My Tier List For Linux Desktop Environments

It's time for another one of my tier list rankings. This time, I'm going to give my tier list ranking for desktop environments available on Linux. Two things to note are (1) I'm not a desktop environment user myself, and (2) these kinds of tier list videos are all subjective opinion.
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[@sahiljindal]

I love how tier list shown in the thumbnail is vastly different from the tier list in the video 🤣

[@skelebro9999]

the clickbait is important

[@xiangzhou8188]

GOT THEM!

[@chloe-sunshine7]

It got me lol. I scrolled past, then went back up to see where KDE was and got curious

[@hellohigoodbye]

lol ya. But it has to be like that otherwise what's the point of clicking on a video and watching it if we know what the tier list is at the beginning.

[@jacquesroux7362]

tsk tsk clickbait, why do all KZbinrs become weird over time?

[@AndreaSimonetti2001]

I think that XFCE is underrated, it's lightweight yet modern (if properly customized). I don't see its slow development as a downside, because when you upgrade frequently, especially in rolling release distros, there can be a phase where things could be broken, it had happened to me more than a time with other DEs. Other than XFCE, I really like KDE, especially for the fact that they put enough effort to make Qt and GTK look uniform by default.

[@fredmckinney8933]

Yes, Xfce, along with MATE and the Openbox window manager are my favorites. Hard to tell which I like best, though.

[@Xenotypic]

i always thought xfce was overrated and lxqt underrated.

[@AndreaSimonetti2001]

@@Xenotypic LxQt has a lot of potential, I personally prefer XFCE tho.

[@njbrx]

I'll always have a soft spot for xfce because I was stuck with an ancient lenovo laptop and i made due with 4 gigs of ram

[@Xenotypic]

@@njbrx it's awesome how these lightweight de's can resurrect old pc's. i have a dell dimension 2400 with 2 gigs that uses lxqt and it's surprisingly snappy. xfce works too, just slightly slower. someone could make it with that setup, the worst thing about it is being 32 bit.

[@mjdxp5688]

CDE actually got its latest update back in July 2022! It's probably not the best choice for a modern DE, but it's fun to just take a look at it and get a retro UNIX experience. There's actually a modern recreation of CDE called NsCDE, which you might want to take a look at if you're afraid of CDE being insecure.

[@theretromillennial]

Glad someone brought up nsCDE.

[@TheCocoaDaddy]

That's awesome! I used to use CDE on AIX and HP-UX, many moon ago. I used it a little on Slackware, back when I was experimenting with Linux. Since I tried Ubuntu, I haven't used any desktop environments or window managers other than what came with the distribution I installed. So, I used Unity on Ubuntu and I installed Mint Cinnammon on my laptop. Back in my experimentation days, I also ran Motif on Linux mostly because I had CDE installed as well and just did it for kicks. lol

[@thingsiplay]

Why do you think that CDE is not the best choice for modern DE?

[@dschoene57]

CDE ist the fastest way to get a desktop env running on a system, like NetBSD or LFS, due to its modest number of dependencies. Once you have Xorg running you basically need ksh, motif, OpenSP and bob's your uncle, everything else came with the base system or X11.

[@dschoene57]

@@thingsiplay Probably because most of its applications are outdated. The terminal still relies on ksh and the Mail client is supremely useless these days, but we're wortking on it.

[@LibreSoftwareEnjoyer]

Depending on the styling, XFCE can look pretty cool - on Endeavor OS, Linux Lite, Zorin, but kind of outdated on Linux Mint(maybe the icon pack contributes to that feeling too). On the backend side it's a shame that only GNOME and KDE (less so) have decent Wayland support. Btw, nice bait in the thumbnail.

[@trajectoryunown]

I've always heard Xfce is highly customizable, but I'm just happy that there are so many easily accessible settings in the base installation. >.> Gnome... (I do like Gnome for laptops though.)

[@omega3fatass61]

@@trajectoryunown nice profile pic! haha

[@matthiasschuster9505]

KWin has the Wayland support So you could say using it on other desktops - like DDE - enables to use Wayland with them Also the apps need to support Wayland, otherwise they are running on a compability layer. Lots of KDE and GNOME apps do that today.

