Comparison of X Window System desktop environments: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:40, 31 January 2021

Revision as of 16:57, 31 March 2021

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There are some exceptions: Window managers like [[Fluxbox]], [[wmii]] and [[Ratpoison]] operate independently of a desktop environment and were written with this objective in mind. Additional hand-picked applications add functionality such as a panel and volume management which gives them some of the qualities of a full DE. This contrasts the behaviour of WMs like [[Metacity]] and [[KWin]] which were not written with the objective of operating independently of a DE.

[[KDE Software Compilation]] and [[GNOME]] are written almost completely on special [[software library|software libraries]] [[Qt (toolkit)|Qt]] and [[GTK+]] respectively.<ref>Official websites of [http://www.gnome.org GNOME] and [http://kde.org KDE]</ref> This usually means that virtually every component of the desktop environment including the [[file manager]] explicitly depends on that library for its functioning.

[[File:X window system desktop environments timeline.svg|thumb|X Window System desktop environments timeline.]]

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| [[Cinnamon_(software)|Cinnamon]] || 2011

| 4.6.2 <ref name=":0">{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/blob/master/debian/changelog |title=cinnamon/changelog at master |website=www.github.com |access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref>|| 2020-05-27<ref name=":0"/> || C, JavaScript, Python || GTK+ || GPL || Forked from GNOME 3 with the intent to create a traditional desktop built on modern technologies.

|-

| [[Deepin#DDE|Deepin Desktop Environment]] (DDE) || 2015

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| [[GNOME]] || 1999-03-03

| 3.38<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|title=GNOME 3.38 Released – GNOME|url=https://www.gnome.org/news/2020/09/gnome-3-38-released/|access-date=2020-11-20|language=en}}</ref>|| 2020-09-16<ref name=":3" />|| C, C++, Vala, Python, JavaScript || GTK+ || GPL, LGPL || GNOME is one of the most popular environments. Major design changes with the 3.0 release sparked the creation of Cinnamon (a fork of GNOME 3), Unity (an alternative Gnome Desktop Session to GNOME Shell) and MATE (a fork of GNOME 2).

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| [[KDE Plasma 5]] (KDE5, KDE Plasma Workspaces, formerly K Desktop Environment or simply KDE) || 1998-07-12

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| [[LXDE]] (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) || 2006

| 0.10.0<ref name=":5">{{Cite web |url=https://blog.lxde.org/2019/03/23/lxpanel-0-10-0-and-some-others/ |title=LXPanel 0.10.0 and some others… |last=LStranger |date=2019-03-23 |website=LXDE Blog |language=en-US |access-date=2019-08-05}}</ref>|| 2019-03-23<ref name=":5" />|| C || GTK+ || GPL, LGPL || LXDE, with its low resource footprint, is a favorite among developers of lighter-weight Linux distributions. Development has largely moved to LXQt, but it is still maintained.

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| [[LXQt]] || 2014-05-07

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| [[MATE_(software)|MATE]] || 2011-08-19

| 1.24<ref name=":7">{{Cite web |url=https://mate-desktop.org/blog/2020-02-10-mate-1-24-released/ |title=MATE 1.24 released |last=Ulbrich |first=Wolfgang |date=2020-02-10 |website=MATE |language=en |access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref>|| 2020-02-10<ref name=":7" />|| C, C++, Python || GTK+ || LGPL, GPL || Revival and continuation of GNOME 2 environment after the release of GNOME 3. In recent releases, it has been ported to GTK+ 3, demonstrating the progress of the project.

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| [[Elementary OS#Pantheon desktop environment|Pantheon]]|| 2011

| || 2018-10-16 || Vala || GTK+ || GPL || The desktop environment of elementary OS.

|-

| [[Razor-qt]] || 2010

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| [[ROX Desktop]] || 2000 (?)

| || 2011-10-09 || C, Python || GTK+ || GPL ||

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| [[Trinity Desktop Environment]] (TDE) || 2010-04-29

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| [[Unity_(user_interface)|Unity]] || 2010-06-09

| 7.5|| 2016-05-25 || C, C++, Python, Vala, QML || GTK+ || GPL, LGPL || Developed by Canonical for Ubuntu as an alternative graphical shell to GNOME Shell. Designed with "convergence" in mind, it was discontinued by Canonical in early 2017.

|-

| [[Xfce]] || 1996

| 4.14<ref name=":9">{{Cite web |url=https://xfce.org/about/news/?post=1565568000 |title=News – Xfce 4.14 released – Xfce|website=xfce.org|access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref>|| 2020-01-12<ref name=":9" />|| C || GTK+ || GPL, LGPL, BSD license || XFCE is often used in lightweight distributions targeting lower-end hardware.

|}

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! [[Widget toolkit]]

| [[Qt (framework)|Qt]]

| colspan=4| <center>[[GTK+]]</center>

| [[GTK+]](legacy) / [[Qt (framework)|Qt]]

| [[GTK+]]

| [[GNUstep]]

| [[FLTK]] (previously eFLTK)