We like Plasma, GNOME and Cinnamon closes the podium of the best graphical environment, but there is room for everyone

A week ago we publish a survey to find out what the Linux community thinks about what the better graphical environment of which we have available. With regard to the number of options, some believe that there are too many and that this only results in fragmentation. Others of us think that the options are always good, and that to avoid this fragmentation, which ones should we focus on? According to the survey, removing options would make some users unhappy.

In the survey we put 12 options, 14 if we take into account that i3 appeared next to Sway and LXQt appeared next to LXDE, and all have received votes. You also added more desks in the Others section, such as a Cutefish (CDE) that we did not want to put on the list because we were born a very short time ago. So it seems that the debate between options or fragmentation would fall on the side of options. And what was the graphical environment that received the most votes? Well, I think one that had the survey been done 5 years ago would have been much worse.

KDE Plasma is the best graphical environment today according to our votes

Almost 1 in 3 users voted for KDE / Plasma as the best graphical environment. I have to admit that it surprises me and it does not surprise me at the same time. It surprises me because in the past it was not going very well and I thought that I had lost the trust of many users, but it does not surprise me because I have hardly moved from the KDE desktop for a couple of years because its graphical environment is very light and its very productive applications.

In second position was the desk that, honestly, I thought it was going to be the first. GNOME It is a desktop with an image that you like and it is very intuitive, so the average user will move very well in this graphical environment and with its applications. In addition, it is the main flavor of Ubuntu and Fedora, and it is an official flavor in many other distributions. I do not know what has motivated me not to win in this survey, but it may be that it is heavier than other graphic environments or that many of us are looking for lightness and / or productivity.

In third position was Cinnamon, which for me was a surprise in part. Linux Mint is one of the most popular Ubuntu-based distributions, and much to blame is that its Cinnamon was liked a lot from the start. If I was a bit surprised, it was perhaps because I expected people to put forward MATE, the evolution of the old GNOME 2, or XFCE, the main flavor of Manjaro that also pulls a lot.

Deepin (DDE), the most unexpected

Yo I was using Deepin for a while (DDE) and I have to admit that I liked many things, but it is not the lightest graphical environment that exists. In addition, it comes to us from China, and there are users who do not trust the Asian country. DDE It is available in Deepin Linux, but also as unofficial flavors of projects like Manjaro or Ubuntu.

Better rated than DDE is XFCE, and with a similar percentage, MATE and Pantheon stayed. The second is the graphical environment developed by the project behind elementary OS, and it was one of the options I installed on my little netbook when Ubuntu switched to Unity. It is very much based on Apple's design, which means that it is very careful.

Everyone has their place

All graphic environments seem to have their audience. Among the options proposed by the community, it was also mentioned Cosmic, which is a new graphical environment developed by System76 for its Pop! _OS, and i3 and Sway, which are more of a desktop-less window manager, also received some votes. Personally, it is clear to me that I prefer KDE, but I could also use GNOME on a somewhat more powerful computer, MATE brings me good memories, Budgie seems interesting to me… it's difficult to choose, but it seems like it's a blessed problem.