Desktop
From STNY LUG Wiki
Contents |
Introduction
What's a desktop (desktop management system)? Why should choose one instead of another? Are there really any new features or capabilities of newer desktop systems that an average user should pay attention to?
Let's begin by defining "desktop" for the purposes of this article. When most users interact with their PC, they cannot avoid the desktop. If you ask them what the desktop is they'll close a few and then point to the screen which is probably cluttered with at least a few icons. Some people may or may not have customized their desktop by choosing a background image and color scheme. ...
A desktop is a GUI for the operating system. At it's very core (IMO), it should:
- Provide a convenient interface for launching and managing applications.
- Include a file manager to enable a convenient and easy to use system for moving and organizing documents
- Make it easy to view documents
- Expose the capabilities of the underlying shell/OS
Other nice features of a desktop should include:
- Allow simple customization so that the screen I look at daily is ascetically pleasing to me
- Enable flexible productivity-oriented customization (shortcuts, profiles, quicklaunch, widgets, scripting, macros)
- Maintain an easy to use and organized system for accessing maintenance utilities (anti-virus, updates, backups, system-status information)
- The desktop shouldn't be so resource intensive (memory, cpu) that it interferes with applications.
Common components, differences
visible and found as part of most desktop management systems, how do gnome and kde etc. compare, where is there active development
- A Start Button
- A Task bar/panel
- A file manager
- A file viewer (or several)
- A window manager
Other comparisons between major contenders
Performance
Feature bloat
Perhaps a desktop doesn't really need many buttons, check out
- Stumpwm ( a minimalist, emacs-like windows manager especially for Jay)
Device, hardware support
Support community
finding help, documentation
International Language support
Trends to watch
widgets, web services integration