[@xamp_exclammark]

Im currently running XFCE on endeavour and i love the way it looks

[@NotJacobX]

which one is better endeavouros or mint? for low end laptops like mine

[@phuchu]

Xfce has something none of the others on this list has: rock solid stability. That is far more important to me than bling.

[@moneysurvival897]

Absolutely right, that's one of the main points about XFCE - Distrotube really messed up on this one.

[@fevangelou]

Zorin probably does the best XFCE customization in their Lite version.

[@demarkz]

You should try Archcraft XFCE. The best looking XFCE distro ever.

[@Toxikcid]

Manjaro?

[@samyt681]

zorin? hahahahahahahahahaha

[@liyifenn]

@@Toxikcid Manjaro is really not good to use.

[@tytanyo007]

Yes!!

[@gregcampwriter]

Cinnamon is in the great tier for me. It was familiar for me to make the switch from Windows 7 without all the frustrations of Microsoft, and it hasn't caused me problems since. "Modern," as a description of cosmetics, doesn't mean better. I will never know what the Deepin environment looks like, since I refuse to subject myself without a fight to an authoritarian government.

[@darknightmike10yearsago]

The themes, extensions, and applets included in Cinnamon are so useful! I love being able to click the "turn off monitor" button without needing to physically turn both of my monitors off. I think Cinnamon is one of the most consistent looking DEs because everything looks uniform between applications, like Gnome, but you get more custimization than you would in Gnome. You get some pre-included Gnome applications, but also some of their own unique applications that are better than Gnome's apps, like the Nemo file manager (Nautilus sucks!). Like you mentioned the transition from Windows to Linux Mint Cinnamon was fairly straight-forward and easy for me also, except I switched from Windows 11. It is nice to actually own the OS, and I don't have to worry about losing my license key if I change my motherboard (yes, this happened to me once).

[@nggtech6089]

its hard to see that gnome is better than cinnamon for DT :(

[@profquad]

Came here to say this. Cinnamon is the cleanest I've tried, which is really a priority for me. Transparent windows couldn't matter less.

[@centurion8446]

Yeah I clung to windows 7 as long as possible, probably why I'm liking Cinnamon the most so far?

[@kenfuller9907]

As an old time unix sysadmin, I love CDE. I managed to compile it for Arch on a raspberry pi. :)

[@umop3plsdn]

theres also NsCDE thats still being devoloped now

[@BringMayFlowers]

@@umop3plsdn Yes, but a recent patch to X broke fvwm and it freezes when iconifying programs now.

[@ronny332]

In my eyes, you are a bit hard to Cinnamon 🙂. I use it since years, and for me it is a "just there" desktop. I never gets in the way, it always works, could be be easily handled without using a mouse (besides normal usage of cause) and is compatible with the mostly all apps integration wise. One bar on the bottom may look old school, but hey? What's wrong with it? We're getting old, too. I'm using Cinnamon on a 3440x1440 screen and the bar is hardly to see anyway (with my old eyes 🙂).

[@Kingdomkush]

Yo DT! just wanna say thank you for sharing your experience and opinions

[@hotsauwz]

I tried to say your @ out loud and now my furniture is flying around the room

[@niccoloveslinux]

KDE's NOT a Desktop Environmenttttttttttt!

[@alexandrosvangelatos9979]

The DE is called "Plasma"

[@cameronbosch1213]

Correct. It's KDE *PLASMA.*

[@PP-ok2xt]

K Desktop Environment

[@cameronbosch1213]

@P P Since KDE 4, it was split into Plasma & the KDE Software Compilation. The latter was also further broken down with KDE Plasma 5 with the addition of the KDE Frameworks.

[@johanb.7869]

At the moment KDE is my favorite. With Fluent dark theme and Thunderbird and Firefox with the dark theme looks amazing, imo🙂 Xfce my second favorite.

[@Maledis87]

I love the fluent theme, makes the taskbar look more modern

[@LuisBernardoMonroyJaramillo]

How about some screenshots of the DEs you are judging?

[@puspamadak]

I love KDE Plasma with it's Breeze dark theme. IMO it's the best out-of-the-box experience any DE has provided. I used GNOME before, but didn't like it's default look. But GNOME 40 looks great now.

