Desktop Environments

Best Linux Desktop Environments: Strong and Stable

Last Updated on May 27, 2022

System Resources

There’s countless articles on the net purporting that if you’re using a machine low on system resources, you should steer clear of the mainstream desktop environments KDE and GNOME. Conventional wisdom asserts these environments are overflowing with useful features but need a fair amount of system resources. Instead, you’re directed towards a lightweight desktop environment. But how true is this assertion these days?

Whether your desktop is a memory-hungry monster is an important consideration depending on the amount of RAM in your computer. If you’ve got less than 4GB of RAM, and a weak CPU, it can be an important consideration.

Desktops-Memory

Bear in mind that memory usage of a DE depends on many factors. For example, some distributions apply their own modifications to each environment.

The chart offers a few surprises. The DE with the lowest RAM consumption is Enlightenment. While the desktop is full of eye-candy, it’s about as lean as possible. MATE comes second in this test. While it consumes about 180MB more RAM than Enlightenment, it still has distinctly modest system requirements, both in terms of memory and CPU cycles. Third comes LXQt, a combination of the discontinued Razor-Qt desktop environment with components from LXDE. The result is an ultra-fast desktop built with a modern Qt look and feel.

KDE used to be renowned for having lots of unnecessary visual fripperies. It’s true KDE 4 was particularly heavyweight and overconfigurable, but recent development has focused on reducing the demands on system resources. Now memory consumption is on a par with GNOME. But it’s certainly not suitable for old hardware. Plasma 5 is less resource-intensive than GNOME. The ‘heavyweights’ KDE and GNOME use about 400MB of RAM. Not that much considering the memory footprint of say Firefox. And GNOME offers better resources management than KDE.

Xfce is often touted as a lightweight DE, yet uses the same amount of RAM as KDE and GNOME. And Cinnamon brings up the rear weighing in with a hefty RAM footprint. It’s certainly not a DE you’d want to run if RAM is tight.

Budgie’s memory footprint is rather disappointing, and with the developers planned feature additions, we don’t expect to see any slimming down.

While the Deepin Desktop Environment is slightly leaner than GNOME or KDE in memory usage, running it on a single core CPU is not advisable. We wouldn’t recommend anything less than a dual core CPU together with more than 2GB of RAM.

Desktops-Memory-Apps

It’s worth putting into context a DE’s memory footprint by comparing it with other popular software. The chart above shows memory usage of Firefox, LibreOffice Calc, Filezilla, RStudio, Terminator, and Dolphin. To make for valid comparisons, these applications were tested under Enlightenment.

Next page: Page 4 – Extensibility

Pages in this survey:
Page 1 – Features
Page 2 – User Experience
Page 3 – System Resources
Page 4 – Extensibility
Page 5 – Documentation & Support
Page 6 – Development / Closing Thoughts


Learn more about the features offered by each desktop environment. We’ve compiled a dedicated page for each desktop environment explaining, in detail, the features each offers together with screenshots.

Desktop Environments
GNOMESimple, elegant and well designed desktop environment
KDE PlasmaKDE's lightweight, simple, but very robust and full featured desktop
MATEThe continuation of GNOME 2 with traditional metaphors
CinnamonDerives from GNOME 3 with traditional desktop metaphor conventions
XfceAims to be a fast and lightweight desktop environment
EnlightenmentDesktop environment when used with the EFL
Deepin DEDesktop environment of the Deepin Linux distro
Budgie DesktopFamiliar, modern and functional experience. Home for Solus OS
LXQtNext generation of LXDE
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38 Comments
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Zach
Zach
5 years ago

Nothing beats Unity.

Salvatore Volpone
Salvatore Volpone
5 years ago
Reply to  Zach

Zach: Your comment has no validity because it is unsubstantiated.

Why not tell the world why, in your opinions, Unity is superior to all other desktop environments?

What is most significant about the desktop development described in the article is the shift of more and more desktops from being based on GTK/Gnome libraries to Qt libraries.

And does Trinity Desktop (“KDE3.5 lives on”) deserve not even a mention or has it died from obsolescence?

Bob Mortimer
Bob Mortimer
5 years ago

You didn’t read the article very carefully, as Trinity Desktop gets a mention.

There isn’t a general shift to Qt, only one is moving over.

And people are entitled to form an opinion, they don’t have to justify their opinion. In any event an opinion is neither right nor wrong.

Salvatore Volpone
Salvatore Volpone
5 years ago
Reply to  Bob Mortimer

“Trinity Desktop gets a mention”

Yes I missed that reference at the very end on page 6.

“And people are entitled to form an opinion”

Of course they are entitled to form and opinion and express it, but if the opinion is expressed without justification, then the opinion has no merit.

As to whether opinions are “neither right nor wrong” you must therefore accept that an opinion consisting of

“All persons with the surname Mortimer must be put to death for the good of the country”

is neither right nor wrong.

