Cinnamon 4.0 Desktop Update Begins Rolling Out As A Tasty Update

[rbmorse]

Would "spicy" work better?

[torturedutopian]

In my experience (several machines, several GPUs, several distros), Cinnamon feels snappier than Gnome Shell but it inherits most of the code so it still benefits from its updates.
In my experience, KDE feels snappier (& has more modern features etc) than Cinnamon and is lighter on memory (except if Baloo is enabled / turns crazy) EXCEPT if you have an Nvidia card in which case Cinnamon feels snappier.
However, if you want things to "just work properly" without tweaking in most users cases, Cinnamon is the safest. If you have an Intel HD / AMD card and are OK to tweak a little, KDE will make you feel you have a much more modern & faster computer

[aksdb]

KDE will make you feel you have a much more modern & faster computer

KDE (well, Plasma) really feels fast and offers the right amount of options for all possible needs. Though for the past few versions something feels always a bit "off". There are many little places where things about the design simply don't fit (in my opinion, ofcourse). The abstractions and component model seems to bleed through. Especially the system settings have become a nightmare. There is so much strange distributed spacing, no clear structure.
I really liked KDE and the first few years of Plasma. But in the last time something just puts me off whenever I work with the recent versions for a few hours/days.
That's why I'm currently at Cinnamon. I miss a few settings I would have in Plasma, but overall it's well designed and therefore visually pleasing. (Gnome 3 is even more visually pleasing, but unfortunately sacrifices nearly everything I need to be productive.)

[torturedutopian]

@aksdb : Heh, no problem, that's understandable. Although I tend to think the opposite.. When I read the changelogs and Nate Graham's post I realize they've come a very very long way since the early 4.x days and that there were litterally tons of stuff not working properly. Now they have a new policy (simple by default) and focus on fixing everything (Usability & Productivity Initiative). Maybe it's gonna be ready for everyone in a couple of months.

cf http://pointieststick.wordpress.com/

Meanwhile, I agree Cinnamon is the safe choice. I would recommend it to everyone. Except, the scope of the Mint project is way thinner : the project needs all the upstream / underlying work. Without Gnome Cinnamon would collapse. But that's not a problem, that's open source & cooperation !

EDIT, BTW, about the KDE control panel : click on the sandwich menu -> you can choose the style of control panel you want, which includes a classic flat view.