Around one month back, this blog featured a poll that asked you which window manager (Desktop) you used the most. The poll was open roughly for two weeks and closed on 31st of August 2007. In those two weeks, nearly 900 (889 votes) people voted in the polls. And the results are not entirely out of expectation.
GNOME and KDE are neck and neck in the popularity front with GNOME being the favoured window manager by 361 people vs KDE by 335 people. Now it can be stated with certainty that both these window managers (desktops really) are equally popular since the difference is just less than 30 votes. The third place goes to XFCE which is also not a big surprise and it snagged 71 votes (around 7% of the total votes cast). Fluxbox/Blackbox combination takes the 4th place.
What is really surprising is that Enlightenment received 18 votes which is more than what IceWM got. Now, I have not seen that many Linux distributions or Unices which come pre-loaded with Enlightenment window manager, though I have found it a very good one. But many Linux distributions such as the mini ones do bundle IceWM with them.
Fig: Pie chart of the percentage of votes polledBelow are the full results of the polls.
Total votes cast : 889
| Window manager | Votes | % Votes |
|---|---|---|
| GNOME | 361 | 40% |
| KDE | 335 | 37% |
| XFCE | 71 | 7% |
| Fluxbox, Blackbox | 44 | 4% |
| Enlightenment | 18 | 2% |
| IceWM | 15 | 1% |
| Window maker | 9 | 1% |
| Fvwm | 5 | < 1% |
| After step | 2 | < 1% |
| Some other | 16 | 1% |
| I don't use a window manager | 13 | 1% |
