"Desktop environments like KDE and GNOME offer a popular interface to computing. Unfortunately they are also often heavy on resource usage. By contrast, the Equinox Desktop Environment (EDE) is the fastest desktop environment I know of--but its lack of standards support and a few missing features may be troubling to some users.
"The boundaries between desktop environments and window managers are often blurred. No window manager by itself offers the things included in a run-of-the-mill point-and-click environment: a desktop with icons, a task bar that shows the running programs and a system tray..."
