With many window managers you are stuck editing flat-text files to add or remove contents. This is certainly the case with E16.  Fortunately E17 has a very easy to use tool to edit the Favorites menu. The only hitch is knowing what tool to use and where to add the apps. Without understanding your tools and targets, this can get a bit tricky. That’s where Ghacks comes in. In this article you will learn how to add to your Favorites menu and configure your Main menu.

Difference between the menus

The first thing you must know is what menus you have to choose from. There are two primary menus in E17: The Main menu and the Favorites menu. The Main menu is the menu you see when you either click the “E” button on your main shelf or left-click any empty space on the desktop. This menu, as stated earlier, it not editable (unless you are willing to do some hacking of .c files). NOTE:  There is much discussion of this subject and hopefully a tool will be created to allow the editing of the Main menu.

The other menu is the Favorites menu. This menu is a user-configurable menu that allows you to easily add and remove applications. This menu is accessed by right-clicking an empty spot on the desktop.

Now, let’s see what we can do with these menus.

Main menu

Figure 1

The main menu is one of the many places where you can launch various applications. Although you can not add or remove applications/actions from this menu, you can configure the menu in a number of ways. The configuration of this menu is handled from within the Enlightenment Configuration window (see Figure 1).

When you open that window you might have to scroll to the right (using the right-pointing arrow) to find the “Menus” entry. Once that entry appears, click it to reveal the two options available to you: Menu Settings and Client List Menu. Click on the Menu Settings to reveal the options available.

When the Menu Settings window opens the first thing you want to do is click on the Advanced button to reveal the full set of options (see Figure 2). In this window you can set a few options. Most of these options really don’t appeal to too many users. You can configure the menu to include or not include both the Applications sub menu and the Favorites sub menu. You can also configure the following:

Figure 2

What to list in the menu: Name, Generic, Comment.

Autoscroll: Distance from from the edge of the screen before the menu needs to autoscroll.

Menu Scroll Speed: How quickly to scroll the menu.

Fast Mouse Move Threshold: What mouse speed is considered a fast move.

Click Drag Timeout: How much time between a mouse press and release that will keep the menu up.

That’s about it for the changes you can make to your Main Menu. Now let’s move on to the real fun.

Favorites Menu

The Favorites menu is a menu that gives you quick access to applications and actions. You might be asking yourself “Isn’t that what the iBar is for?” Yes it is. However, you do not want an iBar across the bottom of your screen filled to overflowing with application launchers. Eventually you would run out of room. To pick up that overflow you can use the Favorites menu. Or you can use the favorites menu to place only certain types of applications. Or you could even create a bunch entries that serve as quick launchers to favorite web sites.

Figure 3

To add applications to the Favorites menu you go back to the Menu section of the Settings window and select Favorites Menu. When you click that a new window will open up (see Figure 3) that allows you to search the listing of applications and add them to the Favorites. Just select the application you want to add and click the Add button. When you are done adding your applications, click OK button to apply the changes and dismiss the window.

As you can see I have added Firefox, Chrome, and Claws Mail to my favorites menu. These entries will show up when I left click the desktop. I can also include this favorites menu in the Main menu (as described earlier).

Say you want to add an entry to open up Firefox to Ghacks. To do this you would have to go to do the following:

• Go to the Settings tool,
• Click the Apps section.
• Select “New Application”.

Fill out the following:

• Name: Ghacks
• Executable: firefox http://www.ghacks.net
• Comment: Ghacks

You will also need to add an icon. You can navigate to /usr/share/pixmaps to find a custom icon for each link you create.

Final thoughts

It is my hopes that someone will eventually create a tool that will allow the user to really get in and edit the Main menu. Until then you can use the Favorites menu to give you some sense of flexibility with the E17 menu.

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Another nice aspect is that there are plenty of themes available for the desktop. So with all of that said, let’s take a look at how to theme the E17 window manager.

