Desktop Environment of the Year
 

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

--jeremy

CDE, but that's still not an option... :(

Probably Enlightenment then.

Cinnamon gets better and better. It's near cutting edge but stable.
 

Cinnamon gets better and better. It's always near cutting edge but stable.

I chose plasma, but lxde (on MX18) is a real close second...

Torn between KDE and TDE... *sigh*

Desktop Environment of the Year: Cinnamon
 

Simple and elegant.

I just picked Gnome by default, since Ubuntu went back to it, I do like their implementation of it, always like the streamlined, simple nature of their desktop.

Also like that easy to use way of adding tweaks, my mind has gone blank and I'm on my Windows laptop this morning, but that web site you can go to and just click ON to add a program, YOU all know what I mean!! :redface::hattip::)

Voted Rox.

I started my GNU/Linux journey with Gnome2 and went from there to Xfce then MATE. MATE is my clear favorite.

I would like to return to KDE4, but I moved on to xfce.

Really?
 

I'm going to laugh if anyone voted for LXDE. I can't imagine anyone actually thinking of it as a decent desktop experience.

Sure, it's lightweight, but a GUI needs more than "speed" to be focused on when it comes to usability.

Still like LXDE

I didn't vote LXDE, but I do use it on my netbook for which it's pretty much perfect. It can't really handle Xfce, and LXDE, which I've been running for over a year, is perfect for my needs on that machine. So think about it from a hardware perspective and what one needs - and expects - to do on particular computers.

I voted LXQt, as the LXDE next-gen. It's up and coming, as they say.

!
 

I've got Kali w/ LXDE loaded up on a flash-drive for the exact same reason. I don't like being bugged down by a DE when all I want is to run some basic tools. Doesn't mean I like LXDE. "Forced to use", would probably be the best thing to describe it in my case.

I think the move to LXQt was natural and I was going to vote for it considering the improvement I've noticed from LXDE, but I just went with my usual go-to. That said, I'm currently running the latest Lubuntu on my now 7 year-old laptop. It runs dandy and I can't see much other reason to use anything else on that thing. LXQt saved me from suffering with LXDE.

LXDE may have it's particular niche use-case, but comparing it to all the other desktops out there, I definitely think it lacks a lot—and I can even say that when comparing it just to LXQt.

I use Cinnamon day-to-day but voted Pantheon as the environment-of-the-year because I thought it was the most interesting and thought-provoking one, making waves this last year.

I'm torn between Cinnamon and XFCE. On one hand, Cinnamon always feels more usable to me, especially with it's exposè-like overview of all running Windows. It's fast enough that I'm able to use it on the computer I'm using right now, which is significant, since it's an almost ten-year-old Vista machine. It has it's flaws, however: it's dependence on languages like Python and Javascript (especially JavaScript) make it feel sluggish at times (especially on a laptop that's even older than this machine). The fact that the Window manager also does practically a million other things does not help, and neither does the fact that a whole bunch of visual themes are suddenly no longer supported.

XFCE on the other hand is very lightweight, and very customizable. It's modular design allows many of it's components to operate in such an independent manner, they can actually be quite useful on other Desktop Environments (such as xfce4-appfinder, xfce4-screenshooter, and thunar). I also find it to be quite stable, even more so than Cinnamon, and it beats Cinnamon in RAM consumption, as well. On the down side: the window manager's built-in compositor tends to cause video players to tear all the time, which gets real annoying, real fast. (I use Compton instead.) Also, on one version of Ubuntu (I can't remember if it was 14.04, or 16.04), one component, xfdesktop, somehow interferes with gnome-terminal, although other terminals are not affected. Thankfully, this does not affect Ubuntu 18.04.

What I use every day, KDE Plasma. Currently installed Version: 5.14.4

Interesting. For lightweight but nice to use I choose xfce. On hardware that can't handle even that (and I do have a lot of vintage hardware around there) I just pick fluxbox. Tried lxde for a while but I consider it ugly and broken.

Mate DE, mate!

It's an awesome DE alright.

XFCE. I think it's the most stable desktop environment and requires relative low resources.

It's my second favorite after MATE.

KDE without a touchscreen, GNOME with a touchscreen. Although extensions and stuff exist, the default GNOME 3 really killed distro theming and customization, and ties hands behind your back. I can tolerate though in some cases with some tweaks

KDE on all my machines.

Don't use straight DE's all that much anymore, but I'd have to say: Mate all-the-way!
Sure as hell miss Gnome 2.x (2.32.x) *cries* :P

I always admired the way that XFCE4 manages the desktop with one simple application, xfdesktop. I wish more desktop environments used this approach.
Despite that i'm a huge sucker for Kwin and Plasma, so my vote went to KDE.

