint decided they wanted to use something slightly different.[/size]

After trying out a release with the Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE) to bring the desktop to a more recognisable state, the team forked GNOME to create the Cinnamon desktop for the following release. The design ethos of Cinnamon has been to take the advanced features of GNOME ? namely notification integration and desktop search ? and package them in the more familiar format of the so-called traditional desktop metaphor. This includes an application menu and open windows listed on the panel at the bottom.

In addition to these basic features is a highly customisable applets section that lists and accesses specific services such as networking, updates, notifications, display resolution, and more. Features can be added and removed from here and in recent updates they will smartly sense when a different application is handling

some of these core tasks and make sure icons don?t double up. Cinnamon is very much about not compromising. There are no features included just for the sake of a philosophy or corporate deal. There is no unnecessary branding, and the interface is quite minimalist in size but not function. Everything is neatly labelled and presented to maximise finding your way around the desktop and file manager.

It?s most certainly not touch-friendly, though. Menus are small and designed to maximise screen real estate, making buttons difficult to press if that?s how you want to use them. In terms of keyboard shortcuts, the basic super key to open the search and Ctrl+Alt+direction key still work as they do in GNOME. However, Down and Up expose everything on the workspace or across all workspaces respectively.

Cinnamon is now no longer a fork of GNOME, having become its own desktop and not just a shell around this time last year. This means it can grow beyond the boundaries set by GNOME and optimise the underlying code a bit more. However, it does result in a slightly less mature codebase. There are no major issues with it now, though.

 

XFCE

The first major lightweight desktop takes some design notes from GNOME 2 but forges its own path

Best for: old computers, veteran users

Associated distros: Xubuntu, Debian

Workflow: A simplistic design utilising panels and a program menu that?s best manipulated by mouse, with open windows listed separately

 

 

With its built-in GTK+ 2 toolkit like the previous version of GNOME, XFCE apes its panel layout and basic workflow. It?s one of the oldest lightweight desktop environments around and more than likely popularised the concept once it was used for Xubuntu in the late Noughties. It?s not the most well-known light desktop, with LXDE winning the popularity contest between the two these days. XFCE still has its loyal followers, though, due to being reminiscent of the older GNOME 2 design and being one the few desktops with a dock bar.[/size]

XFCE is comprised of said dock bar as well as a main panel on the top of the screen. This includes a program menu that not only includes the main software categories but also contains separate categories for system settings and preferences. Open windows are listed on this top panel while quick links to a customisable selection of apps is located on the dock bar. The dock bar doesn?t hide by default; it acts like a border for open windows, reducing screen real estate unless it?s removed or the hiding feature activated. You can also make the top panel hide to truly maximise screen real estate.

As for lightness, recent benchmarks put XFCE at about 89 MB of memory, which is slightly higher than LXDE. XFCE is slowly making the update to GTK+ 3, which will increase this number. For now, though, it?s still a lot lighter than the likes of KDE and Cinnamon and will likely still be significantly less resource- intensive even when on GTK+ 3. It?s also slightly more functional than LXDE, with more going on in terms of the panel and the dock bar and more. Choosing between the two is very much a balancing act and depends on whether or not your system can spare a few more megabytes for a slightly more usable desktop.

 

 

LXDE

The lightest desktop that doesn?t sacrifice usability for the sake of a few extra cycles

Best for: very old systems, underpowered and single-board computers

Associated distros: Lubuntu, Raspbian, Knoppix

Workflow: LXDE uses a minimal traditional desktop metaphor, with a panel at the bottom with access to programs and a mouse-orientated navigation system

 

 

 

LXDE is so ubiquitous with being lightweight it?s in the name. The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment is newer software than XFCE, debuting in the late Noughties when GNOME and KDE were still the top two desktops around. Like XFCE it?s built on GTK+, but it resembles KDE 3 more with its take on the desktop. It?s about as minimalist you can get without actively losing the features of a standard or traditional desktop. It?s so concerned with resource use that a CPU monitor is incorporated into the panel by default.[/size]

LXDE is a very mouse-driven desktop. There are no important keyboard shortcuts and everything needs to be accessed via point-and- click. Windows are typically arranged on panel and the window styling is incredibly minimalist. The program menu holds the standard range of categories for programs and access to settings and such. All the default LXDE apps are quite basic but they?re all quite customisable in the process. There?s nothing really quantifiably special about LXDE in terms of workflow ? it?s just that it has a good basic workflow while being as lightweight as it is.

Specifically, LXDE uses only 78MB of RAM, which is 20MB on top of Openbox as a pure window manager. While this is only 11MB less than XFCE, if you?re only running on 256MB of RAM, that?s a big enough amount to care. This is why LXDE is used on Raspbian, as the Raspberry Pi really cannot handle much.

In terms of eking out every last drop of a more powerful system, the gains made between XFCE and LXDE are extremely negligible as you?re getting into serious diminishing returns when you?re concerning yourself over ten megabytes on an eight gigabyte system.

