Stay with me. Windows and Mac are both “operating systems”. When you click on a file and it opens in your editor, the operating system does that. In Windows and Mac, the operating system is generally coupled with what’s called the “desktop environment”. For example, imagine your Windows computer could look and feel like a Mac or vice-versa.

In Linux, there are two primary players in the desktop environment game: Gnome and KDE. To generalize, I’d say Gnome is more like Mac and KDE is more like Windows. There are other desktop environments. For example, if you are pressed for hardware or prefer a leaner experience, xfce is often recommended.

Anyway, I’d been mostly using Gnome since 2003, but certain things about Gnome 3 leave one wanting, so I tried I tried KDE 4 for a while. I’m currently using Cinnamon, which seems promising.