[@runwiththedolphin]

of the DEs, I appreciate the fact that when Xfce makes a new release, odds are very good that the desktop will work on your system without needting to update every GD gtk library in existence. You likely already have the needed libs to run it. perfect for us debian users.

[@dermond]

you would probably like NsCDE, it's a modern "desktop" with the CDE looks and feel, but it is made from FVWM and still maintained

[@umop3plsdn]

THIS 100% I get a feeling of nostalgia using it or looking at screenshots while it might not be my daily driver it still reminds me of better days back when linux was extremely fun

[@gusdelmoba3185]

Cinnamon is a great desktop environment with the same care as kde and gnome. It looks like windows 10 the default theme is terrible like xfce and mate but is just as light as xfce but is so much better. Mint just needs a better apt store to be perfect distor for new users

[@cameronbosch1213]

And Cinnamon needs a plan for Wayland support.

[@pranze3484]

I find it has the most coherent look of all desktops, 0 discrepancy in look anywhere, and is the most stable. Don't find it dated at all with adapta-nokto-eta theme.

[@SprunkCovers]

I daily drive Mint Cinnamon and my only gripe with it is the lack of Wayland support, the outdated look isn't that big of a deal for me because it is highly customizable so you can make it look modern

[@pranze3484]

@@SprunkCovers it's not dated, bullshit. Transparency is overrated, makes everything looks fancy but unreadable and isn't functional. Don't listen to idiots.

[@jab6757]

Most beautiful to me is Zorin OS and its GNOME spin. Close by is Cinnamon Manjaro. I also like its themed Vivaldi browser.

[@Thomas.Saunders]

I'm not much of a fan of Manjaro, but all of the DEs I've look at on Manjaro have very good theming. The Manjaro team obviously prioritizes the look of those DEs.

[@lukashavel7690]

Cinnamon Manjaro is community edition btw. If you do not download from AUR much, it can be a bit more stable than core DEs from the Manjaro Team. That extra few weeks of wait for a new version helps with that.

[@Dekken__]

I have stopped hopping because of Zorin OS Gnome for now. It is beautiful, does not break (whereas KDE Plasma on Manjaro broke many times despite being gorgeous).

[@toranshaw4029]

I'm glad that you remembered to put Unity on the list, as that's what I'm now using on my work machine! 🙂

[@BurgerKingHarkinian]

My condolences

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@BurgerKingHarkinian Unity is still developed though, just not by Canonical anymore.

[@derricknyakundi1985]

How is the experience?

[@MarkDavidMcCoskey]

I've settled on Budgie (EndeavourOS) over XFCE, KDE or Gnome. It's simple and just works for me. I'm a basic Linux Desktop user.

[@PrateekTade]

I don't think LXQt deserves to be meh. Here's why - 1. The original creator of LXDE decided to start working on LXQt because they realised that it wouldn't remain light enough if they moved to GTK3 which prompted the move to Qt. Forward looking approach I would say. 2. It follows the modularity principle of LXDE and thus keeps the components separate, unlike GNOME which pulls in everything. GNOME's approach is great for people wanting a full-fledged desktop, but removing some base apps might be problematic. 3. LXQt already has some amount of Wayland support and seem to be ahead of Budgie, Cinnamon and MATE in this aspect.

[@cameronbosch1213]

MATE does have Wayland plans. Cinnamon doesn't, which puts it instantly in the Meh category at best.

[@donmills2647]

LXQT Wayland (LXW?) for the general user still seems to be a ways off due to the glacial pace of standardization in some parts of the compositor specifications. I see some people doing custom environment configurations using some LXQT stuff. And I see some other people are doing more fully if not completely LXQT wayland environments, but are using custom builds of some things that have been hacked to make it work.

[@Grizzz1y]

I am currently using Gnome. I find it simple to use, but I do agree with you about the applications that come with the desktop. I replace them. The customization that Gnome has is enough for me, so I would put it in my Great tier. You have great videos that I watch often. Great work.

[@lukashuening]

Got me with the "KDE MEH" Thumbnail 😁

[@coda821]

Mate is really my favorite. Simple & customizable 4 ease of Use. I just love cascading menus. Wish it was faster tho. Might need to use XFCE more.

[@Doruletz1999]

MATE is fast, I cannot understand why you say you wish it was faster.

