Desktop Environment of the Year
 

If you're looking for Fluxbox, Window Maker, Enlightenment or similar options - they are in the Window Manager of the Year poll.

--jeremy

KDE, it continues to make strides in becoming the best free desktop on the market... Usability, looks, and especially features. Plus KDE (KDE4 specifically) has a bright future ahead of it.

Gnome, cause it is not so fancy as KDE (that's advantage) and also well does its job.

Xfce, it's much faster than Gnome or KDE, and still very userfrendly

Personally I really like KDE, it was the first GUI I used and came to enjoy the eye candy and the useful tools and applications. Gnome too is quite nice and has some useful tools and applications as well, but I think I'm just a KDE person, just like people are drawn to different distros. Xfce is quite a nice little GUI to if you want something fast or have an old machine with not much memory.

Gnome
 

Gnome sits well for me between the complexity of KDE and the (Desktop Environment) minimalist XFCE4, though I try them all a couple of times a year to keep abreast of developments.

For me, my Gnome desktop handles shares well, stays out of my way, and lets me do the work that I want to do. With the proper plugins, Nautilus is even decent these days.

Objectively I would say Gnome deserves the title . Because of its the progress it has MADE

Personal gut-feeling response would be KDE

i like gnome but i like KDE better. i also use xfce. but mostly i use KDE because its what im used to using all the time so i know it well.

Ive been stuck with KDE all the time from the beginning...tried gnome a few times..but just could not stick to it

By far the best improved and for it's features has to be KDE though I don't use it. (fluxbox here)

I mainly use Fluxbox, but I am giving XFce a good try and have to say I'm impressed. Will be interesting to see the changes to XFce 4.4.

I really like XFCE and GNOME, but KDE takes the title for me. It keeps on improving at a very fast rate and has a lot of features that are lacking in other DEs.

KDE is the most solid, the most complete, and the one who happens to have a vast number of good applications written for it. So, I voted KDE.

I use Gnome at the moment, but both KDE and Xfce have also made significant improvements in recent years.

I love Gnome unfortunately KDE is tacking the best steps in the right direction so my vote goes to kde, which I'm using in my FreeBSD desktop.

Gnome has really come a long way in usability and features this year! Now if we can just get it a little more memory efficient/speedy, it would rule... XFCE gets a close second though, maybe next year guys ;)

Of course it's KDE! :) I keeps on improving in every release. Besides, there are tons of applications that go with it that are quite useful.

I like KDE, Gnome, and XFCE4 very much, but I think KDE would be the biggest loss to the community if it were to go away forever.

KDE - because there is no other desktop!

(Disclaimer: I used to be an avid Gnome fan and hated KDE with a passion. Now the reverse!)

Gnome. Mainly cause of a few mono apps: F-Spot, Beagle, Muine and especially Tomboy.

i don't really expect gnome to ever surpass KDE in flexibility, speed and features, while KDE can get as usable as gnome easilly. so i think KDE has a much better future. also, with all these companies throwing money at gnome (and still not getting it beat KDE which runs on volunteers), i don't like the direction it chose. clearly red hat and novell have much more influence than the users - which is wrong, imho. at least KDE is listening to their users...

thats not quite true. kde will never be as usable as gnome....ever. the reason why is that its been going in the wrong direction ever since it was first developeed. don't get me wrong, kde and gnome are both nice desktop environments. its true that gnome will never be as configurable as kde, but gnome is faster, more flexible due to its granularity, and more usable than kde even at this present time.

There's no absolute truths here. KDE is right now more usable for me, since it has features I want that Gnome does not have. For others, that may be not the case.

I am a KDE man !! Can't wait for Plasma - in KDE 4.0

GNOME ....you have a long way to catch up.

no it doesn't. they both have different agendas. perhaps you meant that gnome has as much catching up to do with kde in terms of configurability as kde has of catching up with gnome in terms of user friendliness for the average user, etc.

c'mon, what did gnome do, remove some options? remove some icons? and now it's more usable... wow, i'm impressed. hey, its the userinterface. i wouldn't say its very easy to make it usable, but it IS a point'n'click task, UI designer tools are kind'a easy. its much faster to redesign an userinterface than to redesign a whole application's design. for gnome to get faster and more flexibel (you say it is, but find me a developer that has seen both KDE and Gnome code and agrees with you), they have to do a lot more work.

gnome did a redesign after 2.0, kde can do it after 4.0. i just hope they don't dumb down their interface instead of making it easy to use as gnome did.

its more the UI of the applications. apart from inkscape, they're mainly uncluttered whereas KDE has goes the other way. one of the priciples in gnome is to keep everything simple and leave the configuration and such like for powerusers(who will know what to do anyway) and system administrator(ditto). KDE throws everything at the user all at once, so while it may be fine for the reasonably IT savvy individual, the type of individual(and there are a frighteningly large percentage of them) who would panic at the decision between pressing OK and CANCEL are more at home with Gnome than they are with KDE.

its not at all easy to redesign all the applications on kde, because thats what needs doing if it wants to appeal to the masses. i don't see why kde devs should even try - i like kde the way it is because i like all the options (well, most of the time anyway). besides, the framework may well be largely more advanced on kde, but its also much less flexible than that of gnomes. even in years to come, devs will be largely stuck with C++. theres nothing wrong with the architecture on gnome - if anything, the gnome architecture is more fluid and thats why its better for the future. like i say, its less complete at this present stage overall, but it many ways its more advanced(eg things like drag and drop, sound(ie gstreamer), mounting of devices are a lot better in gnome).


the point is, out of the box, gnome is far superior for the average user.

