We all have different preferences when it comes to desktop environments, but we’re considering these as general-purpose desktops that could be used in an office or home situation. There’s nothing wrong with quirkiness, but we’re looking for a clear, attractive colour scheme with desktop features that are easy to use. New ideas are good, but not at the expense of usage that follows the expected patterns in this case. Newcomers to Linux should be made to feel welcome and impressed by an attractive and fast Linux desktop.
Sometimes you’ll want to really get into the nitty-gritty of customising how a desktop presents itself in detail, and all of these desktops allow that. However, we’re considering general desktop use, and we’re more interested in the high-level options. Hopefully, we should be able to quickly switch between themes and light and dark colour schemes. It’s a bonus if we can make quick changes to things such as the highlight colours and the icon theme.
Zorin OS
8/10
The Core edition of Zorin OS has four layouts with a variety of dock or taskbar types and positions. Usefully, these can be instantly switched between. Gnome technology powers the desktop, but there is a custom configuration app for tweaking appearance and layout. Between the Gnome settings and custom dialogs, there’s quite a lot you can change, such as enabling the standard Gnome top panel and swapping the highlight colour.
In the layouts that resemble the Windows desktop, the launcher is a decent size and fully searchable. The search includes application names and descriptions, and also includes apps that are in the software library, ready for installation, which is a neat addition.