[wplug] {window,desktop} {environment,manager}

[Robert E. Coutch]

The answers are in the names themselves.

A window manager manages windows.
This means that the way a window appears, its ability to have scroll bars and 
be moved around as well as resizing, minimizing and so on are all controlled 
by the window manager. Most allow a title bar with various buttons and menus.
Most window managers offer the same features but different looks (themes).

A desktop environment is the place that contains and to some extent manages 
various items such as icons for launching programs, background images and 
menus that are not part of a window.

The combination of desktop environment and window manager are what most people 
refer to as their desktop.

Many different desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, BlackBox, WindowMaker, etc) 
allow the use of several window managers (ICE, enlightenment, metacity, etc).

The cool thing is how you can customize these to your own taste.

In older distributions of Linux, Gnome used the enlightenment window manager.

Enlightenment is also a desktop environment that uses the enlightenment window 
manager.

Gnome is a bit more feature filled than the enlightenment desktop.

It probably would be more helpful to actually try out each of the various 
desktop environments offered by your Linux distro to see what I mean.

As for Nautilus - If you're a Windows person nautilus could be compared with 
Explorer.

Explorer is a webrowser, a filemanager, a program group , a program window, 
etc depending on how it was called.

Nautilus is similar as it can navigate files, browse the web, etc.

On Windows, Control Panel opens in an Explorer window.
On Gnome, the various "control panels" open in Nautilus.

As for customizing,  there is Sooooooo much you can do,
I can even think about putting it into an email.

Does this answer your questions?


Hope so,

Bob


On Thursday 21 October 2004 11:01 pm, Brandon Kuczenski wrote:
> What's the difference between a "window manager" and a "desktop
> environment"?
>
> Specifically, what's the difference between Gnome and Enlightenment?  i.e.
> what are their different roles in the user-interface experience?  And
> where does 'nautilus' fit in?
>
> (speaking of customizing my computer to be exactly what I want, I've been
> focusing on the functional aspects but still haven't done much of anything
> with the appearance).
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Brandon
>
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