Xfce or XFCE is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but it is like Levenshtein distance in that it tries to determine the smallest set of deletions and insertions to create one file from the other. The utility displays the changes in one of several standard formats, such that both humans or computers can parse the changes, and use them for patching.
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.
Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor for traditional Unix-compatible systems such as GNU/Linux, BSD derivatives and Illumos, as well as Windows and macOS. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting. It uses vector graphics to allow for sharp printouts and renderings at unlimited resolution and is not bound to a fixed number of pixels like raster graphics. Inkscape uses the standardized Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format as its main format, which is supported by many other applications including web browsers. It can import and export various other file formats, including SVG, AI, EPS, PDF, PS and PNG.
freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), 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. Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.
The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as applying the patch or simply patching the files.
Glade Interface Designer is a graphical user interface builder for GTK, with additional components for GNOME. In its third version, Glade is programming language–independent, and does not produce code for events, but rather an XML file that is then used with an appropriate binding. See List of language bindings for GTK for the available ones.
Git is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively.
This article compares computer software tools that are used for accomplishing comparisons of files of various types. The file types addressed by individual file comparison apps varies but may include text, symbols, images, audio, or video. This category of software tool is often called "file comparison" or "diff tool", but those effectively are equivalent terms — where the term "diff" is more commonly associated with the Unix diff utility.
The following tables describe attributes of notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software systems that can be used to compare and contrast the various systems.
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
Geany is a free and open-source lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK, including basic IDE features. It is designed to have short load times, with limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. It has been ported to a wide range of operating systems, such as BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows. The Windows port lacks an embedded terminal window; also missing from the Windows version are the external development tools present under Unix, unless installed separately by the user. Among the supported programming languages and markup languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.
Beyond Compare is a cross-platform proprietary data comparison utility. The program is able to compare files and multiple types of directories, as well as archives. Beyond Compare can be configured as a difftool and mergetool of version control systems, such as git.
GTK is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the Wayland and X11 windowing systems.
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.
Unity Version Control is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It includes a command-line tool, native GUIs, diff and merge tool and integration with a number of IDEs. It is a full version control stack not based on Git.
OCRFeeder is an optical character recognition suite for GNOME, which also supports virtually any command-line OCR engine, such as CuneiForm, GOCR, Ocrad and Tesseract. It converts paper documents to digital document files and can serve to make them accessible to visually impaired users.
Guiffy SureMerge is a data comparison utility. In addition to comparing files, the program is capable of doing side-by-side comparison of directories and archives. The program is also capable of performing automatic 3-way file merges. It is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Unix operating systems.
Foliate is a free and open-source program for reading e-books in Linux. In English, foliate is an adjective meaning to be shaped like a leaf, from the Latin foliatus, meaning leafy.