Where to find themes

Before we go on it would be best to point out a couple of outstanding locations to find themes. There are two sites that house plenty of E17 eye candy (there used to be three main sites until Freshmeat dumped themes – BOO HISS!). Those sites are: Get-E and E17 Stuff. The latter has far more themes, but the former’s themes are much more interesting.

The files you are going to download are .edj files and contain every thing you need for your theme (including wallpaper). You can download them to any directory, so long as you have permission to access the directory. I would place them in a centralized location in your ~/ directory (like ~/Downloads). Once you have imported the theme you can them remove the .edj file from your directory.

Sift through these sites and download a few themes that you like.

The theme tool

Figure 1

If you open up your main menu in E17 (left click the mouse on a blank spot on your desktop) you will see the Settings menu. Click on that menu entry to open up the tool (see Figure 1) you will use to import and/or select your theme.

You will notice there are two radio buttons at the top left. Here you can switch from the system themes (pre-installed) or your personal themes (themes you have imported). When you import a theme you won’t have to make this switch.

With this tool open (and your themes downloaded) click on the Import button. When

Figure 2

you click this button a small window will open where you navigate around to locate theme you want to import. After you’ve located your theme click the OK button and you will see your theme instantly appear in the Personal listing of themes (see Figure 2). Select that them and then click the Apply button to make the change. The change in theme might seem to not happen at first. Give it a second or two and the change will magically happen.

Wallpaper

You can chose to either use your theme’s wallpaper or your own personal wallpaper. To make this change click on the Main menu and then on the Settings menu. In this you will see the Wallpaper entry. Click that to open up the Wallpaper tool (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

As you can see you can select Personal wallpaper (wallpaper you have downloaded), System wallpaper (default wallpaper installed with E17), or Theme wallpaper (wallpaper included with the them). Make your selection and click OK.

If you click the Advanced button it allows you to set which desktops the wallpaper will be assigned to.

Final thoughts

Themeing a desktop has never been so easy. With Enlightenment E17 your desktop can look fairly amazing with only a few clicks.

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Enlightenment E17 is one of those very special desktops that has a foot in both the window manager and desktop environment arenas. It is, at the same time, both and one or the other. E17 is the natural progress of E16 which is a much more lean and simple window manager. The biggest difference is that E17 offers more in terms of traditional desktop metaphor. But just what does it have to offer? Let’s take a look.

Features

E17 has much to offer, including:

Menus: E17 has both a main and a root menu. The main window is what you would consider a “Start” menu. The root menu is a menu that appears when you click an empty space on the desktop.

Shelf: This is what you would call a panel in most parlance. The E17 desktop can hold multiple shelves which can be placed in one of twelve locations around the desktop.

Modules: You can load or unload modules as you need them.

Gadgets: You can add different gadgets to your desktop or your shelves.

Let’s take a look at some of these pieces.

Figure 1

As you can see, in Figure 1, the E17 desktop is one of the more elegant desktops available. In this image you see the main Shelf (bottom), the root menu (lower left mid section), Gimp main window (upper left mid section), a shaded Xterm window (upper right mid section), and icons that allow you to open the file manager in different directories (upper left).

The main piece you might wonder about is the Shelf. The Shelf is a point of interest because it is highly configurable as well as usable. Let’s take a look at how to configure the Shelf.

Shelf

The shelf that you see in Figure 1 contains a few pieces:

• Start Menu: Far left. This is another means of accessing the menu.
• Pager: Second from left. This is how to warp to other desktops.
• iBox: Third from left. This is often called the Window list in other desktops. It is where applications are minimized to.
• iBar: Forth from left. Add applications launchers to this tool.
• Gadgets: Last three icons. These are various applets that can be added to the Shelf.

Figure 2

You can configure this piece of the desktop by right clicking anywhere on the Shelf, which will bring up a new menu. From the right click menu you will see a submenu called Shelf. Click on that to reveal yet another submenu. Within this new submenu select Shelf Settings, which will open a new window. The Shelf Settings window will start out in Basic mode. Click the Advanced button to expand the contents of this window to show more options.