Or consider the opinion that

“Free speech (including all opinions) must be banned by law and a constitutional amendment made to enforce this.”

Would you consider a politicians who espoused that opinion to be neither right nor wrong in holding that opinion?

Opinions have consequences …

Look no further than the opinions of GNOME desktop developers and the change from classic GNOME 2 to the flatland of GNOME 3.

Har123old
Har123old
5 years ago
Reply to  Zach

Except for KDE, GNOME, MATE, Xfce, etc

John
John
3 years ago
Reply to  Zach

The BEST DE doesn’t exist, just as anything best, simply because everything is a matter of opinion, taste, required functionality, etc. Some prefer to waste system resources (RAM, CPU, Disk space) for “eye candy” (KDE Plasma, Gnome 3, etc.). I prefer distraction free workspace, pure functionality and simplicity, which is why I use LXDE or MATE (based on Gnome 2). I don’t like anything Qt based and prefer GTK2 and GTK3.

MisterBee
MisterBee
2 years ago
Reply to  John

As I was trying to stretch as much life out of a then 10 year-old, 3 GB laptop, I found OpenBox with the Tint2 launcher perfectly usable, while costing the least in terms of RAM and CPU.

After I finally broke down and bought a more capable machine, KDE Plasma all the way.

I feel too handcuffed by the GNOME paradigm.

Diane Raquin
Diane Raquin
3 months ago
Reply to  John

Good morning Sir.

I agree with you in that there’s no such thing as the best DE, but there are objective reasons to mention that a given DE would be more fitting to given use cases, hardware limitations, and technical skills, as you did.

To put this into perspective, both Emacs and Vim are excellent text editors – but I believe Emacs fits more to my use case, and I’m entitled to be vocal about it, on my own blog, while accounting for the limitations of the software and calling for more modern replacements. I’m not entitled, in the strict context of so-called editors wars, to assert my favorite text editor on every use case out there. Actually, I only see people doing this on social media, not in my local technical-minded orgs.

While we should account for and live in harmony with a plurality of norms – treating tolerance as a contract, I’m not advocating for tolerating hate language! – some things are just more practical for some goals, which I believe imply for a rather large part living up to one’s values.

This is why MisterBee has mentioned he preferred Openbox on old hardware, regardless of his personal taste in terms of appearance (which can subjectively be considered as good or bad, in an objective state of relationships between social groups, and between these groups and cultural products that are made, selected, and commercialized to fit to given “subjective” tastes).

Thank you for your attention, have a nice day!

Last edited 3 months ago by Diane Raquin
Whirly
Whirly
5 years ago

Pantheon Rocks

Alison Moreland
Alison Moreland
5 years ago
Reply to  Whirly

I’d like to see Pantheon covered as well as LXDE.

Me
Me
5 years ago

Plasma is lightweight? Not in my experience it’s not, but I use it because I like it, but only on my beefier machines

Linux Enthusiast
Linux Enthusiast
5 years ago

The new Deepin DE 15.8 could be the best one. easy, to use, stable and alsi beautiful

Широков Андрей
Широков Андрей
5 years ago

In my opinion, Xfce is the best. Thunar file manager with his custom actions replaced most of the apps for me.

Linus T.
Linus T.
5 years ago

LXDE is lightweight and rather snazzy

Linus Luna Jr.
Linus Luna Jr.
5 years ago

LXDE is the lightest and snappiest functional DE you can install.

Esthetically Plasma wins hands down, XFCE has the best mix of all.

PDXWeb
PDXWeb
5 years ago
Reply to  Linus Luna Jr.

Deepin DE is nicer looking, actually.

Wyn Morris
Wyn Morris
5 years ago
Reply to  PDXWeb

Adding actually to the end of a sentence doesn’t turn an opinion into a fact…

msi
msi
5 years ago

“Desktop environments (now abbreviated as DE) provide their own window manager[.]”

It’s not important for the definition of a desktop environment if it provides ‘its own’ window manager. The important thing is that it includes one. For example, LXDE and LXQt use Openbox as their window manager, which is an independent project.

“Ultimately, a DE is a piece of software.”

Well, a desktop environment (in the sense of a desktop application suite, like KDE, GNOME, Xfce etc.) is rather a collection of programs, which are, ultimately, pieces of software.

“Atril […] is excellent.”

I’m afraid it isn’t, because contrary to Okular, its full-text search won’t recognize a search word whenever it is split on a line break. (Tested with Atril 1.20.3 vs. Okular 0.26.1.)

“In many situations, using software in an alpha or beta stage of development is perfectly acceptable.”

I don’t think so. But maybe someone can name a few of those many situations (especially concerning alpha software). Seriously, the only situation in which it is “perfectly acceptable” to use alpha or beta software, is when someone is testing that software.

