If you’re going to spend hours every day staring at a screen, how much does experience matter? Not yours. The experience behind the software you’re trusting with your workflow. I’ve written before about choosing the best Linux distro, and one thing I keep coming back to is longevity. Distributions like Debian, Fedora, Arch, and Ubuntu… continue reading.
Curious where people disagree on this one. I spent a few days trying to poke holes in my own rankings before publishing, so I’m sure then I probably made more holes.
Main takeaways:
The best desktop environment is the one whose tradeoffs align with your priorities.
And if you have the time or skills to contribute, consider supporting the smaller community-driven projects on this list. It’s the same spirit as buying local.
And yes, included are a few window managers alongside desktop environments. At the end of the day, they’re all tools we use with the same end goals on desktop, so it felt fair to compare them side by side.
Drop your thoughts below. How would you rank these, or what would you remove or add? If you’d add something, how would it score across the five criteria?
No other window manager treats configuration as full-blown programming.
This is not true, there are several. AwesomeWM, Xmonad, MangoWM, dwm, dwl, SomeWM.
Anyway I agree with the relatively low setup to productivity score with Qtile but this is not the whole story. Being able to fully customize your environment without limits is big for productivity, given enough imagination. Custom dynamic tiling layouts are big, using i3 with or without autotiling is a bit of a chore by comparison.
Good catch. I meant Python specifically, but even in this space, it’s always safer to say ‘few’ than ‘no other.’ Will update. Thanks!
Agreed on TTP which is why I wrote:
It’s the most hackable window manager on this list, and for the right user, that’s worth every minute of setup time.
I appreciate you taking the time to add feedback. The ranking for sure will differ for everyone by some degree but hopefully this is a reminder for us all of how important of a decision the DE/WM is. They can make or break our distro experience.
At least, the article is about “your picks”. Not everyone’s picks.
Firstly, for me, gnome is the most terrible Linux DE out there…
Secondly, I3WM is not a DE, but WM
Thirdly, someone said the Qtile, is the most hackable in the list (can
be, but not as a general WM)…
The WM world is to big to assert such statements as “most hackable”…
Throughout the years I have used, i3wm, sway, xmonad, etc…
But, for some years now I have been using a not very popular WM that,
in my opinion, is the best one and I should say the best one after
trying all those WMs and DEs. Its name is StumpWM and because I use
Emacs nearly for everything, StumpWM is well integrated with it… It
is written in Lisp (the king programming language, according to
RMS…
And in the end, I’ve just sticked to XFce4 (DE) and StumpWM (WM)
If any of you want to know more about it, have a look on here:
I definitely dropped the ball by not even mentioning StumpWM in the list of notable mentions. Thanks for sharing. First released 2017, so will be considered in a future update I’m sure. .
Sorry I’m late to the party. I came across this and I thought it was a fantastic list. Thanks for giving MATE a great shout-out and I appreciate you using the screenshot to see how customisable MATE can be .
Personally, I use Unity as my daily-driver these days, but I have an Ubuntu MATE VM that I log into several times a week since it’s still fun to play around it and the workflow is awesome. Unity and MATE are my #1a and #1b, though I can understand why Unity didn’t crack the list (no Wayland replacement yet, still on X11 for the foreseeable future, and doesn’t exist outside of Ubuntu).
Thank you for being so welcoming to the MATE Community and giving us a new home on linuxcommunity.io.
There are things that I love about both Unity and MATE. However, at the end of the day, there are a couple things that make me choose Unity over MATE as my daily driver (and, if I had a more powerful machine, I would install both DEs so I can use them each):
Unity lends itself more to a keyboard-centric workflow (or it’s easier to have a keyboard-centric workflow compared to MATE). When I first started using MATE and I was a lot newer to Linux, I was very used to the point-and-click traditional workflow and I really liked it. However, as I ventured further and learned more about tiling window managers, I started to get used to a keyboard-first workflow and, over time, really started to prefer it. I can set up a similar environment with MATE (with keyboard shortcuts and the Mutiny layout), but it feels a bit more integrated in Unity due to it being more locked down in terms of customisation.
The HUD: This keeps me on Ubuntu Unity and Ubuntu MATE, and I could not use another DE or WM due to this feature alone (and I have tried!). However, mate-hud does not work so well on Qt6 applications. The HUD is more compatible on Unity I find.
The tablet-like interface: I was one of the vast minority of people who loved Windows 8 when it was around, and Unity reminds me a lot of what Windows 8 looked like with a workflow that works better for me on a non-touchscreen laptop. MATE is a traditional workflow which reminds me of using something akin to Windows XP, which I also loved. However, given the limitations of my hardware, I have to choose, and I find I prefer the tablet interface again.
I also find GTK4 apps integrate better with the light/dark theme on Unity compared to MATE. Since Ubuntu MATE 24.04, I have not been able to figure this one out.
Things Ubuntu Unity and Ubuntu MATE have in common:
The default apps: Ubuntu Unity ships with Eye of MATE, Pluma, Atril, and MATE Calculator. The default file manager, Nemo, is also very similar to Caja (I find). It is nice that there is that consistency between the two Ubuntu flavours.