Figure 2 shows the advanced configuration for the Shelf. Most of this is fairly straight forward. You will, however, notice the Set Contents button. Click on this to reveal yet another window that will allow you to add and remove items to the Shelf.

iBar

You might assume that, from within the Set Contents button of the Shelf Settings window, you can add application launchers and such. You can’t. What you can add is gadgets to the Shelf. Yes the iBar is where you launch applications from but just because you add an iBar to your Shelf doesn’t mean there are any launchers there.

It’s a bit tricky at first. Eventually you get the hang of it.

Figure 3

In order to add an iBar with your desired launchers you have to go to another settings window. This window is found in the Settings Panel. To get to the Settings Panel you go to the root menu, click the Settings submenu, and then click the Settings Panel entry. When this opens you will see the Apps tab (see Figure 3). Click on the Apps tab where you will see an entry for the iBar. Click on that to reveal a new window which will allow you to add and remove applications to the iBar. Once you’ve added/removed your desired applications click OK and the iBar will have exactly what you want in it.

Themes

Adding Themes to E17 is very easy. Download a theme from one of the many E17 theme sites and save it onto your hard drive. Open up the root menu, click on the Settings submenu, and click on the Theme entry. This will open up a new window where you can import themes saved locally. Or you can click the Online button and conveniently select one of the many themes from the online list.

Final thoughts

I bet if you give E17 a chance you will find yourself going back to it more and more until it is your only desktop. I have switched away many times, but I always wind up going back to Enlightenment.

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With that in mind…what exactly are we doing? For the most part this all is nothing more than “proof of concept stuff”, all of which was brought to fruition in Compiz. But for those who do not want to use Compiz, or are using a window manager that does not work with Compiz, this little “proof of concept” is the perfect trick for getting a bit more eye candy on your desktop.

What exactly is this?

There are two tools that must be used to gain transparency in a window manager: xcompmgr and transset. Both of these will be found in your Ubuntu (or Debian) repositories. Xcompmgr was explained in the article mentioned above. Transset, however, is a small application that does one thing – sets transparency on a single window. The only draw back is that you have to manually set the transparencies of each window.When a window closes, that has a transparency applied, the next time it opens the transparency will be gone.

Of course, before we get to using transset, we have to install it first. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility. Once this is open do a search for transset. When you find the resulting entry, select it, and apply the changes.

Once transset (and xcompmgr) is installed you are ready to go.

Basic usage

Figure 1

Using transset is simple. Have open the window you want to make transparent and open up a terminal window. Issue the command:

transset

from within the terminal window and you see a crosshair (as shown in Figure 1). Move that cross hair to the window you want to make transparent and click within that window. Instantly the window you clicked in will become transparent.

If you take a look at Figure 2 you will see

Figure 2

the difference when transset is applied. You can now see the background behind the Rhythmbox window.

Now you might be thinking this is nothing more than pseudo-transparency where the window manager is just constantly redrawing the background. That is not the case. With transset you are getting true transparency. The difference is that pseduo-transparency basically redraws the root window (what is covered by the wallpaper) behind the window as it moves. If that window moves over another window the image of the secondary window (the one behind the window being moved) is not seen through the transparency.

Figure 3

As you can see, in Figure 3, the secondary window is shown above the root window. What you are seeing is Rhythmbox, above The Gimp, above the root window. Real transparency.

Make it easy

No one wants to have to open a terminal window and issue a command just to make a window transparent. What you can do, instead, is create a menu entry for this. This way, when you want to make a window transparent, all you have to do is click the menu entry and then click the target window.

Figure 4

To make this menu entry in E17 you have to go to the menu and select Settings Panel from the Settings submenu. Once that is open click on the Apps tab and then select New Application from that. Fille out the necessary information (see Figure 4) and save the entry. Here’s the trick though, a simple menu entry won’t work in E17. You actually have to add the new menu entry to the iBar in order to make this work.

