Are you staring at the Linux Mint download page wondering which edition to choose? Do terms like Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE feel confusing? Here are the honest pros and cons of each desktop environment so you can choose confidently.
Linux Mint officially supports three desktop environments (DEs)—Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE—and your choice can meaningfully shape your experience. While all three share the same stable core that Mint is known for, they’ll differ in overall performance and feature availability. As such, here’s a clear breakdown of all three desktop environments so you can pick the best edition for you.
Cinnamon desktop environment
Why you might like Cinnamon
- The most polished and modern-looking desktop environment for Mint.
- Minimal learning curve—you’ll feel right at home with its traditional, Windows-like desktop and a familiar workflow.
- Excellent compatibility with NVIDIA GPUs—especially compared to MATE and Xfce.
Why you might want to skip Cinnamon
- Prone to minor bugs and annoyances, especially after major version updates.
- Higher resource usage than Xfce and MATE, which can be an issue on decade-old hardware.
Cinnamon is developed in-house by the Linux Mint team and serves as their flagship desktop environment. Visually, it resembles a modern, refined version of Windows 7—or what Windows 7 might have become if Microsoft hadn’t shifted to the Metro UI. It offers the same polish you’d expect from GNOME-based distros, paired with a rich collection of features typically associated with KDE Plasma—albeit not that rich.
You get desktop widgets (called Desklets) to make the desktop more functional. You can add multiple panels (four in total) to the four screen edges and populate them with useful widgets called Applets. It’s also one of—if not—the best desktop environments with native, fully customizable touchpad gesture controls with true 1:1 finger tracking. The virtual desktop experience is strong, with an overview-style desktop switcher you can trigger with Ctrl+Alt+Up-Arrow.
The bundled system apps are also well-designed and functional. The terminal is the standard GNOME terminal, which is more than adequate—especially since you’ll rarely need to use the terminal thanks to all the graphical apps. The Nemo file manager is fast and capable, and the Settings app is very thorough and looks like a more organized version of the Windows 7 Control Panel.
Why a Cinnamon Desktop Environment Is Best for Linux Newcomers
Cinnamon desktop makes switching to Linux painless!
Xfce desktop environment
Why you might like Xfce
- Extremely lightweight with negligible RAM and CPU usage—ideal for reviving old systems and maximizing performance.
- More feature-rich than most lightweight DEs—doesn’t sacrifice core functionality for speed.
- Highly customizable with theming options that can make it resemble Windows, macOS, or something entirely unique.
Why you might want to skip Xfce
- Despite being customizable, there’s no dedicated graphical tool for deep personalization—you’ll often rely on the terminal, config files, or manual file operations.
- No native desktop widget support. You’ll need complicated tools like Conky.
- No native touchpad gesture support—requires third-party tools like Touchegg for multi-finger gestures.
The Xfce edition in Linux Mint is a heavily customized version of “vanilla” Xfce, tuned to resemble the Cinnamon edition as closely as possible. In practice, the Mint team has done an excellent job—at a glance, you might not realize you’re running a different desktop environment at all. So what’s different?
Most differences show up in polish and the design language. Xfce lacks some of Cinnamon’s visual refinement—padding, margins, and color accents feel more utilitarian. It also comes with a different set of system applications. Thunar serves as the file manager, Xfce Terminal for a lightweight command-line experience, and the Xfce Settings Manager, which again offers a layout similar to the classic Windows Control Panel. Visually, the DE can feel like it was designed in the Windows XP era—which can be charming if you prefer a retro aesthetic.
Functionally, the Xfce edition covers all the necessities and then some, but it’ll feel limited compared to Cinnamon. For multitasking, you get basic window snapping support along with virtual desktops, although there’s no “overview” feature to see all your active virtual desktops. You can also add multiple panels to the desktop and include plugins on the panel to make your desktop more functional.
5 Reasons Xfce Is My Favorite Linux Desktop
Somtimes, a simple desktop is better.
MATE desktop environment
Why you might like MATE
- Moderately lightweight and resource-efficient—uses less RAM and CPU than Cinnamon but more than Xfce, while still offering a robust feature set.
- Highly customizable with strong support for themes, multi-panel layouts, desktop applets, and flexible window management.
Why you might want to skip MATE
- MATE’s older, heavier compositor causes more graphical tearing and stutter under X11—especially when playing games. Wayland support is still early and experimental.
- No native touchpad gesture support—you’ll need to use a third-party tool like Touchegg.
The Linux Mint MATE edition is a heavily customized version of the MATE desktop environment, which itself is a fork of the classic GNOME 2 desktop. What this means is that with a few clicks, you can tweak this edition to look like classic GNOME 2—if you’re a fan of that two-panel desktop interface. Furthermore, since MATE shares the GNOME codebase, you get access to the large catalog of GTK2 and GTK3 themes.
At the time of writing, GTK4 themes don’t work on MATE, but GTK4 apps do.
Design-wise, it resembles desktops from the 2010s—which makes sense considering its GNOME 2 roots. The core apps also share this aesthetic, and personally, I actually prefer their design over both Cinnamon and Xfce. I particularly like the settings app—MATE Control Center—which is well-designed and includes a sidebar with categories to help you quickly search through all the settings and options.
That said, on the functionality front, the DE can feel slightly bare-bones. This is most apparent when managing windows. While you do have simple window snapping, tiling support is limited, and you need to adjust the window sizes manually. You also have virtual desktops, but—as with Xfce—there’s no “overview” or workspace grid to visualize them.
Which Linux Mint desktop environment should you use?
If you’re trying Linux Mint and have relatively recent hardware—say, from the past five years—go with the flagship Cinnamon edition. It delivers the best overall experience thanks to its polished interface, modern features, and smooth performance. I’d encourage this choice even more if you have an NVIDIA GPU, since Cinnamon generally performs better with NVIDIA hardware than Xfce or MATE. Its robust touchpad gesture support also makes it a fantastic choice for laptop users.
On the other hand, if you’re working with decade-old hardware you want to revive, Xfce is the better option. It’s the lightest of the three editions and can breathe new life into older systems. The Mint team has done an impressive job theming and optimizing Xfce to look as modern as possible—visually, it comes surprisingly close to Cinnamon despite being much leaner.
MATE sits in an interesting middle ground. It’s more lightweight than Cinnamon but not as lean as Xfce. Choose MATE if your hardware struggles with Cinnamon, yet you find Xfce’s interface a bit too dated. MATE offers a good balance—it’s easy to use, reasonably customizable, and carries that classic desktop charm without feeling as spartan as Xfce can sometimes appear.
