Cinnamon
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com Cinnamon – the official desktop for Linux Mint – is forked from Gnome 3 with the focus very much put back on the desktop user. It utilises the underlying technology of Gnome – including forked versions of its core applications, ensuring that they remain more functional than the native Gnome versions – to deliver a polished desktop that’s immediately recognisable, particularly to users switching from Windows, with a menu button, app shortcuts and a system tray all packed into a panel that runs along the bottom of the screen.
It’s also highly configurable through a series of ‘spices’: themes, extensions, applets and floating desklets (Cinnamon’s equivalent of KDE’s widgets), all of which are managed directly through its own System Settings tool.
Although Cinnamon has made great strides in souping up its performance (eg the most recent release uses a pre-load mechanism to start swiftly after booting), its reliance on Gnome 3 means it’s still relatively resource-heavy, while it has also acquired a reputation for being slightly buggy, although recent releases have steadily improved its robustness.
For our money, though, if you’re looking for a polished, instantly accessible desktop that takes the best bits of Gnome and wraps them up in a traditional setting, then Cinnamon is the desktop to try.