Linux desktop environments list

Desktop environment

A desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs, which share a common graphical user interface (GUI).

Contents

Overview

A desktop environment bundles together a variety of components to provide common graphical user interface elements such as icons, toolbars, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. Additionally, most desktop environments include a set of integrated applications and utilities. Most importantly, desktop environments provide their own window manager, which can however usually be replaced with another compatible one.

The user is free to configure their GUI environment in any number of ways. Desktop environments simply provide a complete and convenient means of accomplishing this task. Note that users are free to mix-and-match applications from multiple desktop environments. For example, a KDE user may install and run GNOME applications such as the Epiphany web browser, should they prefer it over KDE’s Konqueror web browser. One drawback of this approach is that many applications provided by desktop environment projects rely heavily upon the libraries underlying the respective desktop environment. As a result, installing applications from a range of desktop environments will require installation of a larger number of dependencies. Users seeking to conserve disk space often avoid such mixed environments, or chose alternatives which do depend on only few external libraries.

Furthermore, applications provided by desktop environments tend to integrate better with their native environments. Superficially, mixing environments with different widget toolkits will result in visual discrepancies (that is, interfaces will use different icons and widget styles). In terms of usability, mixed environments may not behave similarly (e.g. single-clicking versus double-clicking icons; drag-and-drop functionality) potentially causing confusion or unexpected behavior.

List of desktop environments

Officially supported

• Budgie — Budgie is a desktop environment designed with the modern user in mind, it focuses on simplicity and elegance.

https://getsol.us/ || budgie-desktop

• Cinnamon — Cinnamon strives to provide a traditional user experience. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME 3.

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon || cinnamon

• Cutefish — Cutefish is a new and modern desktop environment.

https://en.cutefishos.com/ || cutefish

• Deepin — Deepin desktop interface and apps feature an intuitive and elegant design. Moving around, sharing and searching etc. has become simply a joyful experience.

https://www.deepin.org/ || deepin

• Enlightenment — The Enlightenment desktop shell provides an efficient window manager based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries along with other essential desktop components like a file manager, desktop icons and widgets. It supports themes, while still being capable of performing on older hardware or embedded devices.

https://www.enlightenment.org/ || enlightenment

• GNOME — The GNOME desktop environment is an attractive and intuitive desktop with both a modern (GNOME) and a classic (GNOME Classic) session.

https://www.gnome.org/ || gnome

• GNOME Flashback — GNOME Flashback is a shell for GNOME 3 which was initially called GNOME fallback mode. The desktop layout and the underlying technology is similar to GNOME 2.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback || gnome-flashback

• KDE Plasma — The KDE Plasma desktop environment is a familiar working environment. Plasma offers all the tools required for a modern desktop computing experience so you can be productive right from the start.

https://www.kde.org/plasma-desktop || plasma

• LXDE — The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment is a fast and energy-saving desktop environment. It comes with a modern interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. Fundamentally designed to be lightweight, LXDE strives to be less CPU and RAM intensive than other environments.

https://lxde.org/ || GTK 2: lxde , GTK 3: lxde-gtk3

• LXQt — LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is the product of the merge between the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects: A lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment.

https://lxqt.github.io/ || lxqt

• MATE — Mate provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to Linux users using traditional metaphors. MATE started as a fork of GNOME 2, but now uses GTK 3.

https://mate-desktop.org/ || mate

• Sugar — The Sugar Learning Platform is a computer environment composed of Activities designed to help children from 5 to 12 years of age learn together through rich-media expression. Sugar is the core component of a worldwide effort to provide every child with the opportunity for a quality education — it is currently used by nearly one-million children worldwide speaking 25 languages in over 40 countries. Sugar provides the means to help people lead fulfilling lives through access to a quality education that is currently missed by so many.

https://sugarlabs.org/ || sugar + sugar-fructose

• UKUI — UKUI is a lightweight Linux desktop environment, developed based on GTK and Qt. UKUI is the default desktop environment for Ubuntu kylin.

https://www.ukui.org/ || ukui

• Xfce — Xfce embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of a number of components that provide the full functionality one can expect of a modern desktop environment, while remaining relatively light. They are packaged separately and you can pick among the available packages to create the optimal personal working environment.

https://xfce.org/ || xfce4

Unofficially supported

• CDE — The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX98 Workstation Product Standard, and was long the «classic» Unix desktop associated with commercial Unix workstations. Despite being a legacy environment, it is still kept alive with support for Linux systems as well.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/ || cdesktopenvAUR

• EDE — The «Equinox Desktop Environment» is a desktop environment designed to be simple, extremely light-weight and fast.

