Which do you prefer: Cinnamon or XFCE?

[kurotsugi]

the default XFCE is indeed flat and kind of bland. but, once you know how to customize XFCE you'll surely like it. XFCE is about creating your own personal desktop. almost every part of it is customizable.

[jahid]

there are some comparable things between cinnamon & xfce that i have observed:
1. xfce is too simple compared to cinnamon & cinnamon is way more elegant than xfce , i like this in cinnamon.
2. xfce is way more customizable than cinnamon. this is a big plus point for xfce.
3. the hot corner is a big plus point for cinnamon. i can impress windows users with this.
4. the unlimited workspace in cinnamon is a plus point too, though generally i don't need more than four. but it makes impression on people.
5. cinnamon is way more rich than xfce in features, but the cost is, it is not lightweight as xfce.
6. my favourite filemanager nemo is in cinnamon.
7. xfce is faster than cinnamon, but that's not a problem if your pc is strong enough.
8. the cinnamon menu is more elegant/good looking and easier than the whisker menu.
9. the cinnamon is being more elegant day by day.
10.in some cases customization in cinnamon is easier and cooler than xfce (like drag n drop menu item to the panel).
11.both are stable. i can't say which is more stable than the other.

so in my opinion cinnamon is still better than xfce.

so the final result of my observation is, cinnamon continues to be my favourite....

[jsalpha2]

Xfce all the way! The first thing I do is turn the Whisker menu off. The old menu is one of the main reasons I like Xfce.

[passerby]

3. the hot corner is a big plus point for cinnamon. i can impress windows users with this.
4. the unlimited workspace in cinnamon is a plus point too, though generally i don't need more than four. but it makes impression on people.

You can get hot corners (and tons of other stuff) in XFCE via compiz, though it isn't installed/used by default.
Also, the workspace limit in XFCE (I'm currently using the 4.12 and 4.10 PPAs) is 100. I don't think anyone needs more than that.

[jahid]

You can get hot corners (and tons of other stuff) in XFCE via compiz, though it isn't installed/used by default.

but getting something by default is always a big convenience. and if you want to impress someone with that, you need to have it in the live dvd ( i always keep it in my pendrive)...

[killer de bug]

I prefer Cinnamon. I love the direction it takes. It's beautiful by default. And every version has a lot of improvement.

I used XFCE. You can turn it into something really goodlooking. It's light and fast but you need a lot of work to make it really goodlooking. In my opinion of course

[The Dark Side]

KDE

but if its between cinnamon and XFCE. Well it has to be XFCE by quite a long shot. Sure Cinnamon is really nice and i think one day it might replace XFCE. And sure XFCE does lack some of the nice apps Cinnamon has. But in the end what you want is A.) stability and B.) performance.

XFCE and KDE have this, Cinnamon doesnt. An example is that you have to troubleshoot and restart cinnamon to move the panel to the top, why ?? it all seems so clunky and as if its about to fall.

btw i mention KDE as to me now in the latest versions it feels almost as quick as XFCE even with the effects! and everything is alive and animates where as XFCE is traditional snappy but flat. Also KDE has proper Vsync support and works extremley well for gaming.

I cant choose, but being linux i dont have to, so i have options for cinnamon,XFCE,kde on my desktop and the laptop gets XFCE which i may add apart from vsync missing has been rock solid on my old hardware.

if i really had to pick between KDE and XFCE, it would in the end have to be XFCE as you can trust it (not that KDE has been unstable at all)

I'm practically fully in agreement, as indicated by friend "phill1978". No doubt, at least for my taste, the Best Desktop that exists today it is called KDE. KDE is robust and works very, very well...... KDE its the best desktop that exists today

Cinnamon has very much improved, but the problem here is not Cinnamon, the problem resides in the basis that takes Cinnamon, which is neither more nor less than the bumbling Gnome 3. Although Cinnamon is already independent, there are things that he has inherited the damn legacy of Gnome 3, is still not that stable as if they are KDE, XFCE and Mate.