[@SubhrajitChaudhuri]

yes, i also don't understand why he said mate isn't fast. I would say Mate is literally the snappiest Desktop Environment after xfce especially how snappy the menu is

[@coda821]

@@SubhrajitChaudhuri Mate is fast. I just run old equipment, & have too high expectations.

[@darknightmike10yearsago]

Mate isn't fast for you?! Mate is just as fast as XFCE, in my experience.

[@willft520]

I would personally have XFCE above Gnome just because I've actually used XFCE and enjoyed myself. On the other hand, Gnome to me looks beautiful, elegant, modern and interesting (I've always been curious for gnome since gnome 3), but it's paradigm is very different from the way I like my desktop experience, Gnome is a touch-centric interface and that's something I don't see myself taking advantage of... My feeling tells me that maybe I would enjoy Gnome more on something like a tablet pc.

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

Nah I gotta disagree with you on Xfce. It should be S tier. It may not have out of the box the best icons, but that's practically a two click change to Papirus and Arc or something. It's so easy to fix, so it's kinda unfair to dock it for that. KDE doesn't look good out of the box either. With that disregarded, nothing else comes close. It has a solid default terminal, the best GUI file manager (I use i3 these days, but I still use Thunar bc it's great), by far the best bar, and one of the best performances. If it's not S tier, nothing else should be

[@jozsefizsak]

While I largely agree with your conclusions here, the terms modern and dated have come to bother me because I'm a lot older than you are and have observed the cyclic nature of aesthetic tastes. I've always detested the 1950s pink ceramic tile that some old bathrooms are adorned with but this year I've learned that it's fresh, new and I should be excited about installing it in my kitchen as soon as possible. Does a disinclination to embrace the old mean I'm resistant to change? Anyway, I think the desktop metaphor as seen in Windows XP is very logical, and appealing but since I've settled on Plasma and Budgie, we're ultimately not that far apart.

[@kayachan5198]

appreciate all your videos - i wonder if in future you could maybe include some brief video clips of what you're talking about, totally unnecessary but could add a lot more quality to your content, thanks for everything that you do

[@donmills2647]

LXQT is my primary environment, so I probably would say it is OK instead of MEH. Good basic environment that allows me to be productive without getting in my way. The primary status/management things are all on the panel, desktop switcher, keyboard, bluetooth, network, volume, removable drives. The date, time widget show you a calendar when you click on it. For laptop keyboard, I think on some desktop keyboard too, where the hardware maker made the odd decision of not showing you the caps lock and num lock status, having that on the panel is nice. I dock it a little because some of the widgets and widget configuration could be improved and in the version that is currently in Debian Unstable I'm not seeing an obvious way to add stuff to the quick launch. It's been a while since I added anything to the quick launch so maybe I just don't remember, but I don't think I had to hunt for a way to do this in the past.

[@wrathofsocrus]

You can drag and drop stuff from the menu into quick launch to add it. It doesn't have the separate config window like LXDE. I haven't tried out the most recent release, but there are still some parts of LXDE that didn't get ported over or merged into newer config windows. That being said, it's still my favorite. Many DE's can't do a vertical panel without lots of issues and I'm never going back to full time horizontal panels.

[@donmills2647]

@@wrathofsocrus That worked. I'm sure I tried that, but probably not after the 1.x versions of LXQT made their way into Debian unstable so maybe it wasn't working for a bit because of some compatibility issue between pre1.x LXQT and newer versions of QT.

[@davidfrischknecht8261]

KDE and Cinnamon are actually my two favorite Linux desktop environments. However, Konsole currently has a major bug in that you cannot customize the default profile.

[@tobycat7]

People always complain about the "dated" look of Cinnamon. I actually like that, it's pretty nostalgic.

[@RafaCoringaProducoes]

12:00 glad to see you mentioning the possibility to easily change the WM in LXQT... btw i use xfce+i3wm+vala global menu (kinda bad to install), but im curious to try sometime lxqt+sway or something. XFCE really pleases the modularity + stability sides, to bad wayland seems far for them. Btw² mate's HUD recently caugh my atention! Check it out

[@thesteelshow433]

I really enjoy Cinnamon and MATE's look out of the box. I appreciate the fact they aren't this overly flat looking and that it uses elements of skeumorphism in its design, I find it to be a lot cozier and nice looking. Even if I drive KDE nowadays I find Cinnamon and MATE to be some of the most balanced, most stable DE out there, while providing the user a balance between accessability and customizability.