 

MATE

A fork and continuation of the GNOME 2 code

Best for: veteran users looking for modern features

??Associated distros: Linux Mint, Snowlinux

 

 

Cinnamon?s lighter counterpart is the continuation of the older GNOME 2 line, forking the code when some users were unsatisfied with the direction of the GNOME Shell. The MATE team?s design goals are to keep the GNOME 2 style of desktop alive and up-to-date, incorporating modern desktop features such as notifications and application/file search.[/size]

It?s best for veteran users that prefer the workflow style of the classic GNOME 2 desktop: everything accessible from the top bar without hunting through separate apps, windows displayed on the bottom panel and a mouse-centric design. It?s currently in a fair few distros and is being added to more all the time. It?s much lighter than the likes of GNOME, KDE and Cinnamon too, but can?t really compete with LXDE or XFCE.

 

 

Enlightenment

An alternative lightweight option with a unique yet familiar look

Best for: Highly custom, light setups

Associated distros: Bodhi Linux, Elive

 

 

 

Enlightenment relies on a slightly atypical panel on the screen that contains system info and a list of open windows. The program menu is accessible from this panel, but right-clicking anywhere on an empty part of the desktop will also bring up the options. As the panel doesn?t properly take up the whole bottom of the screen it actually seems like you?re missing out on screen real estate, but Enlightenment uses it quite well.[/size]

It?s very fast, light and mouse-heavy in its use. Due to the way the program menu is hidden away, it?s not the best candidate for a touchscreen, and it doesn?t really have a range of useful keyboard shortcuts either. It?s a very overlooked desktop that doesn?t use GTK or Qt to power it, making it much better at running a mixture of differently coded apps.

 

 

LXQt

The Qt port of the lightweight desktop has some visual differences

Best for: old computers, test machines

Associated distros: none

A port of the excellent LXDE to Qt instead of the GTK it?s currently built on, LXQt is also the successor to a desktop called RazorQt that we had the pleasure of using for a period last year. It certainly rates as one of our favourite desktops. LXQt takes some of the aesthetic flourishes of KDE and other Qt apps and applies it to the LXDE framework ? perfect for if you?re the sort of person who uses a lot of Qt apps and would prefer a lightweight desktop, as it?s the only lightweight Qt-based one around.

Recent benchmarks show RAM usage around 96MB, which puts it slightly higher than XFCE and significantly above LXDE. However, the developers of LXDE admit that with some better optimisation this number will surely go down and will definitely be lower than a GTK+ 3 XFCE.

The workflow is basically the same as LXDE, so moving over from one to the other isn?t a big hassle.

 

 

Openbox

The window manager can easily be used as a hyper- minimalist desktop

Best for: developer systems

Associated distros: CrunchBang Linux, Lubuntu

 

 

Openbox is usually thought of as more of a window manager ? the thing that controls the window?s aesthetics and placement within the desktop environment. However, Openbox can also be used entirely on its own without any other desktop overlay for the most minimal desktop imaginable, using the lowest amount of resources possible.[/size]

There are no panels by default, although if you want to then you can add some with other software, and clicking on the desktop opens a program menu that lets you access the different apps and some of the settings. However, Openbox can be not only quite impractical but difficult to get used to if you don?t add any extra UI elements.

If you?ve installed LXDE then it will usually show up as an alternate desktop environment on login and is the main window manager of the lightweight desktop.

 

source

[rwx]

And I'd just like to add the Trinity Desktop Environment: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ to the list - KDE 3.5x resurrected - the preferred and only choice for me. Fast, efficeint, functional and logical.

[cork1958]

Hmm,

Have never tried the LXDE desktop and I have access to several older, single board computers around. May have to give it shot.

 

Thanks, excellent post. :)

[Haggis Veteran]

Good post

I used KDE up until I tried gnome shell.

I now use cinnamon on Linux mint and it'd the best desktop I have ever used

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Don't forget Pantheon and Awesome.

 

I use XFCE4 on Crunchbang.

[daorbed9]

Good post

I used KDE up until I tried gnome shell.

I now use cinnamon on Linux mint and it'd the best desktop I have ever used

 

I agree Cinnamon is very good.  It feel very polished vs some of the others.

[123456789A]

Command line interface is the way to go.

[Max Norris]

Command line interface is the way to go.

Indeed, not a fan of the desktops but console is were it really shines.  

[simplezz]

A good description of the popular desktops Jack. Personally, I'm an XFCE or tty guy myself. Although most are pretty good these days and I could get by with any of them with some customisation.

This is the best thing about GNU/Linux and FOSS. if you don't like a particular desktop or workflow, it's easy to switch to one of the many others.

[simplezz]

It should also be noted that Whisker Menu improves XFCE significantly. I bind it to a shortcut key. Then I can access the menu and find what I'm looking for without ever touching the mouse.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

It should also be noted that Whisker Menu improves XFCE significantly. I bind it to a shortcut key. Then I can access the menu and find what I'm looking for without ever touching the mouse.

 

+1 I can't live without Whisker. Gladly, it's available OTB on Debian Jessie. But not Wheezy :(