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.
An X window manager is a window manager that runs on top of the X Window System, a windowing system mainly used on Unix-like systems.
Xfce or XFCE is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
Metacity was the default window manager used by the GNOME 2 desktop environment until it was replaced by Mutter in GNOME 3. It is still used by GNOME Flashback, a session for GNOME 3 that provides a similar user experience to the Gnome 2.x series sessions.
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.
A compositing manager, or compositor, is software that provides applications with an off-screen buffer for each window. The compositing manager composites the window buffers into an image representing the screen and writes the result into the display memory. A compositing window manager is a window manager that is also a compositing manager.
Linux is a generic name for a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project.
LXDE is a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements. This makes it especially suitable for use on older or resource-constrained personal computers such as netbooks or system on a chip computers.
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose to include proprietary software such as multimedia codecs. Linux Mint can come with three different desktop environments by default; Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE.
Avant Window Navigator is a dock-like bar for Linux, which sits on an edge of a user's screen and tracks open windows. Instead of representing open windows as buttons or segments on a bar, it uses large icons on a translucent background to increase readability and add visual appeal. The program was created by Neil J. Patel.
This article compares variety of different X window managers. For an introduction to the topic, see X Window System.
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.
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.
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.
GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3, which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications and switching between windows, and is also a widget engine. GNOME Shell replaced GNOME Panel and some ancillary components of GNOME 2.
systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manager" — an init system used to bootstrap user space and manage user processes. It also provides replacements for various daemons and utilities, including device management, login management, network connection management, and event logging. The name systemd adheres to the Unix convention of naming daemons by appending the letter d. It also plays on the term "System D", which refers to a person's ability to adapt quickly and improvise to solve problems.
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.
Budgie is an independent, free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems that targets the desktop metaphor. Budgie is developed by the Buddies of Budgie organization, which is composed of a team of contributors from Linux distributions such as Fedora, Debian, and Arch Linux. Its design emphasizes simplicity, minimalism, and elegance, while providing the means to extend or customize the desktop in various ways. Unlike desktop environments like Cinnamon, Budgie does not have a reference platform, and all distributions that ship Budgie are recommended to set defaults that best fit their desired user experience.
Client-side decoration (CSD) is the concept of allowing a graphical application software to be responsible for drawing its own window decorations, historically the responsibility of the window manager.