[@wrathofsocrus]

LXDE in Lubuntu used to be a buggy mess. Respins of the time like Peppermint and LXLE fixed all of those problems and made it look really nice, but none of the fixes ever made it upstream. Lubuntu may be heavier now, but it has made steady progress and you can use everything KDE with it. I think the OS or respin you use has a huge impact, particularly on the 'lightweight' DE's. You can learn a lot by trying the same DE from a dozen different points of view.

[@Mus_insterat]

Its 2023 ? Did you return to xfce . Any updates?

[@esra_erimez]

Would you consider doing a video about window managers such as TWM and enlightenment?

[@kylewillett9817]

He already did: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqrWeoapZdKWoJo

[@dschoene57]

He showed a shocking lack of knowledge when talking about CDE. If you'd let him lose on old-school WM's like FVWM or CTWM or, heaven forbid, TWM, he'd be completely lost. From what I get from the videos, he grew up with Gnome & Co and doesn't have the faintest clue about the X11 paradigms of the olden days.

[@petejones284]

Used Budgie on Solus for a long time, on my last installation tried out KDE and never went back. Lots of customisation options and their default apps are very good. Now running KDE on Solus and Debian.

[@ShaunakHub]

Ohh boy! Comments will definitely be fun!

[@GreyHazRoot]

xfce 4.18 will be out this month

[@ArniesTech]

GNOME creeped up my tier list right to the top, followed by KDE Plasma. But XFCE will always be the winner of the hearts 💪😁❤️

[@hb9145]

Trinity is old and retro-looking, but it is very advanced, customizable and has tons of native applications. I'd put it in the "good"-category if it was my list. It runs fantastic on older hardware. The latter is not so strange, because it was built for hardware that existed long ago. ;)

[@DarkWorldQ8]

Everyone should use the desktop environment that they prefer. I personally prefer simpler and functional desktop environment, I don't care about animations or widgets or extra things. I've used Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, GNOME, LXQT, and LXDE. IMO MATE > Cinnamon = Xfce > LXQt > LXDE >>>>> GNOME. I really hated GNOME as a computer desktop environment. I did try KDE for a bit, but I didn't give it enough usage to rank it, but I do prefer it over GNOME.

[@billfarley9015]

"Desktop-hopping" is the new thing. It's much easier than distro-hopping. I used Cinnamon for years. I really liked it but it kept freezing on me so I switched to Mate because it's more stable. Xfce and Lxqt are pretty good, too. I tried KDE years ago and it didn't work too well. But they may have fixed it by now. Now a lot of people are raving about it so maybe I'll try it. And Gnome and Pantheon too.

[@TurboPikachu]

CDE may be a "yuck" for me because most modern applications can't run on it, but I'd personally have the FVWM-based NsCDE (Not So Common Desktop Environment) up in the "good" category as it's a new and consistently-updated DE that enables modern apps to run properly in a faithful re-creation of CDE. The UI palette customizations beat out even XFCE's Chicago95 theme in just how granularly you can change UI element colors, and that alone has me really tempted to make it a daily driver.

[@morbosaurus1344]

XFCE has never abandoned me, in every distro I have used like debian, gentoo, mint etc. KDE has often caused me problems even gnome although I have always tried to use stable versions. Now on gentoo I'm using Enlightenment for lowspec hardware, but it's not very complete and there's really too much to fiddle with to have a complete experience, I'm thinking of going back to XFCE.

[@TheZakarumite]

kde is great... vault, activities, kde-connect, ...

[@fl0wedm612]

Being a traditionalist I only agreed with KDE and CDE's placement

[@patpopov]

LXQt+Openbox with Lubuntu Bionic Beaver artwork for retro groovyness.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

My list 1. Cinnamon 2. MATE 3. Budgie 4. XFCE 5. GNOME 6. LXqt/LXDE I've never used the other on the list of the episode.

