[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.
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Table of Contents
Desktop environment
A desktop environment is a graphical layer between the user and the computer. In the UNIX context, a desktop manager is a graphical environment that runs inside an X session. It enables the user through mouse and keyboard interaction to access the underlying features of the operating systems. A full desktop environment (as opposed to a window manager) usually provides a set of software for the most common needs (file access, web browsing, printing…).
A desktop environment usually consists of many of the following components:
- A native window manager to manage window placement and arrangements (some desktop environments may additionally be able to use third party Window Managers).
- A session manager (to save and restore user's sessions).
- A desktop manager (to manage the user's desktop, i.e. background, icons, multiple workspaces etc.)
- A panel with menus for launching applications and additional widgets including notifications and messages.
- A file browser.
- A task manager to manage running applications and background tasks.
- At least one basic graphical text editor (if not more).
- Desktop configuration GUIs, including colours, themes, fonts etc.
- Common utilities such as a console terminal, internet browser, power manager, bluetooth, network manager, clipboard manager and so on.
- System administration GUIs for common actions such as printer configuration, removable device management, file associations etc.
- Several commonly desktop applications including media player, movie player, document viewer, graphics viewer etc.
In addition, Desktop Environments usually provide integration with features such as display and ACPI power management, useful for notebooks/laptops.
Available environments
Other environments
- LXDE.
Sources
- Originally written by kookiemonster for the SlackDocs Wiki Project
- Additional inputs by harishankar