Gnome and KDE are great – they give you a beautiful desktop with all the tools and utilities you need. On either system, you’ll find a solid window manager, desktop icons, a panel full of applets, the works. That’s all well and good for your average desktop PC, but what if you need something lighter, faster, or cleaner in appearance? You could try a smaller desktop environment like XFCE or go with something ultra-slim like Openbox or WindowMaker. On the other hand, you could get exactly what you want, no more no less, by combining individual pieces together into your own custom desktop environment.