[@brianschuetz2614]

I've been trying out LMDE5 with Cinnamon and Manjaro with KDE. I like them both, but I find myself leaning toward Manjaro with KDE. I'd been playing around with Linux off and on for a while to see what I think of it but hadn't committed to Linux. Well, I finally decided in the past few weeks to walk away from Microsoft and commit to Linux. I plan eventually to set up a VM with Windows in it if I find a reason for it. I started the commitment when I bought a laptop from System76 earlier this year.

[@Thomas.Saunders]

If you're thinking of using an Arch based distro such as Manjaro, you might look at EndeavourOS. EOS would require you to spend a little more time learning Linux basics up front, it's much closer to vanilla Arch Linux than Manjaro and you would probably be able to keep with EndeavourOS long after you outgrew Manjaro. Just my opinion.

[@thelakeman2538]

You should try running gnome or just use the default cosmic de that comes with pop os on the system76 laptop, gnome works really well on laptops especially if you often use touchpad gestures like me. Wine/proton are generally good enough to run windows software, in my experience bottles has been really easy to use windows applications, so windows vm not really required unless your use case requires it.

[@DeirdreYoung1]

XFCE is boring.. and solid, so I still love it after all these years. I have a Manjaro XFCE as my KZbin laptop and a Xubuntu install for my little Nextcloud server. But I can't disagree with anything you said about it 😉

[@tenfourproductionsllc]

I boring is great. In the end, all spreadsheets, web browsers etc look identical on all OS's. Sure, if I am going to do nothing but stare at my wallpaper and startup screen all day long, XFCE is boring. But I want to get things done.

[@ManoelPinho1]

KDE is the best desktop environment and very popular in Europe and Brazil but unfortunately not the most popular in the USA.

[@cameronbosch1213]

I use it.

[@GreyHazRoot]

let the flame wars begin.....

[@CollectedG]

For some reason KDE has been very buggy for me. Every time i drag the mouse it creates artifacts and the taskbar would be irresponsive at times.

[@slash2bot]

Check the renderer settings and the graphics driver

[@CollectedG]

@@slash2bot Thanks, I'll try kde again later and reply with my results.

[@draugr7693]

Vanilla Gnome is one of my least favourite DE's but with the Dash To Panel and Tray Icons Reloaded extensions it becomes one of my favourites.

[@xperience-evolution]

Pretty much agreed with some tweaks Gnome - great Kde - good Cinnamon - good

[@laniusdev]

As far as the ranking itself, well that's subjective and of course everybody would change this and that, but saying that XFCE terminal is meh, and nothing special... Well. XFCE terminal is the best 'DE default' terminal emulator, when it comes to raw functionality. It looks fine, it's GTK app, you can theme it, it has all regular configuration options other terminal apps have, but it also supports dropdown terminal. KDE has Yakuake for that, which a separate app, and other DEs don't ship a native dropdown terminal app at all. If you don't care about hardware acceleration, builtin multiplexing (like the one Kitty has) or split windows (Terminator and/or Tilix), XFCE terminal has it all.

[@omegadaboi]

Cinnamon at only OK make me want to commit a warcrime

[@BurgerKingHarkinian]

Same

[@darknightmike10yearsago]

Ha, same!

[@PS_Tube]

Xfce is meant to be stable, lightweight, simple yet customisable. Its applications do one thing, but they do that one thing perfectly. Xfce should have been in good category. I've seen weirdest behaviour on Cinnamon on Mint, I uninstalled firefox and it had just broke the whole DE, two years ago when I was testing Linux Mint.

[@sitaroartworks]

Basically for you, everything is pretty much based on updates and aesthetics and stability is secondary. XFCE deserve the great category because even on powerful hardware is the perfect environment for rock solid tests, multimedia, gaming and working loads of any kind, included the virtualization.

[@r3lativ]

"Cinnamon doesn't try to look dated, just happens to look that way." brutal 🤣

[@BenjaminWSong]

OMG, did not know CDE is still alive!!! remember running it on Unix Machines back in the 90's! didn't even bother installing it on my Linux machine back then. LOL. Looked like a mix between OS/2 and Amiga.....? Looked like it was designed from the 80's, IMO, and I used to enable Open Look instead of CDE...

[@lamar9525]

Thank you, I needed that!

