XFCE

XFCE is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

XFCE aims to be fast and lightweight while still being visually appealing and easy to use. Xfce embodies the traditional Unix philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of separately packaged parts that together provide all functions of the desktop environment, but can be selected in subsets to suit user needs and preference. Another priority of Xfce is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org.

KDE Plasma

KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014.

It includes a new default theme, known as “Breeze”, as well as increased convergence across different devices. The graphical interface was fully migrated to QML, which uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, which resulted in better performance and reduced power consumption.

Plasma Mobile is a Plasma 5 variant for Linux-based smartphones.

LXQT

LXQt is a free and open source lightweight desktop environment. It was formed from the merger of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects.

Like its GTK predecessor LXDE, LXQt does not ship or develop its own window manager, instead LXQt lets the user decide which (supported) window manager they want to use. Linux distributions commonly default LXQt to Openbox, Xfwm4, or KWin.

LXDE

LXDE (abbreviation for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements. This makes it especially suitable for use on older or resource-constrained personal computers such as netbooks or system on a chip computers.

MATE

MATE is a desktop environment composed of free and open-source software that runs on Linux, BSD, and illumos operating systems.

MATE is named after the South American plant yerba mate and tea made from the herb, mate. The name is stylized in all capital letters to follow the nomenclature of other Free Software desktop environments like KDE and LXDE. The recursive backronym “MATE Advanced Traditional Environment” was subsequently adopted by most of the MATE community, again in the spirit of Free Software like GNU (“GNU’s Not Unix!”). The use of a new name, instead of GNOME, avoids naming conflicts with GNOME 3 components.

An Argentine user of Arch Linux, named Perberos started the MATE project to fork and continue GNOME 2 in response to the negative reception of GNOME 3, which had replaced its traditional taskbar (GNOME Panel) with GNOME Shell. MATE aims to maintain and continue the latest GNOME 2 code base, frameworks, and core applications.

MATE was initially announced for Debian on November 8, 2013, at its official website.

MATE became an official Arch Linux community package in January 2014.

MATE has forked a number of applications which originated as GNOME Core Applications, and developers have written several other applications from scratch. The forked applications have new names, most of them from Spanish.

GNOME

GNOME originally an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

Many major Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise distribute GNOME as their default desktop environment; it is also the default in Oracle Solaris, a Unix operating system.

GNOME is developed by the GNOME Project, which is composed of both volunteers and paid contributors, the largest corporate contributor being Red Hat. It is an international project that aims to develop frameworks for software development, to program end-user applications based on these frameworks, and to coordinate efforts for the internationalization, localization, and accessibility of that software.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and Unix-like operating systems, deriving from GNOME 3 but following traditional desktop metaphor conventions.

The development of Cinnamon began by the Linux Mint team as a reaction to the April 2011 release of GNOME 3 in which the conventional desktop metaphor of GNOME 2 was abandoned in favor of GNOME Shell. Following several attempts to extend GNOME 3 such that it would suit the Linux Mint design goals, the Mint developers forked several GNOME 3 components to build an independent desktop environment. Separation from GNOME was completed in Cinnamon 2.0, which was released in October 2013. Applets and desklets are no longer compatible with GNOME 3.

As the distinguishing factor of Linux Mint, Cinnamon has generally received favorable coverage by the press, in particular for its ease of use and gentle learning curve. With respect to its conservative design model, Cinnamon is similar to the Xfce, MATE, GNOME 2 (and GNOME Flashback) desktop environments.