The most common desktop environment on personal computers is the one given by Microsoft Windows ; another common environment is the one given by Apple Mac OS X. Other mostly-used desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems using the X Window System are KDE , GNOME , Xfce . There are also other desktop environments , including : Aston , EDE , GEM , IRIX Interactive Desktop , Sun 's Java Desktop System , Mezzo , Project Looking Glass , ROX Desktop , UDE , Xito , XFast . On personal computers the most popular desktop environments are the one included with the Microsoft Windows operating system followed by the desktop environment of Mac OS X. When compared with desktop environments for Linux , the ones included with these operating systems are relatively unalterable .