XFCE, Gnome or KDE ?

James Wilkinson ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk
Fri May 13 16:54:04 UTC 2005


linux wrote:
> Can you explain the differences between XFCE, KDE and Gnome?

Different "desktop environments". There's a *lot* of difference and a
*lot* of details.

On Unix and Unix-like operating systems (massive simplification alert),
the basis for graphical displays is the X Window System. X is just
responsible for letting programs draw to a "window" (maybe over a
network) and providing basic drawing features.

X itself has always been released under an Open Source license, and was
therefore available for the early Linux distributions.

On top of that, you need a "toolkit", that provides things like buttons,
sliders, dialogue boxes, edit boxes, and other standard "widgets".

You need a "window manager", which uses the toolkit to draw the window
borders, make sure that everything is in the right place, and do various
other jobs.

And you need a "desktop environment" which provides standard programs,
ways of launching other programs, things like preference editors, and
the like.

Way back when, commercial Unix standardised around the closed-source
Motif toolkit and window manager and the CDE desktop environment. This
was costly, and none of the Linux distros adopted it, working with the
early toolkits, window managers, and associated toolkits.

Both KDE and Gnome were attempts to make much more modern systems, KDE
around Qt, Gnome around GTK. GTK came out of the GIMP project and was
available under the LGPL. Qt was usable by Linux distributions, but
wasn't Free Software (source was available, but you couldn't change it
or port it to Windows under the free license). By then, both KDE and
Gnome were well established.

And they've kept going until today, with their various proponents. Both
have grown to take *massive* amounts of memory by traditional standards
(it used to be that you could run Linux distros with half the memory of
contemporary Windows), and XFCE has been developed as a light-weight
alternative.

Gnome has placed a lot of emphasis on usability, cleanliness, and Doing
The Right Thing Automatically. KDE is arguably more cluttered, and has
more options for people to fiddle with.

These days, it is very easy to run applications from all three
environments simultaneously, and they are growing together in the way
that they interact with users. You might not even notice that you're
running a KDE application in Gnome unless you know what to look for.

The best way to tell the difference, though, is to try them for
yourself. I was always on Gnome-friendly distros while this was
happening, and stuck with Gnome because I saw no reason to switch. But
then I was on Red Hat because I saw no reason to switch: maybe I ought
to spend more time in KDE or XFCE...

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | "I don't think so," said René Descartes.  Just then,
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | he vanished.




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