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TOPIC 3 LINUX DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT

History of KDE (K Desktop Environment)

1996 - KDE was founded by Matthias Ettrich

At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the Unix desktop. Among his qualms was that none of the applications looked, felt, or worked alike. He proposed the formation of not only a set of applications, but rather a desktop

environment, in which users could expect things to look, feel, and work consistently.

He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use; one of his complaints with desktopapplications of the time was that his girlfriend could not use them.

available for Unix systems. It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-to-use desktop computer environment. The Kwas originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K

should stand for nothing in particular

KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environmentmainly for Unix-like systems.

The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for dailyneeds as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications

for the system.

In this regard, the KDE project serves as an umbrella project for many standaloneapplications and smaller projects that are based on KDE technology such as KOffice,

KDevelop, Amarok, K3b .

History of GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment)

The name GNOME was proposed as an acronym ofGNU Network Object ModelEnvironment by Elliot Lee, one of the authors of ORBit and the Object Activation Framework.

It refers to GNOMEs original intention ofcreating a distributed object framework. As such, some members of the project advocate dropping the acronym and re-naming

"GNOME" to "Gnome.

GNOME is a desktop environmenta GUI which runs on top of a computer OS - composedentirely of free and open source software.

It is an international project that includes:o creating software development frameworkso selecting application software for the desktopo working on the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and

window and task management.

GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like OS, most notablythose built on top of the Linux kernel

GNOME Project Aims:

Freedomto create a desktop environment that will always have the source code availablefor re-use under a free software license.

Accessibilityensuring the desktop can be used by anyone Internationalization and localizationmaking the desktop available in many languages. At

the moment GNOME is being translated to 166 languages.

Developer-friendlinessensuring it is easy-to-write software that integrates smoothly withthe desktop, and allow developers a free choice of programming language.

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Organizationa regular release cycle and a disciplined community structure. Supportensuring backing from other institutions beyond the GNOME community.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KDE AND GNOME

KDE Desktop Environment GNOME

by default favors blue and

black, has one toolbar at the

bottom of the screen, and has

one main menu

Default look by default favors brown and

orange, has 2 toolbars (one at

the top, one at the bottom),

and splits its menu into three

submenusApplications,

Places, and System

there is a KMenu through which

you access all programs

Menu Navigation you have separate buttons for

applications, for folder

navigation, and for system

preferencesalso defaults to a single-click

instead of double-click for

opening files

Renaming files also focuses on the main file

name, but it does so inline and

not with a pop-up window.

has a System Settings central

location for configuring system

preferences. This can be

accessed through the KMenu.

System Preferences by default, you access each

preference one at a time by

going to System > Preferences >

and then selecting the item you

want

you have to clickApplyor Save

to get the changes to stick

Changes changes usually take effect as

you are choosing the newoption.

click on the KMenu and select

Leave and then the next option

Exiting exit option recently moved

from being in the System menu

to being its own applet. You

click it and the options come

down

Office Applications

KOfficeo free and open-source office suite.

OpenOffice.orgo an open-source software project upon which Sun's StarOffice is based. Its

components include Writer, Impress, Math, Draw, Calc, and Base.

OpenOffice.org Novell Editiono features the Office Open XML translator add-on. Based upon OpenOffice.org.

Go-ooo OpenOffice.org variant with a number of enhancements similar to the Novell Edition

but freely available. It has better support for Office Open XML (MS Office 2007) file

formats than the official OpenOffice.org

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