168 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
168 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
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>Specific Desktop Environments</TITLE
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TITLE="Desktop environments to the rescue"
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><A
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NAME="SPECIFIC-DESKTOP-ENVIRONMENTS"
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>9. Specific Desktop Environments</A
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></H1
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><P
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>We used KDE as an example, but it's by no means the earliest
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desktop environment for Unix systems. Perhaps one of the earliest is
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CDE (Common Desktop Environment), another sibling of the OSF. As per
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the CDE FAQ: "The Common Desktop Environment is a standard desktop for
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UNIX, providing services to end-users, systems administrators, and
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application developers consistently across many platforms." The key
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here is consistency. However CDE wasn't as feature-rich and easy as it
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needed to be. Along with Motif, CDE has practically disappeared from
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the free software world, having been replaced by better alternatives.</P
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><P
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>Under Linux, the two most popular desktop environments are KDE
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and GNOME, but they're not the only ones. A quick internet search will
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reveal about half a dozen desktop environments: GNUStep, ROX,
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GTK+XFce, UDE, to name a few. They all provide the basic facilities we
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mentioned earlier. GNOME and KDE have had the most support, both from
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the community and the industry, so they're the most advanced ones,
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providing a large amount of services to users and applications.</P
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><P
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>We mentioned KDE and the components that provide specific
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services under that environment. As a good desktop environment, GNOME
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is somewhat similar in that. The most obvious difference is that GNOME
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doesn't mandate a particular window manager (the way KDE has kwm). The
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GNOME project has always tried to be window manager-agnostic,
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acknowledging that most users get really attached to their window
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managers, and forcing them to use something that manages windows
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differently would detract from their audience. Originally GNOME
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favored the Enlightenment window manager, and currently their
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preferred window manager is Sawfish, but the GNOME control panel has
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always had a window manager selector box.</P
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><P
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>Other than this, GNOME uses the Gtk toolkit, and provides a set
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of higher-level functions and facilities through the gnome-libs set of
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libraries. GNOME has its own set of programming guidelines in order to
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guarantee a consistent behavior between compliant applications; it
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provides a panel (called just "panel"), a file manager (gmc, altough
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it's probably going to be superseded by Nautilus), and a control panel
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(the gnome control center).</P
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>Desktop environments to the rescue</TD
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> </TD
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>How it all fits together</TD
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