Best Distros for GNOME, KDE, XFCE and more! (Late 2020)

welcome back ladies and gents today's video is going to be about desktop environments now in the linux and open source world there are a myriad of desktop environments to choose from now this is in clear distinction to distributions of linux that you can also choose from now it's a common uh trope and it's somewhat been propagated by channels like the very one you're on right here is that uh the perfect distro or the perfect distribution of linux is what will solve all of your productivity nightmares and you'll be able to have the perfect computing experience if you just find the perfect distro and this leads to people like myself hopping around the place trying out all kinds of different operating systems and different distributions of linux to try and find that perfect combination now recently myself and definitely others in the linux youtube space have been uh feeling that honestly it's probably not all about linux distribution we're all pretty settled on what linux distribution we'd like whether that's manjaro ubuntu arch fedora it we all kind of understand the basics of what makes these distributions unique and we've all probably settled in a particular camp or other with a lot of the universal packaging formats and most desktop environments being widely available across a bunch of different distros it makes the choice of what to run actually a lot more difficult because they're all such great quality options so today's video is not necessarily about which distro is better than another but more which are the best distros for each desktop environment what's the best distro if you like kde what's the best distro if you like gnome so forth and so on so hopefully this doesn't drag out too long what i'm going to do is i'm going to keep things fairly simple on my end here i'm going to be showing you the the web pages of these different projects and then i'll bring in some b-roll of these distributions when i've checked them out here on the channel so that is to say that some of the b-roll that you watch might be slightly dated versions of the current operating systems that we're talking about but having said all that let's get into it let's talk about the best distros for each desktop environment we're going to knock out as many as we can let's do [Music] it okay starting off what i want to say is that coming off the back of my previous video which was uh manjaro plasma if you haven't checked that out go and check that review out honestly i believe that either manjaro or in some ways it's older more mature and somewhat difficult sibling arch are probably the best linux options when it comes to running any and all combination of these desktop environments for whatever reason manjaro and by virtue of it being related to it arch linux are incredible when it comes to being able to run whatever desktop environment you want kde gnome budgie you name it arch and manjaro usually have packages for installing and running all of those um desktop environments so i'm going to say right off the rip that if you're interested in trying all of the desktop environments and you just want an underlying linux operating system that can handle it manjaro or arch is the way to go having said that let's move on to specifics so we'll start with gnome because honestly gnome is one of the biggest desktop environments out there in terms of how much time money and effort gets dedicated to developing it gnome as a desktop environment is shipping on pretty much all of the major linux distributions if not by default it is at least an officially supported version of every major linux distribution out there however i would recommend fedora workstation as your go-to distribution if you want to experience gnome as the gnome team have intended what i will say is that gnome also has their own uh i guess virtual image or they have their own installation medium for their latest releases now that i think they're just calling gnome os but it's not designed to be a full-on linux distro replacement it's just meant to um act as a test bed effectively for um for gnome and the new releases of stuff that they have going on but gnome shell gnome 3 all of those goodies i would recommend if you want to try that out and get the best representation of gnome as gnome envisions their project then fedora workstation is the place to be you get stable performant vanilla gnome i do want to preface what i'm saying and these choices by saying i'm trying to get as close to what the desktop environment is is designed to be but at the same time it gives a good blend of stability and customization and all the different things that are kind of important in an operating system as well so these are 100 my opinion these are not this this is not hard and fast facts we're talking this is my opinion so kde this is a tough one because for most people uh most linux enthusiasts when we think of kde plasma we're thinking about the best distribution which isn't really a distribution officially speaking is kde neon which is based on a long-term support release of ubuntu and then it has the latest kde plasma stuff um packaged for that long-term support base so it is kind of semi-rolling in that the core of the os remains stable and only gets updated every two and a bit years whereas the desktop and the applications that are