Mate is a fork of GNOME 2, openly intended as an alternative for those dissatisfied with GNOME 3 and Ubuntu's Unity. Designed as lightweight distribution options for low RAM machines, both Lubuntu and Xubuntu offer better performance for old or slow computers. KDE, Unity, XFCE. The same as with XFCE, … Xfce is light on resources but proves to provide a feature-rich user experience. Which can be remote with X. Gnome/KDE/Xfce and other window managers / desktop environments are special applications that run in X that draw things like borders and icons and minimize and maximize that the applications themselves don't. MATE. I am using XUbuntu 11.10 with XFCE and am willing to give Unity a try, but don't want to loose my well-tuned system and desktop. GNOME. Finally, there is the process of the KDE desktop theming. GNOME 2.x has a menu at the left of the menu bar (top panel) which is very simple and easy to use. As a result, both Mate and Xfce can be classified as traditional desktops. Re: Unity vs GNOME vs Xfce We can not really answer that question in a sensible manner as we do not know in any detail what you like or dislike about the alternative DEs that you mention. With your high spec machine why not try one or more of the versions as a virtual install in VirtualBox or similar. I looked at Unity and didn't care for it - the UI seems targeted at netbooks where screen real estate is the scarce resource, and falls down on a big screen. But if you ditch the Unity Desktop, you can always find a lot of lightweight desktop environments, instead of the Unity Desktop Environment that can run on Ubuntu. Regarding system resource usage, GNOME 2.x requires less RAM but more CPU than GNOME 3, and less RAM and CPU than Unity or KDE but more than Xfce or LXDE. For those, such as myself, who like the GNOME 2.x desktop and are not completely satisfied with the changes in GNOME 3 or Unity, XFCE 4.8 could be a great fit. TWM, i3, AwesomeWM… You’ve probably seen these words thrown about across this, and many other Linux websites that have something to do with Linux desktops. GNOME3 In Action. Having spent several years consciously imitating it, Xfce also resembles GNOME 2, down to the wording of many menu items and dialog boxes. Desktop Environments. The two different distros, Lubuntu vs… If you need a performance-centric desktop environment without needing advanced customizations, Xfce is a great choice to go with. Unlike LXQt, you will find a lot of major Linux distributions support XFCE editions. I don't think LiveCD is what I need: I … Xubuntu is the XFCE version of Ubuntu, and Linux Mint offers an excellent community edition with XFCE. On the desktop, I run XFCE, because I'm familiar with it and can make it do what I want. Where they differ is the desktop environment they’re based on, which include either XFCE or LXDE. 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