In general there are two flavors of X desktop. The two most well-known "heavyweight" desktop projects are GNOME and KDE; these include both a _desktop environment_ and an _application development framework_. A desktop environment includes a window manager, help browser, file manager, task bar, and so on. A development framework includes any number of libraries to ease application development, perhaps most importantly a GUI toolkit. GNOME and KDE are the desktops with the most support from Linux distribution vendors. 

The second flavor of X desktop includes a desktop environment only; no development framework is included. The line between this flavor of desktop and a plain old window manager is a bit blurry; many people would describe Xfce, and WindowMaker as desktops in this category. 

The following is a very incomplete list of available desktop environments which make use of freedesktop.org standards.


### Full desktop environments

* [[Cinnamon|https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com]]: A variant of GNOME with a more 'traditional' interface
* [[Elementary|https://elementary.io]]: Elementary OS
* [[Enlightenment|http://www.enlightenment.org/]]
* [[GNOME|http://www.gnome.org]] [[(developer site)|http://developer.gnome.org]]
* [[GNUstep|http://www.gnustep.org/]]: The GNU [[OpenStep|http://www.gnustep.org/resources/OpenStepSpec/OpenStepSpec.html]] Implementation 
* [[KDE|http://www.kde.org]] [[(developer site)|http://techbase.kde.org]]
* [[LxDE|http://lxde.sourceforge.net]]: provide a new desktop environment which is lightweight and fast 
* [[Unity|http://unity.ubuntu.com/]]: A desktop environment built on GNOME 
* [[Xfce|http://www.xfce.org/]]: Lightweight GTK+-based environment 

### Light desktop environments

Many of these desktop environments take a 'mix and match' approach, where you assemble your own desktop from a set of components.

* [[awesome|http://awesome.naquadah.org]]: Highly configurable, next generation framework window manager 
* [[fluxbox|http://fluxbox.org/]]: Lightweight WM with support for tabs 
* [[FVWM|http://fvwm.org/]]: An extremely customizable window manager and some desktop applications 
* [[IceWM|http://www.icewm.org/]]: Window manager designed to be small, fast and lightweight 
* [[WindowMaker|http://www.windowmaker.org/]]: Window manager intended to work with GNUstep