Introduction

This guide lists different desktop environments available for your Webdock Ubuntu server and also describes which desktop environment suits well depending upon the RAM, processor and space.

A desktop environment consists of different software programs running on top of a Linux Operating System to give you a nice graphical user interface.

Webdock now offers pre-built Virtual Desktop images! So now there is no need to faff around with instaling and configuring this yourself. Simply head over to the Create Server page and choose one of our pre-built images :)

GNOME

GNOME is a free and open source desktop environment. It is the default desktop environment for most of the linux distributions including Ubuntu which is the only supported operating system on Webdock servers.

Pros

• Highly stable
• Simple and easy to use
• Nice graphical tools for configuration

Cons

• Customization requires third party tools
• Poor performance while managing plug-ins
• High resource consumption

Best suited for

GNOME has following minimum hardware requirements.

• 800 MHz CPU power (1 GHz for optimal performance)
• 512 MB of RAM (1 GB for optimal performance)
• Minimum of 2 GB disk space (more if you want to install more applications)

It is best suited for SSD Bit and above profiles on Webdock.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a desktop environment for the X windows system derived from GNOME 3. It follows the traditional graphical user interface and is the principal desktop environment for the linux mint distribution but can be installed on other distributions as well.

Pros

• Highly customizable
• Does not require third party tools and plug-ins for customization
• Easy to use and best for beginners

Cons

• Expansion management is not satisfactory
• Bugs related issue
• Higher resource consumption

Best suited for

Minimum hardware requirements for Cinnamon are as follows.

• 1 GHz CPU power (more for optimal performance)
• 1 GB of RAM (more than 1 GB is recommended)
• 8 GB of disk space

Cinnamon desktop environment is best suited for SSD Bit and above Webdock profiles.

KDE Plasma

KDE Plasma is the current generation desktop environment, mainly for linux distributions, created by the KDE. It has different powerful features like Krunner, Activities, Customizable desktop layouts, Widgets called Plasmoids etc. It is highly stable and includes a set of different softwares for all the tasks.

Pros

• Highly stable
• Attractive Desktop Environments
• Simple and easy to use even for beginners
• Pre Installed themes & widgets
• Includes a set of tools for all sort of tasks

Cons

• Much higher resource consumption
• Some tools like Kmail are complicated for beginners

Best suited for

Minimum hardware requirements for KDE plasma are

• 1 GHz of CPU power (more is recommended)
• 1 GB of RAM
• 8 GB of disk space

It is best suited for SSD Bit and all the above profiles on Webdock.

XFCE

XFCE is a lightweight desktop environment specially built to be fast for UNIX-like operating systems. XFCE is based on the GTK toolkit just like GNOME but it is not a fork of GNOME.

Pros

• Lower resource consumption
• Smooth working process
• Easy to configure

Cons

• Difficult to configure for a novice user (Configuration instructions are rare to find)
• Rarely updated
• User interface is less attractive
• Fewer pre-installed apps & widgets

Best suited for

Minimum hardware requirements for XFCE are

• 600 MHz of CPU power
• 512 MB of RAM
• 8 GB of disk space

This desktop environment can be installed on all the available profiles on Webdock.

MATE

MATE desktop environment is a fork of GNOME 2. A number of MATE applications have also been forked from GNOME 2 and some of them have been developed from scratch. MATE also supports the GTK 3 application framework.

Pros

• A large number of tools for configuration
• Powerful applications

Cons

• Higher resource consumption
• Old style desktop environment

Best suited for

Following are the minimum hardware requirements for the MATE desktop environment.

• 1 GHz of CPU power (more is recommended)
• 1 GB of RAM (more for optimal performance)
• 8 GB of disk space (16 GB recommended)

This desktop environment is best suited for SSD Bit and all the above profiles on Webdock.

LXDE

LXDE (lightweight X11 desktop environment) is a highly optimised and ultra lightweight desktop environment with low resource requirements. It is suitable for old and low resource systems.

Pros

• Lower hardware resource consumption
• Easy to use interface

Cons

• A small number of tools for configuration
• Less interactive user interface

Best suited for

Minimum hardware requirements for LXDE are listed below.

• 600 MHz of CPU power (more for optimal performance)
• 512 MB of RAM
• 8 GB of disk space

LXDE can be used with all the profiles on Webdock.

Conclusion

Desktop environments provide a nice graphical user interface to interact with a system. Given the pros and cons for all desktop environments you can choose one as per your liking and resources of your server. Once you have picked an environment you like from the list here, you can proceed to follow one of our installation guides.