KDE and XFCE dominate Gnome, Unity in LinuxQuestions Members Choice Award voting

[andyprough]

Interesting, given the recent "Gnome kills KDE" discussion on this board, that the annual LinuxQuestions Members Choice Award voting in mid-February was heavily in favor of KDE, with XFCE a strong second, Gnome Shell a very distant 3rd place, and Unity gaining a tiny 7th place share. If you combine the voting for Gnome and its two variants, Mate and Cinnamon, it would edge out XFCE by a single vote:

KDE... 254 votes, 35.77%
Xfce... 183 votes, 25.77%
Gnome Shell... 70 votes, 9.86%
Mate... 59 votes, 8.31%
Cinnamon... 55 votes, 7.75%
LXDE... 38 votes, 5.35%
Unity... 32 votes, 4.51%
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...210/page7.html

Of course, the sample size is small, but Bruce Byfield at Linux Magazine made some interesting observations:

• The major exception among desktop environments was KDE, which rose from 31% in 2012 to 36% in 2013. This is hardly a stampede, but it is a large enough difference to seem more than a chance variation. If it is a real difference, then KDE is starting to approach its pre-KDE 4.0 popularity again.
• One reason why the increase in KDE voters seems credible is that basic KDE applications are consistently in first or second place in their categories. For example, Dolphin dominated the file managers, and Konsole the terminal emulators. Similarly, among desktop text editors, Kate edged out Gedit (Vim, unsurprisingly, was more popular than both combined). These results go a long way to proving that KDE really is the most popular desktop environment.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online...LinuxQuestions

Might be interesting to hold our own awards voting at some point on the Phoronix site, to contrast the LinuxQuestions voting with that from a different group of experienced users. I have a feeling that Unity would do better among our members than the 7th place it got on the LinuxQuestions site.

[andyprough]

Not just a one-time thing, either - KDE also won the December, 2013 Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards as Best Desktop Environmnet, although the competition with Gnome was much closer:

KDE... 17.9%
GNOME 3... 14.1%
Ubuntu/Unity... 12.9%
KDE Plasma... 12.7%
Xfce... 12.1%
Cinnamon... 8.6%
GNOME 2... 4.5%
MATE... 3.6%

http://www.linuxjournal.com/rc2013?page=8

For some reason, Linux Journal ranked Gnome 3 as 5th most popular, although the 14.1% vote that it received clearly puts it in 2nd place.

The Gnome variants combination (Gnome 3 + Gnome 2 + Cinnamon + Mate) slightly edged the KDE variants combination (KDE + KDE Plasma) in total voters with 30.8% vs 30.6%. Unity, in 3rd place, had a much better showing in this reader's poll than in the LinuxQuestions poll.

[andyprough]

Nine Lessons Other Desktops Can Learn from KDE

Nice article by Bruce Byfield at Datamation with some additional observations on why KDE has been winning "readers choice" poll voting:

http://www.datamation.com/open-sourc...rom-kde-1.html

Some interesting takeaways -
1. Many users prefer the ability to have a "cluttered" desktop, as opposed to the Gnome & Unity method of limiting choices. This lends the ability to have greater customization on the desktop
2. KDE gets high marks for introducing incremental changes - "revisions instead of revolution"
3. KDE can still run fine on machines without 3D graphic support, simply by turning off 3D features.
4. Modularity - allowing KDE to release special versions for netbooks, notebooks and tablets without drastically redesigning the desktop

[sandybhardwaj751]

Thanks for share the post....