Ranking Linux Desktop Environments for 2023

If one DE does not support wayland, it sucks huh? What kind of stupitidy is that. I personally avoid wayland as much as I could. I steer away wayland. Anyone who is willing to spend time about wayland deficiencies, missing feautes, be my guest. Why a decent DE, stable, bug free or solid system commits a suicide by throwing itself into a half baked product?

For a friend Ga Nome = X Nome = yup~ thanks for the video

For some reason i still run Ubuntu for God knows how long. It just works…and i need a computer to work to get actual work done. Sure there will be a better OS, but if it works for you, it just works, right ?

KDE + Arch 🥶

Goal for the future:
Install every single desktop environment, because why the hell not.

For me The Unity style of desktop workflow suits me the best on my 24 inch 1080p monitor. I have KDE configured to look like it but better due to second monitor being ultrawide.

I agree with you pretty much. I have tested GNOME (vanilla and customized, e. g. Zorin, Ubuntu and Pop! OS), KDE, Cinnamon, Unity, MATE and Xfce from your list, and on top of that LXQt and Window Maker.

Both KDE and GNOME are very powerful, but both need a lot of customization to be usable for me. I like GNOME’s feel better out of the box, but its default apps are often too stripped-down for my taste. KDE has all the features anybody could want, but you can easily get lost in fine-tuning. And both are pretty heavy: GNOME especially on RAM usage, KDE not so much, but it can feel a bit slow.

Cinnamon is a nice blend of the benefits of the two. It still needs a bit of customization for me, but it’s easy to do. It’s also lighter on resources than both GNOME and KDE, its apps are not stripped-down too much, and it has almost the flexibility of KDE while looking almost as slick as GNOME.

Unity is pretty much how I prefer my desktop layout. It also feels very similar to Cinnamon, but compared to that, it still lacks a lot of polish. So right now, Cinnamon with rearranged panels and adjusted shortcuts gets me closer to what I want. But I’m keeping an eye on Unity, it still has a lot of potential.

Xfce is also awesome: Very lightweight, but can do almost anything. But it always looks and feels a bit out of date.

MATE is similar to Xfce, but I feel it’s less easy to customize and a bit heavier on resources. It’s a great fit if you really like GNOME 2, but not if you want to turn it into something different.

LXQt is interesting because it uses Qt while being tiny. Qt apps tend to be very powerful, and I feel that in the future, it will integrate better with KDE apps than GTK-based desktops will integrate with GTK apps: They are likely to primarily target GNOME, which can easily make them look and feel alien in other desktops. Only Cinnamon seems to be close enough for now.

And Window Maker really feels like retro computing, but it’s oddly refreshing and fun and still has some nice ideas that could be a great inspiration for other desktops.

My pick today would be Cinnamon, especially in Mint/LMDE, it’s so well-rounded there! Closely followed by KDE and Pop! OS GNOME. But my biggest hopes are in Cosmic Desktop, I’m really looking forward to it!

Is a desktop part of a Linux install or are desktops separate pieces of software that can be added to any distro?

cinnamon now supports wayland and in my experience it deserves great tier. didn’t have any problems whatsoever with it. and it’s so intuitive and modern..

cinnamon is boring. I really like KDE though