In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
GNOME Web, called Epiphany until 2012 and still known by that code name, is a free and open-source web browser based on the GTK port of Apple's WebKit rendering engine, called WebKitGTK. It is developed by the GNOME project for Unix-like systems. It is the default and official web browser of GNOME, and part of the GNOME Core Applications.
gedit is a text editor designed for the GNOME desktop environment. It was GNOME's default text editor and part of the GNOME Core Applications until GNOME version 42 in March 2022, which changed the default text editor to GNOME Text Editor. Designed as a general-purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, with a clean and simple GUI, according to the philosophy of the GNOME project. It includes tools for editing source code and structured text such as markup languages.
NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces.
Xubuntu is a Canonical-recognized, community-maintained derivative of the Ubuntu operating system. The name Xubuntu is a portmanteau of Xfce and Ubuntu, as it uses the Xfce desktop environment, instead of Ubuntu's customized GNOME desktop.
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
GVfs is GNOME's userspace virtual filesystem designed to work with the I/O abstraction of GIO, a library available in GLib since version 2.15.1. It installs several modules that are automatically used by applications using the APIs of libgio. There is also FUSE support that allows applications not using GIO to access the GVfs filesystems.
GNOME 3 is the third major release of the GNOME desktop environment. A major departure from technologies implemented by its predecessors, GNOME 3 introduced a dramatically different user interface. It was the first GNOME release to utilize a unified graphical shell known as GNOME Shell. It also introduced support for the Wayland display protocol and added integration with other key technologies such as Flatpak during its development lifecycle.
GNOME, originally an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
Ubuntu Unity is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, using the Unity interface in place of Ubuntu's GNOME Shell. The first release was 20.04 LTS on 7 May 2020. Prior to the initial release it had the working names of Unubuntu and Ubuntu Unity Remix.
Vino was a VNC server for the GNOME desktop environment, the GNOME developers now recommend using "gnome-remote-desktop" instead.
GNOME Project is a community behind the GNOME desktop environment and the software platform upon which it is based. It consists of all the software developers, artists, writers, translators, other contributors, and active users of GNOME. It is no longer part of the GNU Project.
Disk Usage Analyzer is a graphical disk usage analyzer for GNOME. It was part of GNOME Core Applications, but was split off for GNOME 3.4. It was originally named Baobab after the Adansonia tree. The software gives the user a menu-driven, graphical representation of what is on a disk drive. The interface allows for selection of specific parts of filesystem being scanned so a single folder, the entire filesystem, and even remote folders and filesystems can be scanned. The graphical representation can be switched between a ring chart and a treemap chart so the presentation can be tailored to the specific content being scanned.
Cinnamon is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, which was originally based on GNOME 3, but follows traditional desktop metaphor conventions.
The KDE Gear is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and released on a common release schedule.
Phosh is a graphical user interface designed for mobile and touch-based devices and developed by Purism. It is the default shell used on several mobile Linux operating systems including PureOS, Mobian, and Fedora Phosh. It is also an option on postmarketOS, Manjaro, and openSUSE.
Adwaita is the design language of the GNOME desktop environment. As an implementation, it exists as the default theme and icon set of the GNOME Shell and Phosh, and as widgets for applications targeting usage in GNOME. Adwaita first appeared in 2011 with the release of GNOME 3.0 as a replacement for the design principles used in Clearlooks, and with incremental modernization and refinements, continues with current version releases.
GNOME Text Editor is the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. The program is a free and open-source graphical text editor included as part of the GNOME Core Applications. GNOME Text Editor has been the default text editor for GNOME since GNOME version 42, which was released in March 2022. GNOME Text Editor replaces gedit as GNOME's default text editor, and was created due to the GNOME developers' intention of having all of their programs comply with the GNOME Human interface guidelines (HIG). The adherence to their HIG is done by using the libadwaita library, and making gedit compliant with that would have required an extensive rewrite of gedit's code, so a new program was written from scratch instead.
GNOME Settings
