they/them

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Cake day: March 25th, 2026
  • heliotrope@retrofed.comtoLinux@programming.dev•What are the various linux desktops environments and how do they compare?English
    14·
    18 days ago

    Obviously check out Eylenburg’s page and the ArchWiki, but here are my two cents on a bunch of DEs:

    This is going to be long

    Note: The weight of a DE is comparitive. “Heavy” DEs (such as GNOME) can still be swift on lower spec machines.

    GNOME

    • Based on Shell Toolkit and GTK4 (with libadwaita)
    • Wayland only
    • Heavy
    • Slightly similar to macOS’ UI/UX, but really in a class of its own
    • Not particularly customisable Can be customised heavily, but the settings aren’t exposed and the devs don’t like it much.

    KDE Plasma

    • Based on Qt6 and QML (with its own frameworks)
    • Wayland only (usually)
    • Heavy
    • Has a lot of dependencies
    • Very Windows-y out of the box; but can easily be modified to replicate any other UI/UX

    KDE Liquid

    • Based on QtQuick
    • X11 only (as far as I know)
    • Midweight
    • No fancy effects
    • Not usually packaged, but available on Arch
    • Basically just KDE Plasma, but using a slightly different widget toolkit

    Xfce

    • Based on GTK2/3 (originally XForms)
    • X11 by default, but everything except Xfwm supports Wayland (Xfwl is almost done)
    • Light
    • Generally looks like itself, but some Linux distros have it looking more like Windows

    LXQt

    • Based on Qt5/6
    • X11 by default, but you can switch Openbox for KWin or LabWC in the settings
    • Light
    • The result of LXDE and Razor-qt merging
    • Layout is similar to older versions of Windows, but this can be changed

    LXDE

    • Based on GTK2 (I believe a GTK3 port may exist)
    • X11 only
    • Very light

    MATE

    • Based on GTK2
    • X11 only, but it’s almost Wayland-ready
    • Midweight
    • Comparable to Xfce
    • Unique 2-bar layout, but can be transformed
    • A fork of GNOME 2

    Cinnamon

    • Based on GTK3/4 (with XApp frameworks)
    • X11 by default, with experimental Wayland support
    • Midweight
    • Windows-esque layout
    • Created as a spiritual successor to GNOME 2
    • Forked from GNOME 3

    Budgie

    • Based on GTK3/4
    • Wayland only
    • Midweight
    • Unique layout
    • Also created as a spiritual successor to GNOME 2

    deepin

    • I know basically nothing about this other than the fact it’s Chinese
    • Looks pretty

    Trinity

    • Based on TQt3
    • X11 only
    • Lightweight (these days)
    • Similar layout to Windows; actually an old KDE layout
    • Forked from KDE 3
    • Maintains its own forks of Qt (called TQt), KHTML, and the KDE applications
    • Still works with older themes and software, such as QtCurve (which is nice)

    Enlightenment

    • Based on EFL
    • X11 by default, with experimental Wayland support
    • Lightweight, despite fancy effects and animations
    • Often considered a WM, rather than a DE, but it has its own suite of applications so it’s a DE
    • Unique layout

    COSMIC

    • Based on iced
    • Wayland by default
    • Unsure of weight
    • Maintained by System76 (the Pop!_OS people)
    • Layout similar to GNOME
    • Still quite new

    Lumina

    • Based on Qt5
    • X11 by default
    • Quite popular among FreeBSD users

    Pantheon

    • Based on GTK3/4 and Granite
    • Wayland by default (soon to be Wayland-only)
    • Midweight
    • Akin to macOS
    • Used in elementary OS

    CDE

    • Based on Motif
    • X11 only
    • Lightweight
    • Ancient software, used in many Unices (e.g. AIX, Solaris, Tru64, etc.) and other OSes (e.g. VMS) back in the day

    FVWM-Crystal

    • Not based on any particular toolkit (a fair bit of raw XCB/Xlib, I imagine)
    • X11 only
    • Very lightweight
    • Quite old, so your mileage may vary when using it with newer software
    • Integrates with several music players, including Audacious and Quod Libet
    • Arguably more of a shell for FVWM