Voted KDE although i use Fluxbox mostly

NoWindowsInMyHome: You're trolling, using blanket statements to represent every user. Gnome is not more usable than KDE for me. You can say all these things, but the truth is simply that you are stating an opinion as a fact, and it's rather annoying. When I was a n00b, the first DE i used was Gnome and I was immediately turned off, to be quite honest.

KDE lets me set my desktop any way I like -- lots of options.

@ NoWindowsInMyHome:

i thought it was well known you can write KDE apps with ruby, python and java, and that'll be even easier in KDE 4 as the javabindings will be officially supported from trolltech (so you can have corporate support if you want to pay for that), and most likely python and ruby will be community-supported. all apps will allow (if their devs want them to) scripting with each of these languages. let gnome beat that... Kubuntu uses several python applications, and some tools like Kommander allow writing graphical KDE apps in a mix of ANY language (including BASH) you want, which can be downloaded as one and it'll run on any KDE install (no compiling needed).

and again, as i said (and you first say you disagree, but then you tell me i'm right cus its the interface that has to be redesigned for KDE) its easier to make KDE easier than gnome more powerfull - writing a feature in a spagetti-like codebase (gnome's) is harder than putting it into an 'advanced options' tab in a config screen using a GUI app (KDE).

and i don't understand how you can say things like sound, drag'n'drop and mounting of devices works better in gnome... they adopted gstreamer (while it was extremely unstable, it still is if you use < 0.10) because esound sucked that hard; same with dbus (corba HAHAHAHA). arts (used by KDE) is after 3 years of almost no mantainment still as capable as gstreamer after 2 years of intensive development... when arts came out, it was meant as a cross-desktop sound server. it even depended on glibc (a gnome library!). still KDE choose to use it - but gnome didn't, afaik just because KDE did. and now everyone says KDE doesn't use gstreamer because it is a gnome technology.

well, KDE doesn't use it YET because it is
- UNSTABLE AS HELL, and because KDE is committed to STABILITY
- and they want older apps to work. if you wrote a KDE 3.0 app, it still works under KDE 3.5 - it wouldn't if they would remove arts, dcop etc etc. they will change technologie in 4.0, and use stuff only if it WORKS.

@raftysworld: i DO agree with NoWindowsInMyHome that gnome is generally a bit more usable (tough it imho misses some important functionallity and makes customization waaay to hard) than KDE. but I think KDE can catch up (and does) easilly in this regard, while he thinks that would be hard...

XFce!! Small & Fast...
And it looks good too:-)

no trolling is coming from me.
and if you're an ordinary user, what are you doing here on this forum saying that "when i was a n00b"?

Gnome is best in respect to its features

I use KDE all the time, it's just the most polished and stable of all choices...

Gnome but want 3D

"Desktop Environment" = "KDE" //is there another?

I don't see EDE (Equinox Desktop Environment) listed under either category ...:confused:

baghira!!!!!!!!!!

Not a DE, but a theme for KDE. So does your vote go to KDE?

I voted KDE, because that is the one I use all the time. From what I have heard I am going to give XFCE a try :p

it was a tough choice between Gnome and KDE for me, but KDE won!

They're both MONTROUS bloatware.

I still prefer KDE. :)

:confused: Back on topic...

@Superstoned: I don't agree, quite simply because it's those very functions that Gnome lacks that make KDE more usable to me. Gnome's interface is simpler... but that doesn't make it more usable, for me. Could be different on a user to user basis of course.

gnome is so good! I had tried gnome and kde, but gnome won!

I am sorry, but I just like the Eye candy that KDE has, it's neat and organised, plus I guess if more people used it, the more questions that can be answered in LinuxQuestions.

I havent tried anything else than KDE so that is my opinion.

gnome seems a lot more usable than kde, imho.

ive tried kde many times, but it seems too bright for me.

/weed

yeah, its more usable because it is too bright... of course, colors can't be choosen, isn't it? or did you mean the other 'bright', it's too clever for you? than gnome is you'r desktop, its not made for 'bright' ppl apparently (eg you can't change the colors easilly as you *might* make the foreground color the same as the background color, and make fonts unreadable... wow, they thought of that!)

ow, very well possible i didn't really understand you'r statement, english isn't my native language :D