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 Display Manager (GDM) is a display manager for the windowing systems X11 and Wayland.
freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. Some of the project's servers are hosted by Portland State University, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Google.
In computing, the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual is a standard protocol for the X Window System. It specifies conventions for clients of a common X server about selections and cut buffers, communication with the window manager and session manager, manipulation of shared resources, and color characterization.
KDE Software Compilation 4 was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation, first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014. It was the follow-up to K Desktop Environment 3. Following KDE SC 4, the compilation was broken up into basic framework libraries, desktop environment and applications, which are termed KDE Frameworks 5, KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, respectively.
openSUSE is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project.
The Oxygen Project is a project created to give a visual refresh to KDE Plasma Workspaces.
Compiz is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as loadable plugins. Because it conforms to the ICCCM conventions, Compiz can be used as a substitute for the default Mutter or Metacity, when using GNOME Panel, or KWin in KDE Plasma Workspaces. Internally Compiz uses the OpenGL library as the interface to the graphics hardware.
KDE Plasma 4 was the fourth generation of the KDE workspace environments. It consisted of three workspaces, each targeting a certain platform: Plasma Desktop for traditional desktop PCs and notebooks, Plasma Netbook for netbooks, and Plasma Active for tablet PCs and similar devices.
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
K Desktop Environment 1 was the inaugural series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. There were two major releases in this series.
This article compares variety of different X window managers. For an introduction to the topic, see X Window System.
Wayland is a communication protocol that specifies the communication between a display server and its clients, as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. A display server using the Wayland protocol is called a Wayland compositor, because it additionally performs the task of a compositing window manager.
The KDE Software Compilation was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Compilation was simply known as KDE, which stood for K Desktop Environment until the rebrand. The then called KDE SC was used from 4.4 onward until the final release 4.14 in July 2014. It consisted of the KDE Plasma 4 desktop and those KDE applications, whose development teams chose to follow the Software Compilation's release schedule. After that, the KDE SC was split into three separate product entities: KDE Plasma, KDE Frameworks and KDE Applications, each with their own independent release schedules.
Fedora Linux is a popular Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora attempts to maintain a six-month release schedule, offering new versions in May and November, although some releases have experienced minor delays.
Maliit is an input method framework for computers with particular focus on implementing virtual keyboards. Designed mostly for touchscreen devices, Maliit allows the inputting of text without the presence of a physical keyboard. More advanced features such as word correction and prediction are also available.
Mir is a computer display server and, recently, a Wayland compositor for the Linux operating system that is under development by Canonical Ltd. It was planned to replace the currently used X Window System for Ubuntu; however, the plan changed and Mutter was adopted as part of GNOME Shell.
Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) is a display manager for the X11 and Wayland windowing systems. SDDM was written from scratch in C++11 and supports theming via QML.
KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014.
KDE Projects are projects maintained by the KDE community, a group of people developing and advocating free software for everyday use, for example KDE Plasma and KDE Frameworks or applications such as Amarok, Krita or Digikam. There are also non-coding projects like designing the Breeze desktop theme and iconset, which is coordinated by KDE's Visual Design Group. Even non-Qt applications like GCompris, which started as a GTK-based application, or web-based projects like WikiToLearn are officially part of KDE.
