I spoke yesterday about the MATE environment that I really thought was beautiful in Fedora. I still love it, but I also wanted to share some other environments that I like as well.
For a mac look you can’t beat MATE that I have experienced. However the future of this project doesn’t look good so it may not be the best option for long term use.
Here is a list of all the ones that I think are best:
- KDE Plasma
- GNOME
- Cinnamon
- MATE
Now lets talk about why one may be the best fit for you. If you are coming from Windows which is the majority of people Cinnamon is the most intuitive. If you like unique UI’s and tired of the windows look then GNOME or KDE Plasma might be more fun. If you like options then KDE/GNOME. If you like simplicity than Cinnamon. If you don’t like frequent updates or interface changes and like the mac look then MATE might be up your alley.
Honesty I love all of these UI’s and I think they are all awesome. If I could have it switch daily that would be ideal for me. I get tired of using the mac/windows UI and that why I moved to Linux. I wanted some different environments to work in. I spent a great deal of time in IT on my computer and I like it to be beautiful and interesting if possible.
Now there are projects that look more like Windows UI or more like Mac UI. However they really compromise on stability, functionality or long term outlook. PearOS makes the computer look more like mac than MATE but from the videos I have seen it doesn’t have the stability and shows more errors that I feel comfortable using. Other Linux versions look exactly like windows, but have questionable security and lineage. That’s why I didn’t talk about them.
It is exciting to me to use these different desktop environments. I wish mac would open up its UI interface to other things as well. I think this adds to the value not takes away from it. When people use their computers as much as most people do now, a little customization goes a long way towards making it more pleasant. I love many things about mac, but I don’t like how locked down it is. I think that is why Linux is growing. People are learning that they can have things their way.