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.
Xfce or XFCE is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
GNOME Files, formerly and internally known as Nautilus, is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel with many luminaries from the tech world including Andy Hertzfeld (Apple), chief architect for Nautilus. The nautilus name was a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 (2001) and has been the default file manager from version 2.0 onwards.
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. 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.
Bluecurve is a desktop theme for GNOME and KDE created by the Red Hat Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a consistent look throughout the Linux environment, and provide support for various Freedesktop.org desktop standards. It was used in Red Hat Linux in version 8 and 9, and in its successor OS, Fedora Linux through version 4.
PCLinuxOS, often shortened to PCLOS, is a rolling release Linux distribution for x86-64 computers, with KDE Plasma, MATE, and XFCE as its default user interfaces. It is a primarily FOSS operating system for personal computers aimed at ease of use.
Human interface guidelines (HIG) are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and consistent. Most guides limit themselves to defining a common look and feel for applications in a particular desktop environment. The guides enumerate specific policies. Policies are sometimes based on studies of human–computer interaction, but most are based on conventions chosen by the platform developers preferences.
The Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) is a testing tool that uses computer assistive technology to automate graphical user interface (GUI) testing. The GUI functionality of an application can be tested in Linux, macOS, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, and embedded system environments. The macOS version is named PyATOM, and the Windows version is Cobra. The LDTP is released as free and open-source software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
D-Bus is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, initiated by GNOME developer Havoc Pennington to standardize services provided by Linux desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE.
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.
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.
Nuvola is a free software icon set under the GNU LGPL 2.1 license, created by David Vignoni. Originally created for desktop environments like KDE and GNOME, it is also available in packages for Windows and Mac. The final version, 1.0, contains almost 600 icons. The default set is in the PNG graphics format; an SVG version is also available.
The Oxygen Project is a project created to give a visual refresh to KDE Plasma Workspaces.
The Portland Project is an initiative by freedesktop.org aiming at easing the portability of application software between desktop environments and kernels by designing cross-platform APIs and offering implementations thereof as libraries to independent software vendors (ISVs).
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
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.
In computing, the trash, also known by other names such as dustbin, wastebasket, and others, is a graphical user interface desktop metaphor for temporary storage for files set aside by the user for deletion, but not yet permanently erased. The concept and name is part of Mac operating systems, a similar implementation is called the Recycle Bin in Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems use other names.
openDesktop.org is a libre website portal offering personal cloud services like storage and communication services, as well as public services in form of a store for libre content publishing and a code hosting site for open development.
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.