I don't understand the difference between a "destktop environment" and a "window manager." Does anyone ever use one of each at the same time?

In any case, I'm not voting for any of these because they all compete with the best (most practical, least bothersome) desktop, IceWM.

Used to be a Gnome guy (since v1.0) but v3.0 made me want to rip my own eyes out. KDE (plasma) convert and love the implementation on openSUSE. Tried Plasma on other distros but never found a more stable implementation than on openSuse. Yes, it looks like Windows, which I hate, but it is so configurable and so powerful.

So a DE is a full environment like KDE, Gnome or Xfce4: they each use a window manager to manage windows (!) but also have a ton of other functionality built in. Window managers only manage windows, nothing else. Some window managers include "root menus" which pop up a menu when a user clicks on the root window. You are using both when you use a DE but only a window manager when only using a window manager. That's not redundant at all....

Mate is my favorite...

I'm with you, bigiron45.

On top of what's already been explained, desktop environments are generally heavier on resources. WMs are a lot lighter, sometimes lighter even than LXDE/Lxqt. However, WMs are not as easy to customise as DEs, and doing so generally demands making changes to text files, whereas changes to DEs can be done in a GUI.

However, the RAM usage between the lighter DEs and some of the WMs can be negligible. I use a netbook which runs LXDE or Fluxbox. I find there to be little difference in speed or CPU usage between the two. If anything, CPU usage comes can come from what the browser/application has to do rather than the DE/WM. Secondly, the RAM footprint for LXDE is tiny, using ~160MB with no applications open.

Cinnamon, all the way!

Yeah, yeah. I can google and read Wikipedia with the best of 'em too. But it still seems like an artificial distinction. I occasionally bounce around various distros and initially I use whatever DE/WM is installed by default. But they almost always irritate me and I install IceWM, if it's available. The main difference is that the original DE is irritating whereas IceWM is not.

As for bundled apps, that's a mild nuisance, not an advantage. I tend to use MATE terminal with everything because it seems to have everything I want and not a lot of extra noise. I use Emacs regardless of what other editor is installed. I used to always use Firefox regardless of what was bundled, though recently I've been using Brave. And for a file manager I use fm. Never heard of it? This is in my universal ~/.bashrc file:
You see, I treat bundled apps as if they're not bundled with anything. So that distinction between DE and WM weak at best.

You make it sound like configuring with a GUI is an advantage.

How do I know what DE my distro using? I'm using Lubuntu (but I would like a cmd so I can learn one or two things in other distros)

There's a handy tool you can install, inxi:
Then run this command. It'll show the host, kernel, desktop and distro. Very handy.

KDE Plasma

I just got a new Zareason with Debian 9 with Cinnamon.

It's been several years since I used Cinnamon, and, I must say, the maintainers have made improvements since the last time I used it.

I know I'll end up using Fluxbox, but I'm favorably impressed.

I'm shocked at how good Plasma is getting these days, and I don't even use it. But I might, as the power management is also second to none, for Linux DEs. So far, I have experimented with Plasma 5 on Slackware, openSUSE, and Arch, and the experiences have all been pleasant. Arch won out for lowest RAM usage with Plasma 5 on a fresh boot: 330MB; followed by Slackware at 350MB, and then openSUSE at about 400MB. Stable and responsive on all, too.

another vote for rox

Just a note that the following will show you even more details:

I voted Trinity-DE because I like the look of it and it looks like the KDE 3 that was once dominant on Linux desktops. Some TDE apps don't work, but they can be substituted with other apps.

KDE Plasma 5 rules my desktop, GNOME rules my laptop, LXDE rules my craptop, but the features and beauty of KDE always have my heart.

That's pretty. What theme etc. settings do you use?

I loathe the flat look, so my KDE is a 'orrible 'ybrid that's both pretty and partially restores the 3D look...

Theme
Look & feel - Breeze Dark
Desktop Theme - Oxygen
Cursor - Oxygen yellow
Colors
Obsidian Coast
Icons
Oxygen
Application style
Widget - Oxygen
Window decorations - Plastik

OTOH, for some reason I think Trinity is supposed to be purple.

And the first thing I do with either is install every K-app I can find, cuz I like their consistent look and behavior.

LXDE by a country mile... stable, fast, doesn't eat up resources like *some* environments I could name...

It's a pity that's LXDE is coming to an end. I loved putting it on ancient computers.

It will get superseded by LXQt.

Hi Lysander666. I know but I prefer LXDE.

Arch might come to the rescue. They have an experimental fork of LXDE using gtk3: https://www.archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/lxde-gtk3/

If this progresses, it could well be that Arch-derived distros such as Manjaro will adopt this fork. It may even be released for general distro use.

Thanks for the heads-up there hydrurga. :hattip: