KDE Plasma Desktop Environment
Posted on 01/23/2019 7:17:26 AM PST by ShadowAce
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the best desktop environment of all?
While diversity is one of the best features of the Linux community, as users can try various options and find out which one suits the best for them, sometimes it can also create confusions. Especially if you’re new to Linux community, you can easily be overwhelmed by the number of choices you have. When it comes to Desktop Environments, there’s no exception. But trying out each and every desktop environments is a very time-consuming and tiring task.
Here, we’ve created a list of the best desktop environments available for Linux distros along with their pros and cons for you.
Just to mention, this is not the list for the best desktop environment for programming or any such specific purposes. Also, the list is not in any specific order.
KDE, rather than being only a desktop environment, is actually a collection of applications, one of which is the desktop environment itself. The latest iteration of KDE is called Plasma, which comes in two variations – Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook. KDE is the most customizable and flexible desktop environment available out there.
Where other desktop environments need extra tweak tools for customizing, for KDE it’s all baked into the system settings. You can personalize you desktop environment experience according to your needs without any third-party tools. You can download widgets, wallpapers, themes without even opening the web-browser.
KDE offers a good collection of basic applications and is compatible with all kinds of applications even if they’re not built using KDE Development Platform. The applications KDE comes bundled with offer various essential features, absent in their alternatives.
Whether you want a desktop environment that works just out of the box or you want a fully customized desktop experience, you can definitely choose KDE.
The major Linux distros using KDE as default are openSUSE and Kubuntu.
MATE Desktop Environment is based on the codebase of currently unmaintained GNOME 2. MATE was initially developed for the users who were disappointed with the latest iteration of GNOME shell – GNOME 3. Being a fork of an older desktop environment doesn’t mean that it runs on those obsolete technologies used back then. It just means that MATE took what already works and now continues to improve upon it using modern technologies.
MATE Desktop Environment offers the traditional desktop experience with a hint of modernism. And because it’s built on something that’s been tested and tweaked for years, it works seamlessly. It supports panel system with various menus, applets, indicators, buttons etc. and can be arranged however the user wants.
MATE comes with a collection of basic applications, most of which are forks of GNOME 2 applications. One other thing that makes MATE wonderful is that it consumes only a very small amount of memory for itself and thus is able to function properly on older and less powerful hardware.
Ubuntu MATE uses MATE as its default desktop environment.
GNOME is one of the most popular desktop environment in the world of Linux distros. Many of the popular Linux distros use GNOME as their default desktop environment and it has some popular forks, such as – Cinnamon, Unity etc. GNOME is designed to be easy to use and customizable. The latest iteration, GNOME 3 has a modern and attractive user interface and aims to provide better support for touch-based devices.
GNOME contains almost everything a modern desktop environment should have. Those who are uncomfortable with the modern user interface that comes with GNOME 3 and prefers the good old GNOME 2 experience, it provides a classic mode as well. Dashboard, system-wide search , powerful in-house applications that get the works done, themes, extensions support, window snapping are some of its key features. However, tweaking this desktop environment requires gnome-tweak-tool to be installed. In version 3.18 it has introduced some interesting features like integrated Google Drive in the file manager.
One of the downsides is that GNOME 3 draws a lot of memory because of its graphically heavy interface compared to some of its alternatives.
Some major distros using GNOME are Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu GNOME.
Suggest read: How to install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu
Cinnamon, a fork of GNOME 3, was initially developed to be and is the default desktop environment for Linux Mint. It is known for its similarities with the Windows user interface which helps the new Linux users from feeling uncomfortable with unfamiliar user interfaces.
Cinnamon contains various customizable components like the panel, themes, applets and extensions. The panel, initially across the bottom edge of the screen, is equipped with a main menu, application launchers, list of open windows and the system tray.
Cinnamon comes with various basic applications including some forks from GNOME 3.
Budgie is the newest in this list of desktop environments. It was created as the flagship desktop of Solus Linux. Though it is still being developed by Solus team, it’s intuitive and elegant interface made it popular among other distribution users. As a result, you can get Budgie in SUSE and Arch based Linux distributions. Ubuntu also has an official Budgie flavor, unsurprisingly called Ubuntu Budgie.
Budgie is based on GNOME. The looks and other Budgie specific changes are managed by Budgie settings while the rest of the settings can be configured by the regular GNOME settings.
