Open-Source Desktop Design: Environments & Window Managers
Open-Source Desktop Design: Environments & Window Managers Contents What a desktop environment actually gives you Window managers: less software, more control Making the choice that suits you Where BSD, Linux and Unix meet in the middle Ask ten open-source users to describe their "desktop" and you'll get ten different answers. Some will show you a polished, icon-rich workspace that wouldn't look out of place on a shop-floor demo machine. Others will proudly reveal a screen made almost entirely of terminal windows, arranged with mathematical precision and controlled without ever touching a mouse. Both are legitimate, both are open source, and both sit somewhere on the spectrum between two very different philosophies: the desktop environment and the window manager. Understanding that spectrum is one of the most useful things a new BSD, Linux or Unix user can do, and it matters just as much for enterprise IT teams choosing a standard image as it does for a s...
