You may have been stuck trying to choose a desktop environment at some point during your Linux journey. Perhaps you started with Gnome and then fell in love with KDE Plasma? If so, then you'd know that every one of them have their own pros and cons. Today, I'd like to talk about what I think is the best desktop environment you can get on the modern Linux Desktop, as of 2025.
The Contenders
Here are the Desktop Environments that I've used this past year for at least 2 hours on each:
- Gnome
- KDE Plasma
- Cinnamon
- XFCE
- Cosmic
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A Desktop Environment is the program or set of programs that power the graphical user interface of an operating system.