As far as the system resources are concerned, Budgie is not that resource hungry but it’s not lightweight desktop environment as well. A moderate system with 2-3 GB RAM is sufficient for Budgie.
LXDE is an extremely fast and energy saving desktop environment. It’s designed to be lightweight and user-friendly while keeping the resource usage low. It embraces modular approach so that each of its components can be used independently and that’s what makes LXDE porting to almost every Linux distros, as well as BSD and Unix, easier.
LXDE comes with various code desktop components, accessories, system & configuration tools. It’s used in Lubuntu as default desktop environment.
The successor of LXDE, combining two open source projects LXDE and Razor-Qt, is LXQt. LXQt’s currently under development and aims to be lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment. It’s already available on a wide range of Linux distros.
Xfce is one of the most lightweight desktop environment for Linux, BSD & other Unix-like distros. Xfce offers a lite but modern, visually appealing and user-friendly interface. It comes with all the basic features you’ll need along with a decent set of applications.
Manjaro Linux and Xubuntu has Xfce as default desktop environment.
Every desktop environment is distinct in their nature and purpose. Which one’s the best desktop environment for Linux, actually depends on your needs. You have to try a few and decide for yourself which one suits you the best.
So, which desktop environment you use? You can share your desktop screenshots with us in the comment section.
I couldn’t live with KDE, and MATE looks like the 1990s are calling. Cinnamon and Gnome look like the best bests. Your XFCE also looks usable.
I am a big fan of KDE. Unfortuately, Mint has pretty abandoned KDE support. Switched to XFCE for my Mint VMs. Desktop will switch too whenever I get around to upgrading the hardware, probably later this year. Don’t feel like changing distros again, (used to run Fedora), so I’ll live with new DE instead.
Absolutely. Win 7 was not bad but when 10 came out it was the last straw with their foul ups, greed, and extortion practices. For the first time in decades I finally actually OWN my PC and OS not MS.
Cinnamon is basically Gnome with some added features. :)
Me too. Been running it for years as my primary. Hardly ever needs restarting. One thing bad and it's not the OS; the Mozilla Fox browser, which I prefer due to the addons I use, will hog memory until I shut down Fox and restart it.
I have three different browsers loaded to use as what fit’s my needs best.
I’m sure you are aware of this. But I have found despite what mozilla claims about cookies, even though I have my settings correct and Ghostery installed, I still have to clear my cache quite often to keep Firefox as quick as it should be.
does anyone use bsd?
Crap, I didn’t know there WERE 7, let alone 7 best.
Having lived on the Mac since 1985, I’ve never found the (Microsoft) environment to be that great.
As for Microsoft... These days, Microsoft is a minor evil deity. The true evil lies in Mountain View.
Having never owned or extensively used a Microsoft PC, I don’t find their environment that great.
I used to work for DEC. I’ve used UIS, Motif, the HP/UX environment, Sun (BSD & Solaris variants), Sri, & Apollo. My original Unix work was on X10. There are improvements in the windowing environments done by Linux devotees. It’s unfortunate that each of these environments is yet another distribution.
The 100 distributions pose another problem: Commercial software vendors are not going to support 100 distributions for their product.
As I’ve said elsewhere on this forum: Desktop Linux is a failure.
I’m typing this reply on a MacBook Pro. I’ve never felt that I don’t own my computer. With the Mac, I’ve been Microsoft free for a long time.
I honestly have no experience with Apple at all so I can’t judge it. But this is because I always felt the premium price for comparable equipment was far too high for what you get. Just like Apple phones that are no better than any of the others at half the price. Being a businessman I have never been fooled into paying more just for the name.
Me too. Fox, Chromium, and Brave. There's a built-in Ubuntu browser but I never use it. Maybe I should.
Good tip. Thanks!
You may be greatly lacking in knowledge about how it truly works. Almost all will run each others software. From what I understand there are very few proprietary programs at all.
That is the beauty of it. And there are some 50,000 + programs. And it is legal to write your own if you like without copyright issues. And it will run some windows programs and MAC OS X ware.
It’s the complete opposite of what you are stating here. In fact this very website you are on now is operating on Linux. You may want to do a little homework on this. I think the truth might surprise you.
“There’s a built-in Ubuntu browser but I never use it.”
What? I would have tried that FIRST! lol If you try it let me know if it has good security and cookie, ads. etc. control. I might give it a shot myself on this.
Know what? Come to think of it, what is the exact name for it and I will go grab it from the repository and try it. lol
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