One of the most important things to consider when using linux is your desktop environment. Your desktop environment is what your desktop will look like. I am going to try to go through 5 desktop environments, and rate them on speed, eye candy, and usability. I am going to cover XFCE, LXDE, Cinnamon, Kde, and Gnome. While these are not the only desktop environments, they are the most used ones.
XFCE:
Speed: 8
Usability: 9
Eye candy: 6
XFCE is fast. It is the fastest desktop environment other than LXDE. It is good for both windows and mac users, as the default UI is close to MacOS, and when it is configured it is very close to windows. It doesn’t look amazing out of the box, but the customization can make it look great.
LXDE:
Speed: 10
Usability: 7
Eye Candy: 5
LXDE is the best desktop environment for old computers. It uses very little resources. It is good for users of windows 7 or xp. The only problem, is that it is not as easy to configure as many desktop environments.
Cinnamon:
Speed: 6
Usability: 10
Eye candy: 8
Cinnamon is the best for users of windows 10. It is made by the Linux mint team, and they did a good job at making sure that it is easy to customize. From the settings, you can install, and change themes, icons, window borders, anything. While it doesn’t have as many options as KDE, it is the easiest to customize.
KDE:
Speed: 3
Usability: 7
Eye candy: 10
KDE is made for the power user. It has so many options that it can be almost daunting to customize. You can truly tailor it to yourself. However, because it is customization, it is slow and has a hard time running on older computers.
Gnome:
Speed: 2
Usability: 5
Eye candy: 4
Gnome is very unorthodox. It is meant to be very simple, and clean. While that is true, it doesn’t have many tools to customize out of the box, and it is slow. If you are used to a traditional desktop, Gnome may take some getting used to. It can look good, but especially with Gnome 40, it is hard to customize.