kde specific they get updated constantly i am going to go on record and say that i would actually recommend if you like kde i i actually think you get a better experience by running kubuntu as your go-to option if you really love the kde desktop and you love plasma i think and my experience has been that you get a better product in kubuntu than you do for kde neon some of the key reasons for this is app choice you get a more up-to-date core os so more recent linux kernel more recent graphics drivers etc although that is mitigated somewhat with the hardware enablement stack on lts releases the the overall finished product that the kubuntu team tie together just seems to me more stable and less buggy just a better all-round experience on kubuntu than kde neon okay what about all of the xfce folks out there now for those of you who have already zoomed in on this video and you can see all the tabs i've got lined up you know exactly where this video is going but xfce is all is also a hard one because while it's very easy to stay in ubuntu land and just go ah try zubuntu or it's easy to recommend manjaro again and say manjaro is probably one of the biggest distributions that recommends xfce up front and center i'm going to go with mx linux because mx linux is a wildly popular distribution for all the reasons that xfce makes a great desktop environment it's performant it's very speedy works well on older hardware and it is very very utilitarian utilitarian is like the key word when i think of mx linux because they have so many excellent custom tools that really make xfce uh as powerful as it possibly can be without being a full blown uh heavyweight desktop environment also because xfce in my opinion is not the prettiest thing out of the box mx linux kind of embraces that spartan feel to its desktop environment and uh and it lets xfce breathe and be its own thing albeit its own early 2000s look and feel thing so while mx linux does have other spins available like kde and flexbox those came later the xfce desktop environment on mx linux is a excellent utilitarian spartan time for all of those who who just want to do stuff with their computer in the most productive and old-school sense of the word all right let's talk about deep in dpn would be easier it for me to recommend running the deep in desktop environment uh on ubuntu dpin edition then on deep in itself and for all of the reasons that i've stated in previous videos i will link up in the cards at my review of ubuntu dpin and i'll probably have a link in the description somewhere about my review of the latest dpin os release but there are a few key issues with dpin as a linux distribution that prevent me from recommending it even though they're the ones that come up with the deep in desktop go and get the ubuntu deep in version if you really love the the deep in desktop having said that it is an older version of dpin hopefully it gets updated well i guess we'll wait and see all right let's talk about budgie an independent wildcard who is very valuable in the linux space in my opinion is solace if you want to run the budgie desktop environment which is almost like a more traditional gtk based gnome desktop environment so it's kind of like if gnome 3 didn't want to introduce a whole new workflow to things but kept a very traditional panel desktop windows with all the window controls and all that kind of stuff that's what the budgie desktop would be and the budgie desktop has a lot of good stuff to offer solars are the ones that kind of originally officially came up with it and so it remains the flagship experience on solas despite the fact that once again solace now supports kde gnome and mate alongside their budgie edition um solace in its own right as a distribution is fantastic i've uh i ran it for almost a whole year between 2017 2018 and then a little bit into 2019 and budgie even though development has slowed down compared to what it was um we're i guess we're still waiting to see what happens with future releases of budgie but uh yeah solace is still the best place to experience the budgie desktop as it was originally envisioned that leads us on to the cinnamon desktop and really there's no other option to experience cinnamon desktop in all of its quality other than linux mint i mean what did you expect linux mint needs no introduction cinnamon is basically a very similar description to what i just gave for the budgie desktop but it is far more configurable it has a far bigger user base and a lot more add-ons and extensions that make it um wildly wildly useful i like to think of cinnamon as basically a gtk version of kde plasma that's a lot of jargon to throw into one sentence just means that if you like the smooth look and feel of a lot of mac user experiences and user interfaces but you want the configurability and the minute control that windows gives you and you want all that bundled in a linux desktop environment that's probably where i'd recommend cinnamon really great desktop environment that has proven itself time and time again it has extensive financial support behind the development of cinnamon and each release has just gotten better and better and better so again for people who are looking for a traditional desktop computer paradigm the cinema desktop on linux mint is one of the best in the business so now speaking of more mac like