Figure 5

To add this to the iBar go back tot he Settings Panel and click iBar Applications. You will see a new window with two panes (see Figure 5). Scroll down until you find your transset entry. Select your transset entry and click Add. Once you have clicked Add click OK and the new iBar button will appear in your Shelf.

Now all you have to do is click your iBar button for transset and then click the window you want to become transparent.

Final thoughts

It’s not going to make you a more efficient worker. It’s not going to resolve all of your IT issues. But it will make your desktop cooler without hogging up resources like Compiz will. And it might also help you understand, even if a tiny fraction, how the desktop is laid out.

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There was once a plugin for Beryl that worked with this. But since Beryl became Compiz, the developer of the screencast plugin found migrating to Compiz too difficult. Work ceased on that plugin. So I tried a bevy  of applications until I managed to get gtk-recordMyDesktop to work.

Installing the app

Installing the app was simple. Since Elive Compiz is a Debian based operating system it was just a matter of issuing the command (as root):

apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

Once the application was installed I found it in the Video menu of the E17 Applications menu.

You can also install gtk-recordmydesktop by doing a search for it in your Add/Remove Software utility.

Running the app

Main Window

When you open up gtk-recordmydesktop the main window will open. As you can see (in the image to the left) the window immediately begins grabbing your root desktop window.

What you do from here is select the window you want to grab. When you click the “Select Window” button your cursor will turn into a fat “+” symbol when your cursor hovers over the window displaying the screen. What you want to do is click and drag that cursor over the section of the desktop you want to record. If you want to record the entire desktop you select the entire desktop.

Once you’ve done that you click “Record” and the gtk-recordmydesktop window will minimize. In the case of Elive Compiz it will minimize to a small red dot at the bottom left of your screen. This small red dot is what you click when you are finished recording.

Problems

When I created a video of Elive Compiz, with the default settings, the playback was so bad it

Advanced Settings

wasn’t viewable. The defaults settings could grab all of the 3D effects. In order to get this to work I had to configure two options. To get to this options click the Advanced button from the main window. A new window will open (as shown in the image to the right) where you configure all advanced settings. Click on the Performance tab. There are two settings to change. The first setting is the Frames Per Second. The highest you can set this is 50, so max that baby out.

The next setting is the “Full shots at every frame”. You need to enable this in order to capture any 3D effects. It should be auto-enabled when any compositing is use. In my case this did not happen.

Once you have made these changes, click the Advanced button again to get rid of the settings window. Now when you record your Compiz-enabled desktop you should have decent output.

Output

The output of gtk-recordmydesktop is Ogg Vorbis Video (ogv). If you need to convert that format you can use a command-line tool like ffmpeg to covert to mpg like so:

ffmpeg -i input_filename.ogv ouput_filename.mpg

The quality of the ogv format is going to be much better than the mpg format when converted. There are ffmpeg settings you can tweak to try to raise the quality of your output. Play around with that to see how you can eek out the best quality. To get a peek at what both gtk-recordmydesktop and Elive Compiz can do, check out the sample video link I created below.

elive_compiz_small1

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There are many reasons why you should give this distribution a try. One of the reasons is that even when using the Live CD you can get the full benefit of what this distribution is all about. Even using a three year old machine I didn’t feel like I was using a Live CD. It’s that well put together.

How Did They Do It?

It’s been known for a while that Compiz and Enlightenment wouldn’t work together. The developers have been asked over and over to roll Compiz support into Enlightenment. It wasn’t until Elive developer Thanatermesis put in the necessary time to develop a special version of Ecomorph which consists of a special version of Compiz and a special version of E17 that are able to work together. As of now the developers claim this is nothing more than a “hack” and in pre-alpha stages. What I have seen, however, is pretty stable. That doesn’t mean you should be putting this version of Elive on your production machines. This version should be going on a machine that can be wiped clean whenever you choose. But you should definitely put it on something…it’s that cool.

