Talk:Desktop environment

Best to leave out external links to individual entries?

Assuming someone will make an entry for EDE, wouldn't it be best to leave the external links on the individual desktop environment entries? I think Gnome and KDE already have links off their page, and adding redundant links across multiple articles makes keeping the links up-to-date harder.

Yes, that is a good general principle. Done.--Eloquence*

Do window managers belong on the list?

According to my knowledge FluxBox and BlackBox are not DEs but rather WMs. Do they belong on the list? -- DNAdk 3/8-06

I'd say "no" - there's already a page for window managers, and if something just manages your windows, it's not really a full desktop environment. Guy Harris 23:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Window manager, desktop metaphor and desktop environment are interestingly dependent concepts. Window manager actually redirects to X window manager and I think that's justified, the other windowing systems just don't separate the managing from the environment. Traditional window managers for X didn't implement the whole desktop metaphor, but they had to implement a minimal desktop environment for the system to be usable. The desktop was called the root window and the window manager would provide a menu to launch programs there. Minimized windows would have to be available either in a menu or as icons. Compare this to modern window managers such as Metacity, Kwin or Compiz that cannot necessarily be used without a desktop environment.

I'm not saying that FluxBox and BlackBox should be included in the list of desktop environments, but for example Ion would in my opinion be both an X window manager and provide a full (unconventional) desktop environment for the user. --TuukkaH 09:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm also not sure if Enlightenment should be on here. By my understanding Enlightenment is a window manager. In fact, the article for it calls it a window manager. Whenever I have used it, I don't recall there being a desktop instead it only managed windows, hence a window manager. --Harbit713 19:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Choosing images

I suggest we should remove the images of desktop environments, they look all the same and they are not interesting. A drawing that shows the elements of a desktop environment as discussed in the article could be a better choice. --TuukkaH 07:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I see that they are all rather similar; yet they are all different. Are you thinking we should take one of these and label it like a schematic? I suppose it could be done, but I am not certain it would look better. --Matthew K 02:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

After some thought, I think that perhaps leaving most of these here, but making the images a bit larger and adding captions that describe the differences between them would be the best approach. If there is no oposition to this idea, I will try it in a couple days and we can see what we think of it. --Matthew K 16:21, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Unnecessary external link

The most recent addition to this page is a link to a very short opinion about desktop environments... it just lacks substance to be a relevant reference here. Rather than just do it myself, I propose we remove the reference to http://www.evilbitz.com/2006/10/22/windows-customization-needs-help/ --Matthew K

I agree. I doubt it will help the reader understand what desktop environments are. --Chaos386

Done; if anyone has more useful/substantial external links, they are welcome to add them. --Matthew K 16:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge

The articles Desktop_metaphor and Paper_paradigm should probably be moved here as an introductory section. Dragice 06:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Those two articles should definitely be merged, though I'm not sure that this article should be merged with them. — Omegatron 15:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

SimpleKDE? AntiRight?

SimpleKDE? http://www.simplekde.org/node/7/default.htm
AntiRight? http://www.nongnu.org/antiright/ -- Writtenonsand 00:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Clipboard

Would it be appropriate to mention that some DEs provide clipboard functionality? - dcljr (talk) 05:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

X Window System bias

The Windows and Mac OS desktop environments are easily the most used desktop environments in the world, being used by more people then the X Window System. It is then strange that first Windows and Mac OS don't get their own paragraphs and second that what they do have is so small and brief. The majority of the page is easily dedicated to the X Window System and environments which use it. I think there should be more information about the Windows and Mac OS desktop environments, which also link to the more complete articles about them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DiablosDevil (talk • contribs) 14:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Understood. But the fact of the matter is there isn't much done with the Microsoft types because there are no choices. What is included with the OS is what you get. Further, because the whole thing is proprietary there isn't much that can be said about it. - KitchM (talk) 03:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Desktop Environment vs. Shell

I was just looking at Shell (computing). Can a Desktop Environment be accurately described as a graphical shell? Karl Dickman ^talk 18:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

No. A shell is a script language interpreter or a program executor which communicates with kernel-near layers of an operating system; and a graphical shell is a window with a frame around a shell on top of a desktop environment (which becomes opened when it is started there as an ordinary application). This is intended to make working with such tool somewhat more nice and handy for the user (while making him residing in a GUI surrounding atmosphere), but the shell commands related to the script language and to program execution stay the same as in a non-GUI-environment. A.Abdel-Rahim (talk) 23:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, desktop environments can and have been described as graphical shells (there are even articles for the Windows Shell and its replacements). In Unix-like systems "the shell" is the script language that you describe, but there's nothing preventing that the concept of "a OS shell" can be a graphical environment with visual commands (including commands that can't be issued through a non-GUI). Diego (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Packed or Backed?

In the first paragraph, is the word "-packed" or "-backed"? - KitchM (talk) 03:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)