The X Window System is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
IceWM is a stacking window manager for the X Window System, originally written by Marko Maček. It was written from scratch in C++ and is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. It is customizable, relatively lightweight in terms of memory and CPU usage, and comes with themes that allow it to imitate the GUI of Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7, OS/2, Motif, and other graphical user interfaces.
The X Display Manager (XDM) is the default display manager for the X Window System. It is a bare-bones X display manager. It was introduced with X11 Release 3 in October 1988, to support the standalone X terminals that were just coming onto the market. It was written by Keith Packard.
KDE Display Manager (KDM) was a display manager developed by KDE for the windowing systems X11.
freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.
Fast user switching is a feature of a multi-user operating system which allows users to switch between user accounts without quitting applications and logging out.
Cygwin/X is an implementation of the X Window System that runs under Microsoft Windows. It is part of the Cygwin project, and is installed using Cygwin's standard setup system. Cygwin/X is free software, licensed under the X11 License.
In computing, the X Window System is a network-transparent windowing system for bitmap displays. This article details the protocols and technical structure of X11.
In the X Window System, an X display manager is a graphical login manager which starts a login session on an X server from the same or another computer.
NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces.
In computing, a tiling window manager is a window manager with the organization of the screen often dependant on mathematical formulas to organise the windows into a non-overlapping frame. This is opposed to the more common approach used by stacking window managers, which allow the user to drag windows around, instead of windows snapping into a position. This allows for a different style of organization, although it strays from the traditional desktop metaphor.
Compiz is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as loadable plugins. Because it conforms to the ICCCM conventions, Compiz can be used as a substitute for the default Mutter or Metacity, when using GNOME Panel, or KWin in KDE Plasma Workspaces. Internally Compiz uses the OpenGL library as the interface to the graphics hardware.
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
LightDM is a free and open-source X display manager that aims to be lightweight, fast, extensible and multi-desktop. It can use various front-ends to draw the user interface, also called Greeters. It also supports Wayland.
Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) is a display manager for the X11 and Wayland windowing systems. SDDM was written from scratch in C++11 and supports theming via QML.
KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth generation of the KDE Plasma graphical workspaces environment, created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014. It was succeeded by KDE Plasma 6 on 28 February 2024.
Garuda Linux is a Linux distribution targeted towards gaming based on Arch Linux. It is available in multiple desktop environments, but the KDE Plasma version is the main one. The term Garuda, originating from Hinduism and Buddhism, is defined as a divine eagle-like sun bird and the king of birds.
KDE Plasma is a set of graphical shells developed by KDE for Unix-like operating systems. With the KDE brand repositioning in 2009, Plasma 4.4 succeeded KDE 4.3. Currently, it has four workspace variants: one for desktop PCs and laptops, one for TVs, one for smartphones, and another for embedded and touch-enabled devices. Plasma Desktop, in its default configuration, resembles KDesktop from K Desktop Environment 3 and Microsoft Windows XP; however, extensive configurability allows radical departures from the default layout.