“It’s uncommon for a software crash to affect other running applications.”

That is, unless these applications are running on top of the software that crashes. For example, if an X server crashes, or something goes wrong when waking a laptop from hibernation – which are both not exactly uncommon, in my experience –, that is going to have a lot of impact on other applications (though they’re admittedly not running ones in the latter case).

karl
karl
5 years ago

I Think Wayland is important and hopefully we will have 7 desktops working with Wayland in the autumn 2020. Gnome, Plasma, Enlightenment, Lxqt, Mate,Sway and Budgie.

Luke Baker
Editor
5 years ago
Reply to  karl

Wayland has been in development for a decade, and who uses it?

Ararat
Ararat
3 years ago
Reply to  Luke Baker

yeah, it’s just like HaikuOS and ReactOS, developed for years and never saw the day of an rather official release lol.

Chris
Chris
4 years ago

Cinnamon is not derived from Gnome 2 as the author states. It is based on Gnome 3 technologies with heavy modification so that it resembles the original Gnome 2 desktop paradigm.

Diversity & respect
Diversity & respect
4 years ago

“documentation is generally awful, people hate writing it”

I have wanted to write some docs many times but the DEs and distros wikis where I tried didnt permits to write original content in other lenguage than english; one has to send his work in english and then translate to his lenguage if he wants. O_O

First of all most people on the Earth DOESN’T speak english, and the mayority if the others, do it very badly, as you can verify in most english post all over the internet, starting with this post of me. So, if I want to write in a non too vomitive english I have to consult dictionaries and grammar guides all the time, making the tedious task of writin documentation, 4 or 5 times more tedious and time consumer and irritating.

But is even worst that being GNU/Linux a free, libre, project; being an initiative that wants to democratize the tecnology; being KDE and Gnome and the mayority of the desktop environment writen by non americans nor other english speaking countries it is absurd and imperialist to obligate the people that ofers to write documentation, to do it in a foreign lenguage. Excuse me, but if I give my time for free to write something that I already know, for the benefit of others, I do it in my damn lenguage; and if you dont understand, just dont read it or f*king go to Deepl and copy-paste the text to translate it and then, if you are nice and generous enough with your time, post that translation, previous revision, in the english language section of the documentation wiki!
But no, they prefer that milliards of potential users that are of chinese, hispanics, arabics, french speakers, rusians, etc, dont have documentation in their lenguages if americans dont have it first. Well, dear DE “dictators”, f*k off!

Sorry to be so rude, but it’s the plain and simple truth. There is no good and updated documentation in big part because of the fault of that “gringophilic” dictators of the majority of the software development and documentation projects.

I have nothing against the english lenguage, I am using it right now (if one can call “english” this), but if I can write quickly, with clear, precise and correct grammar and rich vocabulary in my native lenguage whuy the hell I have to do it in other lenguage that I cant manage well nor write it correctly even spending 4 times the time I spend writing in my mother lenguage? Why I have to work to make the world a place less diverse and more culturaly colonized? No, thanks.
All my colaborations in this sense have gone to Wikipedia. Big parts of most articles in my lenguage’s Wikipedia, about Mate, Gnome, KDE Plasma, Gimp, Krita, and several other programs I use a lot and think that could be considered “power user” have writen by me, at least originally, of course in WP colaborates a lot of people that modifies what others have writen previously. Wikipedia is not a documentation site and the articles have to be rasonably short and not very profound, but is a place where nobody is going to forbid me to write in whatever lenguage I wat.

So, dear documentation systems rulers, keep on telling good will people that we have to write in english or nothing, and the response will be “nothing”, and the documentation in Linux world will keep being a sh*t forever.

H Ent
H Ent
4 years ago

You seem well suited to write for Wikipedia, a very unreliable source of information.

Diane Raquin
Diane Raquin
3 months ago
Reply to  H Ent

I beg you pardon?

Diane Raquin
Diane Raquin
3 months ago
Reply to  H Ent

Excuse me but without digressing too much on you gratuitous attack on the Wikipedia project, which – as I apparently need to add it right there, your opinion – is a plain lie, which collaborative projects have you even written for?

Given your behavior, I’d bet you’d had trouble with collaborating with anyone at the time of writing this message.

Montage
Montage
3 months ago
Reply to  Diane Raquin

No, it’s not a lie. It’s an opinion. An opinion is neither right nor wrong.

And I actually agree with H Ent. The problem with Wikipedia is that there’s often very little verification of factual information. Personal bio information is often questionable. I’ve heard radio interviewers admit that when they used Wikipedia for background information on the guest they are to interview, the interviewee disputes the factual information gleaned from Wikipedia.

Some of the sources quoted on Wikipedia are highly questionable publications, or other sources which are just not reliable. It’s like treating say The Sun as an authoritative source of information.

