Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop Comparison: 6 Desktops, 5 Driver/GPU Combinations
Overall, KDE 4.9.0 and LXDE 0.5.11 were the fastest desktop environments on average for the OpenArena game testing with the different drivers/hardware. The exceptions for the KDE performance though were with the Intel and Nouveau driver stacks. Ubuntu's Unity desktop also performed fairly well overall.
The results are similar for the newer OpenArena 0.8.8 release except for the Radeon, Intel, and Nouveau driver stacks being much slower for this game release with more advanced visual features.