[@accountid9681]

GNOME with a mouse is absolute hell, but on a laptop the multi touch gestures make it so intuitive, and fast to navigate that I feel like i'm flying through vim, but without ever needing to touch the keyboard.

[@yt_reborngameplays]

If people start to disagree with the tier list, the title clearly says 'My tier list...'. So it's essentially his tier list of choice and doesn't necessarily have to be yours too. You make your own tier list. You work with anything you are comfortable with.

[@green9624]

"Mate looks dated" - but not oldschool enough. I'd like a theme to make it look like the good old Gnome 1.0

[@kogeke]

Cinnamon is DE where you can use hidpi without problems

[@iibrahimov]

Haven't you tried Enlightenment DE? It is very lightweight but very elegant at same time.

[@MMLavi]

I really like gnome, the extensions are great and really take customization to the next level. I love the simplicity.

[@Mage4636]

tier list to start the day with coffee... good stuff

[@bobbybologna3029]

Won't rate CDE higher because of "security holes" but put gives Deepin top tier? Damn you smokin' some good sh** there bro

[@Perry....]

GNOME in good??? DT.. what happened man... You ok?

[@DarkGladiator]

You mean it should be in yuck/meh? It's an opinion bruh...

[@Perry....]

@@DarkGladiator It's a joke bruh...

[@DarkGladiator]

@@Perry.... I didn't get it sry

[@BurgerKingHarkinian]

I agree but not as a joke

[@The1RandomFool]

The bigger changes I'd make is rate XFCE as great and Gnome as yuck.

[@decoydave]

Linux noob here. What about the Enlightenment desktop, where does that fall into? Nice explanation of the desktops.

[@tyh2989]

NsCDE improved on CDE and is currently developed The interface is clean and easy to configure . So it would deserve an OK if you like a nice retro DE.

[@thanhlephuong7687]

Actually, i have seen HP-UX on HP workstation. It runs from 1997 to now without errors and restarting. It use CDE so nice, run slowly slowly but everything run smoothly.

[@mydroid2791]

Personally I very much dislike DE that radically change their UI/UX every 5-10 years. I use Linux over Windows because I want the UI to be stable and not to change much. So any DE that either still looks like Windows 7 / XP or is modern but just doesn't change is my preferred DE.

[@blbezcc]

I have KDE and I love how every time I turn my laptop on, I find another cool hidden setting waiting form me :D

[@JoaquinCorradi]

What about UKUI, it's an official Ubuntu flavour

[@safi164]

CDE is included with Sparky Linux if anyone is curious.. lol though completely unusable for daily use and doesn't support any modern standards. But they have working binaries there as a curiosity. To be honest TWM is more up to date than CDE.

[@artax33]

Without watching the video I am guessing the thumbnail is not the real list and it is made to troll people.

[@PenguinRevolution]

CDE wasn't actually a "Linux Desktop", it was actually built for Unix for use on commercial and office work stations. It was actually proprietary software till 2012 and was open sourced under the GPL in 2012.But it did work on Linux systems when it was proprietary. It has been patched several times since the source was released, I think the latest patch was July 2022. I doubt it's the most secure piece of software out there, but there has been a fork released called the "Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) that is more modern, updated features, and sees more support than CDE does.

[@moneysurvival897]

I agree with most of your rankings, but I think you are doing XFCE a disservice, and misleading many would be users. It is fast and low on resource usage, rock solid stable, highly customizable, and has one of the very best menus in all of linux. It can easily be made to look more modern. I can't remember ever having a crash on XFCE. Also, I have used KDE Plasma and XFCE, and while I love Plasma, I like XFCE even better. It does everything I need it to do, and it just seems to have a lighter and crisper feel to it than Plasma.

[@kvngn]

Lumina basically amounts to a Fluxbox overlay. Once the wallpaper has disappeared when logging out, a right click will actually bring up the Fluxbox menu.