https://edeproject.org/ || edeAUR

• KDE 1 — «forward-ported» to work on modern systems. Mostly for nostalgia, but now actually works and can be used as a daily driver. There are also a growing number of KDE 1 applications in AUR.

https://invent.kde.org/historical/kde1-kdebase || kde1-kdebase-gitAUR

• Liri — Liri is a desktop environment with modern design and features. Liri is the merge between Hawaii, Papyros and the Liri Project. Highly experimental.

https://liri.io/ || liri-shell-gitAUR

• Lumina — Lumina is a lightweight desktop environment written in Qt 5 for FreeBSD that uses Fluxbox for window management.

https://lumina-desktop.org/ || lumina-desktopAUR

• Moksha — Fork of Enlightenment currently used as default desktop environment in Ubuntu-based Bodhi Linux.

https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/ || moksha-gitAUR

• Pantheon — Pantheon is the default desktop environment originally created for the elementary OS distribution. It is written from scratch using Vala and the GTK3 toolkit. With regards to usability and appearance, the desktop has some similarities with GNOME Shell and macOS.

https://elementary.io/ || pantheon-session-gitAUR

• PaperDE — Desktop environment built on top of Qt/Wayland and wayfire.

https://cubocore.org/paperde.html || paperdeAUR

• Phosh — Phosh is a Wayland shell user interface based on GNOME, useful on mobile devices.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh || phoshAUR , phosh-gitAUR

• theDesk — theDesk is a desktop environment that tries to be as transparent as possible. It uses Qt 5 as its widget toolkit and KWin as its window manager.

https://github.com/vicr123/thedesk || thedeskAUR

• Trinity — The Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) project is a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the overall KDE 3.5 computing style.

https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ || See Trinity

Custom environments

Desktop environments represent the simplest means of installing a complete graphical environment. However, users are free to build and customize their graphical environment in any number of ways if none of the popular desktop environments meet their requirements. Generally, building a custom environment involves selection of a suitable window manager or compositor, a taskbar and a number of applications (a minimalist selection usually includes a terminal emulator, file manager, and text editor).

Other components usually provided by desktop environments are:

Use a different window manager

If the desktop environment has an article, see its Use a different window manager section, otherwise consult the official documentation.

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10 Best and Most Popular Linux Desktop Environments of All Time

One exciting aspect of Linux unlike with Windows and Mac OS X, is its support for numerous number of desktop environments, this has enabled desktop users to choose the appropriate and most suitable desktop environment to best work with, according to their computing needs.

A Desktop Environment is an implementation of the desktop metaphor built as a collection of different user and system programs running on top of an operating system, and share a common GUI (Graphical User Interface), also known as a graphical shell.

In this article, we shall list and walk through some of the best desktop environments for Linux, including a few of their illustrious features and components. However, we should note that this list is not organized in any particular order.

That said, let’s move to listing the desktop environments.

1. GNOME 3 Desktop

GNOME is probably the most popular desktop environment among Linux users, it is free and open source, simple, yet powerful and easy to use. It is designed from ground up to offer Linux desktop users a wonderful and exciting computing experience.

It presents a activities overview for easy access to basic tasks, provides a powerful search tool for users to access their work from any place. However, GNOME 3 latest stable release ships in with the following distinguished components and features:

1. Uses Metacity as default window manager
2. Comes with Nautilus as default file manager
3. Supports desktop notifications using a convenient messaging system
4. Enables on/off switching of desktop notifications and many more

Gnome 3 Desktop Environment for Linux

2. KDE Plasma 5

KDE is a well-known, powerful and highly customizable desktop environment, designed to offer Linux desktop users absolute control over their desktop.

The latest release in the KDE desktop series is the Plasma 5, which has brought in several improvements and new features. It has come with clean and well-polished user interfaces in comparison to previous versions, with improved readability.

Built using Qt 5 and frameworks 5, a number of the notable components and new features in Plasma 5 include:

1. Dolphin file manager
2. Kwin window manager
3. A converged shell
4. Updated graphics stack enabling smoother graphics performance
5. Modernized launchers
6. Workflow improvements in the desktop notification area
7. Improved support for high-density (high-DPI) display plus many other minor features

KDE Plasma System Monitor Window

3. Cinnamon Desktop

Cinnamon is in fact a collection of several minor projects such as Cinnamon, a fork of the GNOME shell, Cinnamon screensaver, Cinnamon desktop, Cinnamon Menus, Cinnamon Settings Daemon coupled with many more.

Cinnamon desktop is a fork of the GNOME desktop environment, it is the default desktop environment on Linux Mint together with MATE.

