Which linux desktop environment

Here’s How to Find Out Which Desktop Environment You are Using

Last updated August 27, 2020 By Abhishek Prakash 33 Comments

If you are a new Linux user and seeking help in one of the Linux forums, you may be asked this question:

“Which desktop environment are you using?”

You have an idea about what a desktop environment is but how do you know which one are you using? I’ll tell you how to find it out. I’ll show the command line method first because that is applicable to all kind of Linux distributions. I’ll also show the graphical way of getting this information.

Check which desktop environment you are using

You can use the echo command in Linux to display the value of XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable in the terminal.

Open the terminal and copy paste this command:

For example, it shows that I am using GNOME desktop in Ubuntu 20.04:

While this command quickly tells you which desktop environment is being used, it doesn’t give any other information.

Knowing the version of desktop environment (also called DE) could be important in some cases. Each new version of a software brings new features or removes some. GNOME 3.36 introduces a ‘Do Not Disturb’ option to toggle off all the desktop notifications.

Suppose you read about this new Do Not Disturb feature. You verify that you are using GNOME and yet you don’t see this option in your GNOME desktop. If you could check the GNOME desktop version you have installed on your system, that could make things clear for you.

I’ll show you the commands to check the desktop environment’s version first because you can use it in any Linux, running desktop environment.

How to get desktop environment version

Unlike getting the name of desktop environment. getting its version number is not straightforward because there is no standard command or environment variable that could give this information.

One way to get the desktop environment information in Linux is by using a tool like Screenfetch. This command line tool displays the logo of your Linux distribution in ascii format along with a few basic system information. Desktop environment version is one of them.

In Ubuntu based distributions, you can install Screenfetch by enabling Universe repository and then using this command:

For other Linux distributions, please use your system’s package manager to install this program.

Once installed, simply type screenfetch in the terminal and it should show the desktop environment version along with other system information.

Check Desktop Environment Version

As you can see in the above image, my system is using GNOME 3.36.1 (basically GNOME 3.36). You can also check the Linux kernel version and other details here.

Please keep in mind that it is not guaranteed that Screenfetch will display the desktop environment version. I checked its source code and it has lots of if-else code to get the version information from a number of sources and parameters in various desktop environments. If it can find nothing on version, it just displays the DE name.

Using GUI to check desktop environment version

Almost all desktop environments provide basic system details in their Settings-About section.

The one major problem is that most DEs look different and thus I cannot show the exact steps for each of them. I am going to show it for GNOME and I let you discover it in your desktop.

So, search for Settings in the menu (press Windows key and search):

In here, go to the bottom to find the About section. Click on it and you should have the desktop environment along with its version.

As you can see, it shows that my system is using GNOME 3.36.

I hope you find this quick beginner tip useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below.

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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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