On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 14:12:15 -0700 (PDT) ray <r...@aarden.us> wrote: > > > Which desktop manager are you using? Once we know, one of us will > > be able to tell you how to switch. > > I'm sure that you don't need to edit anything. > > I appologize as I am new to Linux I may need some help in the > terminology. Please help me understand 'which desktop manager'. > When I said I have been running Gnome on Debian 7.4, I thought Gnome > was the desktop manager. Is there something else that is a desktop > manager? >
Gnome is referred to as a desktop environment, as it is much more than just a manager of windows, menus etc. KDE is the other heavyweight DE, there are two medium-weight DEs, LXDE and Xfce4. There is also at least one fork of an older version of Gnome, as the current Gnome is a bit heavy on resources and won't run well on hardware more than a few years old. Then it gets complicated... There are window managers which can be used by themselves, without a desktop environment, though all DEs must use a window manager. The simplest just provide a menu from which to launch applications. Because they are so simple, they are very fast in their own operations, and don't take much processing time away from applications. The price is that you do everything yourself, there are no system trays with notifications, clocks etc. All of these things need to be added manually. The good news is that you can play with all of them. You can install all four major desktop environments, and all the window managers you can find, and try them all out from the display manager, which is basically a graphical login shell used to start a window manager or DE. Eventually you will probably settle on one environment, whether a window manager or full desktop environment. Even then, there are applications which 'belong' to one environment but can be used in any of them. I have an occasional use for Konqueror, which is a KDE application, but runs fine in LXDE, which is my preferred DE. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140405231927.6ea92...@jretrading.com