My personal preference:

I prefer GNOME – a nice balance of elegance and beauty on the right system. It borders around KDE's score,
taking 10-15 MB less RAM.

LXDE aims at being simple and getting the job done over the bells and whistles.

Xfce stands somewhere in the middle ; not exactly nice and not exactly beautiful but still not so high on the
resources.

Enlightenment looks very good but seems that it will take a lot of RAM.

Openbox is a boon to people with old systems who wish to run newer software, but ends up nowhere as
eventually the software itself is more taxing than the rest of the system.

KDE seems ill-fated with poor application support , heavy resource usage and a bad mix of eye-candy.

Category KDE GNOME Openbox Xfce LXDE

Archiver ark file-roller xarchiver- file-roller file-roller
0.5.2
File Manager dolphin nautilus pcmanfm- thunar pcmanfm
0.9.9 ; mc-
4.7.3 –
Console File
Manager
Music Player clementine- Music exaile – Music Player audacious- clementine clemetine-
Player (Replaces 2.4.0  – Audio (Replaces Music Player
Amarok) player Listen)
Browser firefox- Web Browser firefox – Web firefox-3.6.12 firefox – Web firefox- Web
Program Browsing Client – Web Browser Browser
Browser ( Chromium (Chromium
and Opera and Opera
available from available from
our Software our software
Center) center)
CD/DVD k3b brasero gnomebaker- xfburn grafburn
Burner 0.6.4
Email Client mozilla-thunderbird mozilla-thunderbird sylpheed-3.0.3 thunderbird claws-mail
Video Player vlc (Replaces totem mplayer-4.4.1- vlc – mplayer
Smplayer) 0.31026 – Multimedia
Video Player ; Video Client
smplayer-0.6.9 (New on
– Multimedia LiveCD)
Player
Text Editor kwrite gedit geany-0.19.1 mousepad ; leafpad ; nano
nano – – Console
Console Text Text Editor
Editor
 kernel-2.6.33.7- kernel-2.6.33.7- kernel- kernel- kernel-
pclos6.bfs-1 – BFS pclos6.bfs – BFS 2.6.33.6- 2.6.33.7- 2.6.33.7-
kernel Kernel pclos6.bfs-1 – pclos6.bfs-1 – pclos6.bfs-1 –
BFS kernel for BFS kernel BFS kernel for
maxium maximum
desktop desktop
performance performance
System bleachbit bleachbit bleachbit- bleachbit bleachbit
Cleanup 0.8.1
Flash flash-player-plugin flash-player-plugin flash-player- flash-player- flash-player-
plugin- plugin plugin
10.1.85.3

They are all equal

On scale of 4:

KDE GNOME Openbox Xfce LXDE

Image Editor gimp gimp gimp-2.6.11 gimp
Image Viewer gwenview gthumb gqview-2.1.5 gpicview
PDF Viewer okular evince evince-2.32.0 evince
IRC Client xchat xchat-2.8.8 xchat xchat
On scale of 3:

KDE GNOME Openbox Xfce LXDE

Online Backup dropbox dropbox dropbox
Storage (max
2 GB)
Screenshot ksnapshot shutter screenie
Capture
USB Disk liveusb liveusb liveusb
Creator
drakconf – Computer drakconf – Computer lxdecc –
Control Center Control Center LXDE Control
Center
Microblog / choqok- pino – Microblogging pino-0.2.10 –
Twitter Client Microblogging Client Program Microbloggin
g Twitter
Client
ktorrent – Bittorrent transmission – transmission –
Client Bitorrent Client Bittorent
Client
IM Client pidgin – Instant pidgin – Instant pidgin –
Messaging Client Messaging Client Instant
Messaging
Program
Remote rdesktop rdesktop-1.6.0 rdesktop
Desktop
Support
gnome-desktop – tint2-0.10 – Compiz – 3D
Awesome Gnome Taskbar for Desktop
Desktop Openbox Support

emerald – 3D
Desktop
Theme
Support

On scale of 2 :
 KDE GNOME Openbox Xfce LXDE
digikam – Photo flphoto-1.3.1 –
Manager Photo
Manager
kcalc – Office gcalctool – Calculator
Calculator
synaptic – Software synaptic – Software
Package Manager Package Manager
shorewall – Firewall shorewall – Firewall
Manager Manager
abiword – Word abiword-2.8.6
processor – Word
processor
gftp – FTP Client filezilla-
3.3.4.1 – FTP
Client

On scale of 1 :
 KDE GNOME Openbox Xfce LXDE
cheese- Webcam
Client

gnumeric –
Spreadsheet Program
grsync – Sync Files
skype_static –
Chatting Client
tucan – File
Downloading Program
mtpaint-3.31 –
Graphic
Drawing
Application
mozilla-
sunbird-0.9 –
Calendar
Application
sakura-2.3.8 –
Terminal
kscd – Listen to Music
CDs
smb4k – Samba Share
Client
tvtime : television

=> Enlightenment is nearly same as KDE.

The scales are judged as the no. of distro flavours to which the package is common :
On 4:
1st KDE , Openbox , LXDE (4)
2nd GNOME (3)
3rd Xfce (1)

On 3:
1st KDE (8)
2nd Xfce (6)
3rd GNOME (5)
4th LXDE (4)
5th Openbox (3)

On 2:
1st GNOME (5)
2nd KDE (4)
3rd Openbox (3)
4th LXDE & XFCE (0)

On 1:
1st GNOME (4)
2nd Openbox and KDE (3)
3rd LXDE and XFCE (0)

=> KDE , GNOME : KDE seems stuffed to the brim with features
=> LXDE , Xfce and Openbox mostly play a catch-up game ( hence not ideal unless you have a very old PC ). –
while not stuffed to the brim with features , they cover all the essentials.