Have you voted yet in the first round of our Linux Desktop Poll? The winning Desktop Environment project will receive passes to this year’s SCALE, All Things Open, plus t-shirts and hats.
Editor’s note: Voting has closed in the first round of our Readers Choice Favorite Desktop Environment poll. Final round voting begins at 8 am Wednesday and will continue through 6 pm Tuesday, February 21.
The polls are open for the first round of our Readers Choice 2022 Desktop Environment Poll to determine which desktop environment our readers used most in 2022. The voting on this round will determine what desktop environments and/or window managers make to to the final round of voting.
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Which of these Linux Desktop Environments and Window Managers would you most prefer to use?
Total Voters: 375  Loading ... |
Two times in the past we’ve run polls focused on desktop environments, but this will be the first time we’ve pulled out all stops to make a DE poll central to our editorial calendar (February is DE month). In both of those previous polls, KDE won.
The first desktop poll was conducted in February, 2014, about five months before the KDE desktop officially changed its name to Plasma, or KDE Plasma. With 70% of the votes, KDE ran away with that poll, which asked the question “Which desktop environment do you prefer?” and offered only three choices, KDE, GNOME 3 and Cinnamon. The following year we ran another desktop poll, but included 8 DEs and WMs on the ballot as well as including the option for write-in voting. KDE Plasma also won that poll, besting second place Xfce, but by a much smaller margin than its win in the previous poll.
Unlike those previous polls, this time we have some nice prizes to award to the winning DE project, similar to what we did with January’s poll focused on Linux distributions. Our friends at the Southern California Linux Expo, which is coming up in Pasadena in March, have contributed a couple of top tier SCALE Passes (with a combined value of $170) to the pot, and All Things Open, the large East Coast conference held every year in Raleigh, have contributed a couple of passes to ATO (a value up to $498), along with 5 ATO t-shirts and hats (priceless).
We are also doing something entirely new around this poll. On February 15 when we the poll for our second and final round of voting goes live, we will also be publishing a Desktop Environment Survey that we hope will offer DE designers and maintainers valuable information about users’ experiences and wants and needs concerning Linux DEs. The survey will be available on our site for you to take from February 15-28. After information from the survey is compiled, the results will be made available at no cost.
How Our Poll Works
The poll will be conducted in two rounds, with the first round being something like a primary election that decides which DEs and window managers are included on the ballot for the second and final round of voting. This is because we can’t be sure that we know about absolutely every DE or window manager that exists and we want this poll to be as all-inclusive as possible.
The first opening round poll included with this article went live on Wednesday, February 8, and consists of 10 popular DEs, along with an “other” option and a text box beneath the ballot for casting a write in-vote for any DE or window manager that’s not included on the ballot. Although we would prefer that only people who vote “other” in this round use the option of casting a write-in vote, we allow anyone to cast a write-in vote for a DE that’s not included on the polling software ballot, whether they vote for a distro included on the ballot or not.
Any write-in vote for a DE that’s already included on the ballot, or any write-in vote that lists more than one DE or WM will not be counted.
When the polls on this round closes at 6 pm EST on Tuesday, February 14, the top ten winners from all votes, including write-in votes, will be put on a new ballot for a second and final round poll that will go live at 8 am EST on Wednesday, February 15. That poll will close at 6 pm on Tuesday, February 21st, and after checking for duplicate voting, the official winner will be announced sometime before noon EST on Wednesday, February 22.
With that said, let the voting begin.
KDE Plasma is currently the best desktop environment available for computers. It is very powerful and flexible and you can make it work and look almost identical to every other desktop environment. It has the most features and despite all this it is still one of the lightest desktop environments available. If KDE Plasma was shown and promoted to users of closed proprietary alternatives I am sure there would be a lot more people wanting to switch to GNU/Linux. Steam Deck does a lot of this luckily, and hopefully more like this will be done in the future.
I just don’t understand why cinnamon isn’t more popular. Gnome is ugly and boring, KDE goes way overboard on the number of clicks to accomplish a task. In cinnamon it take half as many clicks as KDE.
I am enjoying this progress and slightly surprised from one days results to the next, entertaining and amusing.