The community: The MATE community is amazing and very involved. I am also involved with the Ubuntu Unity community on Telegram and they are also a fantastic group. Very helpful and open about the development plan of the distribution.
The themes: Ambiance and Ambiant-MATE are my favourite themes. The colour scheme and the slight skeuomorphic design work for me big time. Ambiant-MATE integrates well into Ubuntu MATE (even in 2026) and Ambiance integrates well into Ubuntu Unity.
I’ll add this too – I used neither desktop when it was the “default” on Ubuntu. I started using Linux in 2023 so I don’t really use either desktop for the nostalgia, rather for the workflow and interface.
I hope this helps understand why I’m on Unity. I still use MATE a lot on my VM, but ultimately I’m preferring Unity more these days. Also, my dad is happy using MATE on Linux Mint. He is so happy to have a setup that he is used to (i.e., traditional and familiar), rather than dealing with all the new changes on Windows 11.
Also, in my personal opinion, the default GNOME setup on Ubuntu does not mimic Unity. It may look like Unity at face value, but find it lacks a lot of the features that make Unity what I prefer (the keyboard centric workflow and the HUD). I tried Ubuntu GNOME once, and was disappointed unfortunately. However, I say this with the utmost respect behind it, and GNOME is a great desktop – it is just not the experience that works for me.
Sorry this ended up being more of an essay than a response. I wish Unity and MATE were more popular than what I see discussed online. I would recommend either desktop environment without hesitation.
Thanks Jaymo, and no worries on the essay. I actually enjoyed reading through it, especially the explanation of why Unity works for you. The HUD and keyboard-centric workflow are definitely compelling reasons. Keyboard-centric is massive for me as well on XFCE.
It also gets into something I’ve been thinking about increasingly: the relationship between a distro vs desktop environment release cadence.
After 2 decades of experimenting with a lot of combinations, I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that XFCE is probably the sweet spot for people who like bleeding-edge or leading-edge distros but STILL need their workstation to be boringly stable. You can run a very current distro underneath without necessarily making the desktop itself part of the experiment.
And, while down that rabbit hole, ending up taking the idea probably way too far and turning it into a game: distrofighter.com lol. From which the pretty serious stats page has confirmed my suspicions: XFCE is one of the largest overlooked yet still mainstream Linux desktop environments:
I’m genuinely so positively surprised with Xfce. I think most discussions these days are between Plasma and GNOME, but for someone who just wants a bit more practicality and “no-nonsense”, Xfce is absolutely brilliant.
That is a really cool experiment and idea, and I think I saw the distro fighter featured on a Linux YouTuber’s channel (I think Brodie Robertson, but I could be wrong). I’ll have to play it sometime!
Funny enough, since I wrote that “essay response” I actually went back to Ubuntu MATE. I installed a program called Ulauncher which gives me the same functionality as the Unity Dash and the MATE HUD works perfectly with the Global Menu panel applet enabled, even on Qt6 apps, so I managed to solve my downsides from that post.
What drove me back to MATE was when I wanted to change my theme on Unity. After about a month I wanted to spice things up a bit, and I didn’t realise how difficult it is to theme Unity. On MATE I can easily change theme, panel configuration, etc. from MATE Tweaks and just downloading any GTK2/3 theme from the internet. I also have Compiz as my window manager so I can enjoy the same desktop effects as on Unity.
I’ve been repeatedly DE hopping for years in the hopes of hitting on a new one that just does the job. After the release of GNOME3 I jumped shipped faster than the average rat. I’ve tried using it repeatedly and something just isn’t working for me. I keep trying to get into KDE, which I admit is now much better than it has been, but it still isn’t all the way there yet…
When i quit GNOME I ended up with Xfce4 and although I was really excited by the GNOME2 forks, Mate and Cinnamon, I quickly scurried back to Xfce4. The biggest issue I have with both GNOME3 and KDE is how painful it is to create custom launchers on the panel for items not added to the main menu. I know it can be done, create a .desktop file and configure it manually, then drag the file to the panel. Xfce4 is just better, right click the panel, Add, drag a new launcher to the bar, right click that and configure, browse to the file, or manually enter the path, use the GUI to select an icon, give it a name and enter a working path…so easy! No creating ugly files on the Desktop or in /usr…
I also find creating launchers for Wine launched Windows binaries to be too complicated to stop me bashing my head against the desk and logging out and switching back the Xfce. I make no apology for loving easy and “just works”.
I agreed with you here. KDE is probably “most improved” over the past decade.
For me it was the reliance on extensions that would contantly break or go unmainted. A DE/WM is only as strong or stable as its weakest point.
Could not agree more. And no need for 3rd party extensions that require contant updates to remain in sync / not break with GNOME which updates fairly frequently.
Feel free to share your setup in our desktop sharing threads. Thanks for joining.
Could not agree more. And no need for 3rd party extensions that require contant updates to remain in sync / not break with GNOME which updates fairly frequently.