experiences the comparison is very tired with the pantheon desktop and mac i think there's actually less common ground now than there ever has been but if you do like the idea of a minimal and focused desktop environment that um that gets rid of a lot of the distractions of uh of operating systems nowadays and strips it back to the bare essentials and makes the bare essentials run really smoothly then the pantheon desktop as featured on elementary os and largely developed by the elementary os team is where it's at at the moment elementary os and by extension the pantheon desktop environment is my um os and desktop environment of choice uh for right now for where i'm at as a user i uh i have very limited time on my hands so when i show up and do stuff on my computer i don't want to have to update a bunch of things i don't want a bunch of things moving around or constantly breaking i just want a stable system that is really predictable very minimal and just gets out of my way the same could also be said for gnome and that's why i jump back and forth between vanilla gnome on fedora and elementary os all the time just depending on what i'm feeling at the time so if you want to run pantheon elementary as most of you would already know is the best way to do it mate mate is a fork of gnome 2 that carries on the traditional desktop experience of yesteryear and keeps it rolling and updating with the latest gtk technologies just to keep everything working together my recommendation if you're looking for an a linux distribution that features the mate desktop and really makes it shine i would definitely recommend ubuntu mate once upon a time i would have said mint but nowadays i really feel like the the amount of work and polish that goes into ubuntu mate is almost second to none they make the ubuntu mate desktop look so good and and i really appreciate the work that that goes into this particular project everything from different layouts from the desktop from custom welcome apps and software boutique and so many bits and pieces make this project amazing but definitely strongly recommend ubuntu mate if you love a traditional slightly older desktop experience but one that is very productive very configurable nonetheless and now we get to the weird hybrid one which is like the lightweight uh combination of some xfce some cinnamon some lxqt and other bits and pieces which i'm going to call the lightweight category peppermint os i haven't really talked a whole lot about peppermint os on this channel but it has a very special place in a lot of users hearts because it is able to take the best and most functional but lightweight pieces of a bunch of different linux desktop environments and stitched together into one relatively cohesive uh operating system uh it was originally designed as a lightweight desktop os that could run really well on netbooks but since then it's evolved into its own into its own thing it definitely has amazing tools when it comes to integrating web apps into your normal desktop which keeps everything running really light with minimal software footprint but they keep evolving with each release of this distribution so whether it's changing up what the file manager needs to be or whether it's changing other default app selections or window managers or rendering engines or whatever it needs to be to keep this distribution focused on being very lightweight and very functional the peppermint os team seemed to be able to do it and do it well so that's kind of where i'm going to leave this video they're all my recommendations for running the major desktop environments out there but there are so many honorable mentions that i could be here all day i think for most uh regular users when it comes to gnome itself there seems to be a lot of love around the internet right now for pop os and how pop os interprets gnome the gnome desktop because pop os makes a lot of the changes that a lot of users make by default when they first run gnome and also their recent edition of a tiling window manager makes it super appealing to a lot of power users and people that have a lot going on on their desktop at any at any given time so i will give an honorable mention to pop os if you are interested in the kind of interested in most of the workflow that gnome offers you but you're not down for um for how minimal or how fewer options are enabled by default well that about does it for me i hope this video was helpful for you please share it around and uh and give the video a thumbs up it always helps out the algorithm and uh subscribe if you like this stuff on a regular basis and i will see you all in the very next video peace [Music] you

Channel: InfinitelyGalactic

Views: 132,891

Rating: 4.9085836 out of 5

Keywords: infinitelygalactic, technology, linux, open-source, free software, ubuntu, alternatives to windows, alternatives to macos, distro reviews, app reviews, kde plasma, gnome, xfce, budgie, cinnamon, pantheon, LXQt, deepin, linux desktop

Id: RsrQHygVYiU

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Sleestak_Cha-ka]

I've always enjoyed his videos and was happy to see him come back after school. I'm comfortable with Pop!_OS / Gnome but used XFCE with older hardware. Never liked KDE and other DE's were ok to use when trying other distro's.

[u/gide_wilder]

Lists Fedora for stock Gnome, Pop!_OS as runner up.