[@n3kowarrior]

4:08 retro fans might wanna use it though

[@securelinuxchannel1519]

I love kde

[@kenbalbari3229]

I thought the ranking in the thumbnail was better than the one in the video. For me.... Great: Cinnamon; Good: KDE, Xfce, Gnome; OK: LXQt + LXDE DDE, Meh: Budgie, Unity For me, the best of these in actual use are Cinnamon and Xfce. The biggest knock on both is the lack of Wayland support. Give Xfce credit for having some of the best included applications (like Thunar and XFCE terminal) and a good window manager (xfwm4), plus for making it easy to have a unique background for each workspace. But Cinnamon still has the best panels, menus, configuration tools, and solid window management. KDE isn't far behind in its basic functionality, and it does support Wayland, but it's also kind of bloated and just tries to do too much, and does too much of that not especially well. Just give me the window manager and panel and keep the rest. Gnome 43 on the other hand is still a disordered mess. But with the right extensions, properly configured, you can get it to function fairly well, almost as nicely as Cinnamon. LXQt has a decent modern panel, an OK menu, and decent configuration tools, but isn't great at managing the desktop. But LXDE has better desktop management, including unique backgrounds for each workspace, but with an outdated panel and applications. A good lightweight combo I like, is to run LXQt, with the xfwm4 window manager, disabling its control of the desktop, and then in the application autostart setting it to run pcmanfm --desktop, so you get the desktop management from LXDE. And Budgie is yet another gnome based wm, but slower and less responsive, uglier, and seems more outdated than the above.

[@dschoene57]

correction: CDE is still in active development. The security holes do not originate from CDE, but third party tools like inetd and rpcbind and they're no longer required by now or have been chnaged to safer use.

[@therealb888]

PERFORMANCE DT, PERFORMANCE! How do these DE's compare in resource consumption, scaling, responsiveness, benchmarking, gaming, etc?

[@kebugcheck]

why nothing on perf. I thought this guy is a pro.

[@Rolltide101x]

I honestly do not understand how Budgie is "Great" and Cinnamon is "OK". They are very similar, I can understand liking the look of Budgie better but Cinnamon is less buggy and a little lighter weight.

[@MarnixSchoeters]

The thing about desktop environments is, that I never actually use the desktop. I use the window manager, menu and status bar, but the desktop is there because it came with the package.

[@RonVichar]

LXQT 2 is around the corner and will be all based on QT6. Cosmic Desktop is interesting too for a pre-alpha System76 DE

[@ionut9672]

when gnome 40 dropped, with horizontal workspaces.. my jaw dropped and i switched to arch just because I HAD TO HAVE IT ASAP. felt in love and still am. i do not have a single Qt app on my pc, if I need one I'll stick to cli to not ruin my beauty extensions to consider: -clipboard indicator(there is a modern one with images nowadays) -legacy theme scheme autoswitcher -DDTERM!!!! never had to open a terminal app since -workspace indicator -appindicator. i'd advise trying to change your ways instead

[@teapulp]

I do hope you consider checking out nsCDE - a modern recreation that has the retro charm without the security flaws.

[@joatmor]

Gnome Shell is in a class all by itself. It is the *only* desktop that tries to get of your way. Modern desktops are 'yet another windoze clone' (YAWC). Quite honestly the YAWC look is dated and not very intuitive to noobs. In same cases the YAWCs are bloated and in your face with unneeded 'features'. Lastly the YAWC look serves to perpetuate bad habits learned from using windoze. Unless and until something more forward looking comes along I will stay with Gnome Shell.

[@TheThunderSpirit]

xfce is really a good one, only if keeps up with wayland support its gonna get even better

[@darknightmike10yearsago]

Cinnamon doesn't look bad on Linux Mint IMO because it ships with all of the themes and has a newer theme choice. If you install Cinnamon on Arch it will look bad though because it won't come with the new themes installed, it will be installed with an older theme.

[@tankermottind]

Have you ever tried NSCDE? It's essentially a very elaborate extension of FVWM that turns it into a CDE look- and work-alike with some modern features (though it's not as nice as even Xfce), and it automatically configures GTK and Qt themes to match your CDE color settings.

[@BjornsTIR]

XFCE is kinda meh out of the box, but it can look and functiom very nice with slight customizations

[@avalagum7957]

I used CDE on Solaris back in 1998 - 2000.

[@danduby8416]

Hey Dt, would you consider Enlightenment a DE or a WM? I always heard it described as both.

[@zweiwing4435]

Can you do tier list of all Linux Immunity Distro as 2024 edition? What tier is bspwm?