KDE and Gnome are by far two of the most popular Linux desktop environments, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages that may sway users in either direction. Gnome is less customizable but widely recommended to Linux beginners, while KDE goes all-in on GUI-based customization and a smorgasbord of features. However, recent testing by Phoronix reveals that there may be an objectively better desktop environment for gaming on Linux.

In a comparison between Gnome 50.3 (technically Gnome Shell 50.3), KDE Plasma 6.7.2, and Xfce 4.2.0, Gnome surprisingly held a small, but measurable lead over KDE in the performance division. Both Gnome and KDE were running on the Wayland display protocol, while Xfce was running on X11, and that difference alone led to Xfce falling far behind the Wayland alternatives, especially in Vulkan rendering applications. The testing was all conducted on CachyOS and with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU graphics, and each desktop was tested with default configurations.