What It Contains

Upon first glance of this distribution you would think you using E17 with maybe a few extra applets on the desktop. That is not the case. The minute you hit Ctrl-Alt with a left mouse click you will see that famous 3D cube brought to the desktop care of Compiz. A little more digging and you will find some rather interesting (and very alpha released) video applications as well as some spiffy configuration tools.

There was one effect with this desktop that really caught me by surprise. When you close a window the window folds into a paper airplane and flys away. Useful? Not really. Impressive? Very.

Graphic Requirements

Obviously this is one of the first questions you will have to ask. On the site they highly recommend an NVidia card. I ran the LiveCD on an NVidia 6800 GT and it was smooth as silk.

Have a Look

There is a great video on Youtube that shows off the Elive Compize release. Take a look here. In this video you will notice Elive Compiz running on an Eee PC. You can use the fantastic UNetBootin tool to install Elive Compiz onto a USB drive and get it working on an Eee PC.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a Debian-based distribution that takes the PC desktop to heights you have never experienced, Elive Compize is the Live CD for you. Just remember, while this is in such early stages, to not run this on a production machine.

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The first thing you need to do is make sure you have installed a theme that supports verticle titlebars in a way that makes them actually usable. Most themes will offer some form of verticle titlebars but some are not as well done. One of the best themes for this configuration is the Chromium Noise theme. Download this them for installation. If you’re not sure how to install the theme it is simple. As the root user move the theme .gz file to /usr/share/e16/themes. Before you unpack the them create a new sub directory for Chromium. Do this because many theme creators do not (for some strange reason) place the contents of their theme within a directory, so that when you unpack the directory all of the files just spill all over your current working directory. With that in mind issue the command mkdir /usr/share/e16/themes/CHROME. Now move the Chromium tar file into the newly created directory with the command mv chromiumnoise-0.60.tar.gz /usr/share/e16/themes/CHROME/.  After you change to the CHROME directory (cd /usr/share/e16/themes/CHROME) issue the command tar xvzf chromiumnoise-0.60.tar.gz to unpack the file.

Go to your desktop and do a middle mouse click to bring up the menu that includes the Theme directory. You should now see an entry for CHROME. Select that to switch to the Chromium Noise theme.

Chromium Noise Theme

By default Chromium Noise is a pretty slick theme. But let’s make it slicker. There are three small squares in the top left corner of each window. If you right mouse click the left or middle square a new menu will appear with a Set Border Style Entry.

Set Border Style

There are three entries for verticle titlebards: Side-1, Side-2, and Side_Shade_Right. Select Side-1 and your border will instantly change.

Side-1

Now you have an aterm window with a cool verticle titlebar.

You can make this change stick if you like. If you don’t want to have to go through this process every time for certain windows (the change only applies to the application configured – not all windows) you have to have Enlightenment remember the configuration. Go back to the right mouse click menu on the middle square of the window (upper left). In that menu you will see an entry for “Remember”. Select that to open the Remember Application Attributes window.

Remember Attributes

Select Border style from the list and click OK. Now every time you open up that particular application the titlebar will be verticle.

Final Thoughts

Why do this? Because you can. Adding verticle titlebars is a simple means of differentiating between windows for various reason. And while you’re at setting your titlebars to verticle, check out some of the other cool features in the Window Attributes settings.

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The simplest method to get a composit manager installed is to install Compiz. Compiz is an outstanding window manager all on its own that is, by default, ready for compositing. With Compiz installed you will have a composit manager that E16 can deal with already installed.

In Ubuntu if you issue the command sudo synaptic you will open up the Add/Remove Software application. From here do a search for compiz. When the results come up select compiz and allow the system to install all necessary dependencies. Finally click Apply to install all of the packages.

