KDE is best.

windowmaker is not listed and it should be, even if its not popular I think it deserves a mention.

Windowmaker is a window manager, and it therefore in the Window Manager of the Year category.

--jeremy

Ive got to say that as far as general growth in DE popularity, its probably got to be lxde this year. I remember about a year and a half ago, very few people were even aware of its existence, it really burst on to the scene in full force this year and gained a lot of converts. LXDE's got my vote for this year.

Xfce.

Wow I thought Xfce was going to win this poll. It still did really well considering it's not the featured desktop for most of the major Distros.

I did take a look at Kde the other day though. It's definitely improved and looks nice compared to what it was. I wish it was a bit faster. It's noticeably slower compared to Xfce, even with a specced out system.

lxde

Yes, well done to Xfce. I guess, however, that the reason it came second is the cock-up of the Gnome team.

Sure, a Gnome cock-up. However, Xfce was there to pick up the market share. People could have easily gone for KDE, or MATE, or LXDE. But according to this poll it seems that they flocked for Xfce. This probably shows some intrinsic value.

Yes, it does. I'm not denying it. I'm using a window manager myself but if I were to use a desktop environment, it'd definitely be Xfce (especially with 4.8 and Thunar's networking capabilities)

Comparing this year to last year, there has been a Great Schism in GNOME. KDE has kept about the same amount of votes, while XFCE surged from 15% to 27%, and variances of GNOME such as Unity, MATE, and the standard Shell came about. Adding together of the percentages of the gains in LXDE and XFCE and the GNOME-lets gives us roughly the same percent as GNOME last year. Will GNOME come back together or fall apart?
I personally switched back to KDE in wake of 12.1 approaching over the summer. GNOME 3 isn't too bad for me, just different and weird, and if was tweaked a little might be good. In the past,
(starting with KDE 2.5\GNOME 2.16) I've bounced around between the two and have voted differently over the years. I've always used SUSE though.

Gnome3 developers take note. We obviously do NOT like the direction you've taken us and are abandoning the sinking ship in droves....

Gnome2 remains my choice. That it isn't in the list to be chosen is a fault of the survey.

Xfce is my favorite Desktop.

Why is there no mention of Enlightenment? I find that to be a beautiful DE though for my main computer I am still using Gnome 3.2 I might soon be moving over to Enlightenment completely with Bodhi Linux. KDE has somehow been a bit unstable to my taste.