My choice (removing the KDE environment ) among Cinnamon and XFCE, the truth is that for now I'll stick with XFCE. Although Cinnamon, I see from time to time, and really going well. Have you removed ALL the heritage of Gnome 3 a good time. Best Regards to All.-

[phill1978]

KDE

but if its between cinnamon and XFCE. Well it has to be XFCE by quite a long shot. Sure Cinnamon is really nice and i think one day it might replace XFCE. And sure XFCE does lack some of the nice apps Cinnamon has. But in the end what you want is A.) stability and B.) performance.

XFCE and KDE have this, Cinnamon doesnt. An example is that you have to troubleshoot and restart cinnamon to move the panel to the top, why ?? it all seems so clunky and as if its about to fall.

btw i mention KDE as to me now in the latest versions it feels almost as quick as XFCE even with the effects! and everything is alive and animates where as XFCE is traditional snappy but flat. Also KDE has proper Vsync support and works extremley well for gaming.

I cant choose, but being linux i dont have to, so i have options for cinnamon,XFCE,kde on my desktop and the laptop gets XFCE which i may add apart from vsync missing has been rock solid on my old hardware.

if i really had to pick between KDE and XFCE, it would in the end have to be XFCE as you can trust it (not that KDE has been unstable at all)

I'm practically fully in agreement, as indicated by friend "phill1978". No doubt, at least for my taste, the Best Desktop that exists today it is called KDE. KDE is robust and works very, very well...... KDE its the best desktop that exists today

Cinnamon has very much improved, but the problem here is not Cinnamon, the problem resides in the basis that takes Cinnamon, which is neither more nor less than the bumbling Gnome 3. Although Cinnamon is already independent, there are things that he has inherited the damn legacy of Gnome 3, is still not that stable as if they are KDE, XFCE and Mate.

My choice (removing the KDE environment ) among Cinnamon and XFCE, the truth is that for now I'll stick with XFCE. Although Cinnamon, I see from time to time, and really going well. Have you removed ALL the heritage of Gnome 3 a good time. Best Regards to All.-

great minds think alike

I am running XFCE + KWIN = Best of both worlds. Changed a few effects, set animation speed to fast and its amazing. Its got the performance snap of xfce with the compositing power of Kwin

http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/tu ... -with-xfce

also added effect: 'cool effect' for kwin from the kdesettings.

[Eggnog]

I use cinnamon on my laptop, and XFCE on my desktop.

Mine is set up the other way around - Cinnamon on desktop and Xfce on my laptop, both in dual boot with Win 7. I have to admit, I like both. I routinely threaten to replace the Xfce on my laptop with Cinnamon, but I just can't bring myself to do it. If you held a gun to my head and made me choose, I'd probably choose Cinnamon, but only out of panic and so you wouldn't shoot me.

[wayne128]

If you held a gun to my head and made me choose, I'd probably choose Cinnamon, but only out of panic and so you wouldn't shoot me.

[Crewp]

I use, ( and prefer) Cinnamon on all 3 of my PC's. 2 desktops and 1 laptop. I find it smooth, stable, and elegant. Cinnamon all the way.

[xfrank]

I prefer Xfce, then Mate, then Cinnamon, then Lxde. Of the "main" DEs, the only one I really dislike is KDE.
Xfce: minimalistic, stable, nice, highly customizable, light on resources.
Mate: elegant, very stable, lightweight.
Cinnamon: very elegant.
Lxde: very lightweigth.

[wanderer7]

Cinnamon - whenever I can. On my laptop, for example, I have LM 16 Cinnamon. It's been my favorite DE so far.
Xfce - on old computers. I've installed it on old hardware and it's nice - lightweight and beautiful.

[InkKnife]

I think the best answer is that it is great to have a distro that provides truly excellent implementations of 4 great DEs so we do not have to worry about arguing which is better.

[I2k4]

I agree that ability to switch DEs is a nice selling point for Linux. Personally, running on two machines, I've tried the more demanding Cinnamon and on my netbook it runs about the same as W7, i.e. not quite good enough, so I've settled on XFCE for both computers. I want complete mindless consistency between my laptop and netbook OS - the only difference in configuration is the photograph (my own) I use as desktop wallpaper. XFCE fills the bill pretty well - its very fast, and as someone else mentioned can be spiced up with Compiz settings if desired.