Once Compiz is installed you should be able to set compositing up in Enlightenment. With a right mouse click the Settings menu will appear. Select “Composite Settings” to open up the configuration window.

Composite Settings

Once the settings window opens you will see a few configuration options to choose from.

Composite Settings Window

The first option to take care of is Enable Composite. Make sure that is checked. The rest of the options are all up to user taste.  I prefer to have  Fading Speed set to slowest (slider to the far left), Shadows Blurred, Default Unfocused Window Opacity near 1/2, and Default Pop-Up Window Opacity around 3/4 on. Once you have selected these options click Apply to set them.

The final effect can be pretty amazing for just a “simple window manager”.

The full effect

Final Thoughts

What I love about Enlightenment is that it is a lightweight desktop that manages to pull off enough tricks to impress yet doesn’t drag your machine to a halt. With a little hackery, Enlightenment can make Windows Aero look like a sad attempt at a modern desktop.

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Abiword is considered part of the GNOME Office Suite, but does not require GNOME to be running to use.  Abiword is also available for Microsoft Windows. Abiword is available for most distributions and can be installed by both traditional routes. The first, and easiest method, is to open up your Add/Remove Software application (such as Ubuntus’ Synaptic), do a search for Abiword. What should appear is a list of possible matches. The following are the packages you need to install.

• abiword
• abiword-help
• abiword-plugin-mathview
• abiword-plugin-grammer
• abiword-common
• libgtkmathviewOc2a

Select those and click Apply to begin the installation.

Once installed you will find the Abiword entry in your desktops’ Office sub-menu. If you are using a desktop such as Enlightenment you may have to click Ctrl-Left Mouse Button (to make the Maintenance menu entry appear) and click Regenerate Menus to make Abiword appear. Once the menus have regenerated Abiword should be found in the Other menu in the Office sub-menu entry.

When Abiword opens what you will find is an efficient, well thought-out word processor that has everything you need to create solid, professional documents. You will also find some nice additions that make your writing even easier. One such tool is the Wikipedia entry tool. With a word highlighted you click the Wiki Encyclopedia entry and it will open the Opera browser on the Wiki entry of the highlighted word. There is also a Collaborate tool that allows users to collaborate on documents through Jabber. Of course Cisco purchased Jabber so who knows if collaboration with Abiword is going to be possible. The good news is you can do collaboration with a direct TCP connection (we’ll go into this in my next article.)

Final Thoughts

I have used Abiword and in the past have thought it had a ways to go before it was production ready.  Well, that time has come. Abiword is certainly worthy of being your word processor of choice.

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But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. Before we get to the actual configuration let’s first take a look at Enlightenment (version E16 which is the stable version).

Enlightenment Screenshot

As you can see Enlightenment has a lot of neat tricks up its sleeve. On the above screenshot you can see The Gimp open, a Firefox browser shaded to only show its title bar, the aterm terminal will full transparency running the top application, the iconbox (bottom right) which is where applications are minimized, and the pager (bottom left).

Now let’s install E16. It shouldn’t be necessary to jump through any hoops. On most modern Linux operating systems you can just open up the Add/Remove Software application (on Ubuntu this is Synaptic, on Fedora 10 running GNOME it is gpk-application) and do a search for “enlightenment”. The package manager should pick up all dependencies.

If you’d prefer to use the command line you can run one of these (either as root or using sudo):

• apt-get install enlightenment
• yum install enlightenment
• urpmi enlightenment

If, by chance, your distribution doesn’t find “enlightenment”, you can try “e16″ instead.

That should do it. Now, if you use a graphical login screen you’ll want to choose the E16 entry before you log in. This should be under “Sessions”. If you use text-based log in you will want to create an .xinitrc file with the following contents:

exec e16

If that doesn’t work us:

exec enlightenment

Most likely the former will work.

Configuration

If you do a left mouse click you will see the configuration window.

