Paul Kraus wrote: > Ok I am assuming that KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker ect are nothing more then > front ends to the command line. If this is true what advantages does one > have over the other? Which should I learn? Is it worth learning them > all?
KDE and GNOME are GUI desktops or desktop managers (I think WindowMaker is also -- there are a bunch of them IceWM, Black<something>, ...). If you're from the Windows world and remember dos, think of dos as command line Linux and KDE or GNOME as Windows. I think there is a little more to them than just front ends to the command line, but I guess that depends on your perspective. KDE is commonly thought to be the most newbie friendly and most Windows like for a user migrating from Windows. GNOME is somewhat similar, but I like KDE better than GNOME. Both KDE and GNOME are resource hungry, (I needed 256 MB of memory to get KDE performance (with a 2.2.19 kernel) similar to Windows 95 with 64 MB). The other desktop managers generally have advantages in terms of speed and less resource usage. Some desktop managers have the look and feel of other known operating systems, so you might like one of them better. (Other desktops are just different.) I don't think you should learn them all, but you may want to spend a little time experimenting with them all to see which you like best. In general, KDE and GNOME applications will run under the other desktops. (KDE, like GNOME, has some behind the scenes interprogram communication / automation features (dcop, kdcop for kde) -- I don't know if these work under the other desktops. Randy Kramer
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