Other minor projects and components integrated in the Cinnamon desktop comprise of the following:

1. MDM display manager
2. Nemo file manager
3. Muffin window manager
4. Cinnamon session manager
5. Cinnamon translations
6. Blueberry, a bluetooth configuration tool plus many more

Cinnamon Desktop

4. MATE Desktop

MATE is an intuitive and appealing desktop environment, that is an extension of GNOME 2. It works on Linux and many other Unix-like systems. It comes with a handful of default applications such as Caja file manager, Pluma text editor, MATE terminal and more.

Additionally, it is also the default desktop environment for Linux Mint along side Cinnamon desktop.

Mate Desktop in Ubuntu 16.04

5. Unity Desktop

Unity is a graphical desktop shell for GNOME desktop environment. The Unity project was started by Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical, the makers of the well-known Ubuntu Linux distribution. It was started back in 2010, with aims of offering desktop and netbook users a consistent and elegant computing experience.

We must note that, Unity is not a totally new desktop environment, but basically an interface to existing GNOME applications and libraries, with various technologies integrated within it, Unity comes with the following prominent components and features:

1. Compiz windows manager
2. Nautilus file manager
3. A system dashboard
4. Lens, that sends search queries to Scope
5. Scope, a powerful search feature, that searches both locally and online in case the machine is connected to Internet
6. Unity preview, that previews search results in the dashboard
7. Offers an application indicator
8. System indicator that provides information about system settings such as power, sound, current session and many more
9. A simple and sleek notification component combined with other minor features

Unity Desktop

6. Xfce Desktop

If you are looking for a modern, open source, lightweight and easy-to-use, desktop environment for Linux and several other Unix-like systems such as such as Mac OS X, *BSD, Solaris and many others, then you should consider checking out Xfce. It is fast, and importantly user friendly as well, with low system resources utilization.

It offers users a beautiful user interface combined with the following components and features:

1. Xfwm windows manager
2. Thunar file manager
3. User session manger to deal with logins, power management and beyond
4. Desktop manager for setting background image, desktop icons and many more
5. An application manager
6. It’s highly pluggable as well plus several other features

XFCE Desktop

7. LXQt Desktop

LXQt is also free, open source, lightweight, simple and fast desktop environment for Linux and BSD distributions. It is the latest version of LXDE, specifically designed, and a recommended desktop environment for cloud servers and old machines due to its remarkably low system resources usage such as low CPU and RAM consumption.

It’s the default desktop environment on Knoppiz, Lubuntu and a few other less known Linux distributions, some of its notable components and features are listed below:

1. pcmanfm-qt file manager, a Qt port for PCManFM and libfm
2. lxsession session manager
3. lxterminal, a terminal emulator
4. lxqt-runner, a quick application launcher
5. Supports multiple international languages
6. A simple and beautiful user interface
7. Supports an integrated energy-saving component
8. Supports several keyboard shortcuts plus many more

LXQT Desktop

8. Pantheon Desktop

Pantheon is a simple and well-designed desktop environment for Elementary OS, a Windows and MacOS X like Linux distribution. It offers users a clean and organized desktop experience. Due to its simplicity, Pantheon comes with not many visually observable features as compared to other popular desktop environments.

Nevertheless, it works exceptionally well for new Linux users switching from Windows or Mac OS X operating systems.

Elementary Pantheon Desktop

9. Deepin Desktop Environment

Deepin Desktop Environment(DDE) is also a simple, elegant and productive desktop environment for Linux, developed by the makers of Deepin OS.

It works on several other Linux distributions as well including Arch Linux, Ubuntu, Manjaro among others, it ships in with some well designed and sleek user interfaces for absolute productivity.

Furthermore, it is also user friendly with few configurations available. Most configurations are performed from a pop-out side panel, additionally, users can launch applications from a dock at the bottom of the screen similar to that in Pantheon desktop.

Deepin OS

10. Enlightenment Desktop

Enlightenment initially started as a windows manager project for x11 system. However, the project has grown to include a full desktop environment, mobile, wearable and TV user interface platforms as well. Additionally, the developers also wrote some useful libraries in the course of the project advancement.

The libraries created will be used to build several desktop applications as well such an image viewer, video player and a terminal emulator and more, with up coming future works on a complete IDE.

Notably, it is in active evolution from x11 to Wayland as the primary graphical display layer for the Linux ecosystem.

Enlightenment Desktop

Which of the above desktop environments is your favorite? Let us know via the feedback section below by sharing your Linux desktop computing experience with us, you can as well inform us of other less known, yet powerful and exciting desktop environments not mentioned here.

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