E16 Configuration Menu

The one thing you can not configure via the configuration menu is the menu itself. To configure the menu you have to actually edit the file ~/.e16/menus/user_apps.menu. It is very easy to edit this menu. Open this menu up in your favorite text editor and you will see entries that resemble:

“aterm” NULL exec “aterm -tr -fg blue -bg green +sb”
“XTerm” NULL exec “xterm”
“rxvt” NULL exec “rxvt”
“Basket” NULL exec “basket”
“Mozilla” NULL exec “mozilla”
“K3B” NULL exec “k3b”
“Firefox” NULL exec “firefox”
“Flock” NULL exec “/home/jlwallen/flock/flock-browser”
“Thunderbird” NULL exec “thunderbird”
“gnucash” NULL exec “gnucash”
“Amarok” NULL exec “amarok”
“Banshee” NULL exec “banshee”
“The GIMP” NULL exec “gimp”

A menu entry is set up like so:

Comment Icon exec “command”

The comment is the text that appears in the menu. Icon is the actual path to an icon image to use (NULL means none), The exec command is necessary to tell the system that what follows is an executable command. The command section is the actual command.

Once you edit that file, save it, and the changes are made in real time.

Final Thoughts

And that’s pretty much it to configuring Enlightenment E16. If you have a Linux box you should certainly give Enlightenment a try. It might wind up being your “go-to” desktop.

UPDATE: Here’s a new screenshot, full size, for your enjoyment.

New Screenshot

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With that in mind let us begin by illustrating the differences between a desktop environment and a window manager. We’ll begin by showing how the Linux graphical desktop is layered.

As you can see, in the image below, there are basically three layers that can be included in the Linux desktop:

• X Windows – This is the foundation that allows for graphic elements to be drawn on the display. X Windows builds the primitive framework that allows moving of windows, interactions with keyboard and mouse, and draws windows. This is required for any graphical desktop.
• Window Manager: The Window Manager is the piece of the puzzle that controls the placement and appearance of windows. Window Managers include: Enlightenment, Afterstep, FVWM, Fluxbox, IceWM, etc. Requires X Windows but not a desktop environment.
• Desktop Environment: This is where it begins to get a little fuzzy for some. A Desktop Environment includes a Window Manager but builds upon it. The Desktop Environment typically is a far more fully integrated system than a Window Manager. Requires both X Windows and a Window Manager.

A Desktop Environment generally includes a suite of applications that are tightly integrated so that all applications are aware of one another. A Desktop Manager will also include some form of panel that includes a system tray where small widgets can be placed for quick action or information.

Linux Desktop Layering

Much of the confusion starts to peek out when you examine such Window Managers as E17 (Enlightenment 17).

The most recent iteratio of Enlightenment includes many of the elements usually found only Desktop Environments even though Enlightenment is still considered a Window Manager. To this point I generally refer to such desktops as Desktop Managers.

There are two main Desktop Environments: GNOME and KDE. If you are curious as to which is right for you, here is some advice. The latest default GNOME will make users of OS X feel right at home, KDE 3.x will make Windows XP users feel at home, and KDE 4.x will make Windows Vista users feel at home.

As to which Window Manager is best suited for which user? Since there are so many Window Managers I will highlight my favorites.

• Enlightenment: You want plenty of eye candy but not something as resource-intensive as KDE or GNOME.
• Fluxbox: You want minimal and fast.
• Afterstep: You want something old-school to give you hours of tinkering fun.
• Xfce: You want a Windows-like interface without the bloatware of GNOME or KDE.
• Compiz-Fusion: This is a full-blown 3 dimensional window manager rife with plugs that do just about everything. If you want something to seriously impress your friends, this is where you want to look.

One of the most wonderful things about the Linux desktop is that it is only limited to your imagination. You can make the Linux desktop look and feel exactly how you want it. You can go from complete minimalism to the full-blown 3D goodness of Compiz-Fusion. I will give you one warning: Playing with the Linux desktop might be as much of a time-suck as World of Warcraft.

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