Even reputable organisations like the BBC contain lots of factually inaccurate or biased information or information that fits their agenda. This then appears in Wikipedia as facts when it’s not.

And there’s of course the fact that the vast majority of Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone at any time, can be subject to vandalism or just a work in progress. Wikipedia should never be considered a definitive source.

Diane Raquin
Diane Raquin
3 months ago
Reply to  Montage

Of course Wikipedia shouldn’t be treated as a definitive source, but this is true for most academic books actually. I’m tired right now but I don’t think there would be science as we know it if academic books were 100% factually correct; not only is reality nearly unexhaustable, at least in humanities, but the factuality of acclaimed research is constantly refuted, as has Norbert Elias’ research, which has influenced Bourdieu, and then Darmon, who has recently published a book suggesting improvements in the medical management of post-stroke recovery (whose research is questioned again by Wilfried Ligner), and Lahire, working on conditions to the success of underprivileged people, e.g. coming from illiterate families (whose research is especially questioned by a sinister muppet that nobody, to my understanding, takes seriously – I couldn’t read his book past its introduction).

Some sources are more solid than others and I guess it depends on the complexity of your tasks, but calling Wikipedia an unreliable source of information sounds like, if not a lie, cherry-picking to digress on a totally irrelevant topic. This isn’t what Diversity & respect’s comment was about; even if you considered that their account for their feelings as a contributor to our digital commons would contain enough red flags to question the factuality or quality of their contributions (assuming that writing, documenting, reporting, and sourcing couldn’t be learned from experience, which is factually wrong in itself), it’s hard to see how it would be a good contribution to the topic at hand, especially given its harshness and thus its rejection of a rather long, structured, novel, and documented comment, without even considering the culture it would be developing or how it could deter bystanders from contributing to e.g. free software (which is an actual problem here, to which, I will repeat, Diversity & respect is trying to provide a solution).

In sane doocratic communities based on self-help, that I’m part of (e.g. tildes), the person in question would have the space and opportunity to think about their behavior and apologize a few hours later; H Ent’s comment was unnecessarily harsh and factually incorrect in itself, so we all have our bad days but we shouldn’t lose focus of our real-life goals for the sake of an online conversation to the point of defending bad behavior.

The complete sentence meant that Diversity & respect would only feel at home at Wikipedia because he would be bathing in his peers’ mediocrity. This is no acceptable behavior.

Last edited 3 months ago by Diane Raquin
Ararat
Ararat
3 years ago

my DDE experience was rather harsh since it’s just a beautiful vase for me, just like Gnome, resource-heavy as hell. I’d rather use Xfce if for balance, or KDE Plasma if for good-looking.

Ararat
Ararat
3 years ago
Reply to  Ararat

anyway, my go-to DE is like, Xfce>Openbox, Fluxbox>MATE>IceWM>LXQT>LXDE>Cinnamon>Budgie>KDE Plasma>Enlightenment. love them all in fact.

Reason
Reason
2 years ago

Linux friends,

You spur my comments even though I generally avoid forums; due to banning. You tube and facebook, twitter etc… are dead to me. The Internet has gone down. Not going; digressed. Lost.

Some truths do not return void; so without knowing to whom I’m typing, if to any group then this will be both a waste and a hopeful difference.

In the topic of DE’s and points mentioned; I preference Mate, usually. And without the elimination of all others, BTW. Mate scales better, uses less memory and is more familiar to new adopters. Mate keeps with stability well; by in large and has robust matching components. Plus like people are trained on Windows familiar, I am on Mate. “WIndows” is so awkward to me, and annoying. I forget how much until I attempt to use windows. Mate is easy to get used to. Oh and on Mate; I like how once a setting is checked then there’s no OK to also click.

But I’m motivated by the the overstatement about ‘all is opinion’. No it’s not. Some have well commented on effects. But no one has discussed truth. Likely as it’s obvious most think truth is opinion.. Well they may say, that’s your opinion of the truth. Truth is not subject to our opinions. Reverse that.

MisterBee
MisterBee
2 years ago

As I was trying to stretch as much life out of a then 10 year-old, 3 GB laptop, I found OpenBox with the Tint2 launcher perfectly usable, while costing the least in terms of RAM and CPU.

After I finally broke down and bought a more capable machine, KDE Plasma all the way.

I feel too handcuffed by the GNOME paradigm.

hellow
hellow
1 year ago

thanks

Last edited 1 year ago by hellow
Torin Doyle
Torin Doyle
6 months ago

I’m glad to see my favorite DE (MATE) at least getting 3rd place. My next favorite DE is Xfce [surely it deserves much better than 6th place].

TheDarcBird
TheDarcBird
3 months ago

I have tried K Plasma (Kubuntu) and although it was good, it seemed a bit bloated to my liking. Right now, I’m back to Gnome 3.0. I am interested in others though…