I'm not an "OS lover", per se, so I'm happy with the best performance I can get if there is enough polish to not cause actual problems in getting full use of a browser or third party software. (I tried LXDE a couple of years ago and found it a bit crude compared with XFCE.)

[Ginsu543]

I guess Cinnamon for me, since I'm running it on all my Linux boxes, including on my 9 year-old Toshiba Portege R200 laptop which has a 1.2 GHz Pentium M, 1.28 GB of memory, and on-board Intel 915GMS Express graphics. Yet, Cinnamon runs surprisingly well on it, once I installed Petra on a SSD drive. There is occasional lagginess, but it is eminently usable. I chalk it up to excellent implementation by the Cinnamon devs to allow it to run smoothly enough even on resource-deficient machines.

[Condorman]

I use, ( and prefer) Cinnamon on all 3 of my PC's. 2 desktops and 1 laptop. I find it smooth, stable, and elegant. Cinnamon all the way.

Yup same here. Installed it on so many machines for many different people and types of user, and the reports are always always positive. It's an incredibly powerful, attractive, and yet crucially user friendly (many other devs forget this bit) desktop that many can't help but love. Was playing with the new Unity last night, and while I really do like it a great deal, I feel it makes a lot of compromises on a desktop and is missing features that Cinnamon easily handles. Very nice (really nice!), but Cinnamon all the way for me too.

[Fifis]

I have tried all DEs on different PCs and different distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint), and, as a user with a heavy need for multilingual input support, I can assure you that XFCE and LXDE are unsatisfactory since they require some configuration scripts that mess with locales and X11 settings... just for that simple task “enable Compose key, enable 3rd level with AltGr and use extra typographic characters”! In KDE, Cinnamon and Unity (guess that in Gnome 3, too) it is a matter on 3 checkboxes in a single window. In LXDE, there is an option to set explicit xkb flags, but (1) there is no accessible tutorial for a non-expert user; (2) after recomendations from “experts” are implemented, Caps Lock may behave wildly regardless of distribution or locale settings. It turns out that LXDE and XFCE decided to cut off all those extra options, but by doing that, they have created problems for users with low-end PCs that can’t afford to allocate resources to Cinnamon or—heaven forbid—KDE but have not reached the level of a developer familiar with xkb internals. That simple reason leaves me no option but to use Cinnamon on an uncomfortably old Asus EEEPc. And guess what? It is not much of a trouble. The ease of configuration (XFCE lacks facilities for advanced microphone setup) and the presence of features not available in XFCE that would normally require some development skill—all that overbalances the slight loss in performance.

However, if a computer really stinks (which is quite probable if you reside in Russia), you should get accustomed to that Shift+CapsLock+Alt trick that fixes the really bugged command-line configuration of xkboptions provided in various online tutorials by old-time experts.

From now on, I decided to install only Linux Mint Debian Edition with Cinnamon only. It combines the flexibility of KDE with the robustness of pure Debian and eliminates the need for low-level Debian configuration.

[xor10]

I prefer Cinnamon for "Nightlife - Graphite" theme (the default theme of Mint 15 Cinnamon). I installed this theme on Mint 16 Cinnamon and maybe will install on Mint 17 Cinnamon also. I like it especially for its dark-grey taskbar color. The new default of Cinnamon has translucent taskbar-menu which I dislike. One of the positives of Xfce is the straight-forwardness of its start menu: mouse pointer has to move less distance to reach the buttons in the menu. File manager of Xfce I find better than Cinnamon because in Cinnamon, inside file manager if I click on an option on the left pane navigation and then start typing for searching within opened files/folders, it starts matching the typed text with the options on the left-pane while other file-managers do the right thing by searching for the typed text in the right side window which is having the files / folders.

[growled]

I run Xfce on all my computers. I've tried them all and Xfce is the only one that works the way I want things to work.