Comparison of X Window System desktop environments

Comparison of X Window System desktop environments

A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.

This article applies to operating systems which are capable of running the X Window System, mostly Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X.[1] Microsoft Windows is incapable of natively running X applications; however, third-party X servers like Cygwin/X or Xming are available.[2][3]

Contents

Technical elements of a desktop environment

A desktop environment (DE) can be broken up into several components that function independently and interact with one another to provide the look and feel and functionality of the desktop environment. A fundamental part of a DE is the window manager or WM. A window manager creates a certain way for application windows to present themselves to the user. It manages the various application windows, keeping track of which ones are open and providing features to switch between them. Another important element of a DE is the file manager. This application manages files/ folders and presents them in a way that the user finds convenient. It provides file operations like viewing, copying or moving, changing permissions and deleting. DEs usually provide utilities to set wallpapers and screensavers, display icons on the desktop, and perform some administrative tasks. They may optionally include word processors, CD/DVD writing applications, web browsers and e-mail clients.

Some exceptions must be noted here. 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 libraries Qt and GTK+ respectively.[4] This usually means that virtually every component of the desktop environment including the file manager explicitly depends on that library for its functioning.

KDE file manager Dolphin running under GNOME

Notably, nothing prevents the user from installing any number of software libraries of his/her choice. In practice, software written on major libraries can be run under any desktop environment. Running a package designed for one desktop (which essentially means that it's written using the same libraries as the desktop itself is) within a different desktop can be visually displeasing, as well as incurring the RAM penalty of loading libraries that wouldn't otherwise be required.

Some of the differences which can influence the choice of desktop environment are:

  • Look and feel of the desktop environment. The user will be more comfortable with a certain look and feel that he/she may or may not already be familiar with.
  • Flexibility and configurability of the desktop environment. A sophisticated user might want a highly configurable desktop environment to make the desktop environment work the way he/she wants. A beginning user might just want an easy-to-use environment to which he/she will adjust.
  • Personal preferences for choice of software, which has two aspects:
    • Each desktop environment comes packaged with various default software and various "ways things are done" under that desktop. A casual user might like a highly integrated graphical interface to change various settings while a more experienced user might prefer to use individual configuration utilities or even CLI tools.
    • Desktops are also often closely tied into various major functional components of the desktop manager (example: file manager, browser, word processor); whilst "mix and match" is possible, it is generally pleasing to make choices which result in a consistent look and feel of programs under the chosen desktop environment. Making choices based on what software integrates with a chosen desktop environment necessarily limits the weight that can be given to other application features.

Desktop comparison information

Outer view of different classes of desktop environments

For convenience, the desktop environments have been grouped into five classes only for the purpose of representation in this table. The classes are listed approximately according to the size of each environment. Note that many desktop environments are not in the table, but nearly all desktop environments should fall into one of the five categories. The table also includes X window managers which are not desktop environments, but often mistaken for same.

Full environments Shell (semi-environment) Window manager only
KDE Software Compilation GNOME Xfce, LXDE and ROX Desktop Étoilé EDE Enlightenment awesome Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox and IceWM Ratpoison, wmii, dwm, xmonad, WindowLab, and Ion
Main objective[5] An attractive desktop environment using a graphical design that can be used by everyone. Lightweight, well designed, clearly presented for productivity. Speed and resource conservation. Lightweight, modular, portable. Advanced graphical libraries, tools and environments Framework window manager (extensively customizable). Very fast and low resource-hungry. Fast, lightweight. Nearly zero library dependencies. No additional software packaged. Ultra low memory consumption Super-minimalistic. No fancy graphics. Scant, if any, window decoration. Belief in concise, elegant code
Programming language[6] Mainly C++, as Qt is written in C++ Mainly C, as GTK+ is written in C Objective-C C++ C C, Lua C++, Openbox uses C C, Lua, Haskell, Lisp, Common Lisp
Additional library dependencies[7] KDELibs GNOME libxfce* for Xfce. EFL
Toolkit used[5] Qt GTK+ GNUstep FLTK (previously eFLTK) ETK (provided by EFL) Internal
Size (base system, X installed)[8] ~210 MB ~180 MB Xfce: ~15 MB, ROX: ~780 KB EDE: ~3 MB DR16: ~3 MB, DR17: ~15MB ~700 KB with 20,000 lines of code Blackbox: ~350 KB, Fluxbox: ~800 KB The wmii package is close to 10,000 lines of code and 90 kB in size. Dwm is less than 2000 lines of code and Xmonad uses fewer than 1200 lines of code.

Default programs packaged

This table shows basic information on the programs distributed with some desktop environments for the X Window System:

KDE Software Compilation GNOME Xfce LXDE ROX Desktop Étoilé EDE Enlightenment
X window manager KWin Mutter Xfwm4 Openbox OroboROX Azalea edewm Enlightenment
X display manager KDM GDM LXDM elma Entrance
File manager Dolphin (Konqueror before SC 4) Nautilus Thunar PCManFM ROX Filer Efiler EFM, Entropy
Widget toolkit Qt GTK+ GNUstep FLTK (previously eFLTK) ETK
Terminal emulator Konsole GNOME Terminal Terminal LXTerminal ROXTerm aterm Enterminus
Text editor KWrite (Kate before SC 4) gedit Mousepad, Leafpad Leafpad Edit TextEdit Eyesight
Video player Dragon Player (Kaffeine before SC 4) Totem Parole lxine mplayer-rox Enna (media center), Eclair
Audio player JuK, Amarok Banshee, Rhythmbox LXMusic MusicBox Melodie Emphasis
CD burners K3b Brasero Xfburn RoxISO
CD ripper K3b, KAudioCreator Sound Juicer Ripper Extrackt
Image viewer Gwenview Eye of GNOME Ristretto GPicView Picky Eimage Ephoto
Office suite Calligra Suite, KOffice GnomeOffice
Web browser Rekonq (Konqueror before SC 4) Epiphany Midori Eve
E-mail client Kmail Evolution GNUMail
Personal information manager Kontact Contacts
Instant messenger Kopete Empathy
Archive manager Ark File Roller Xarchiver, Squeeze Xarchiver Archive
PDF viewer Okular (KPDF before SC 4) Evince Vindaloo Epdf
IDE KDevelop Anjuta Gorm, ProjectCenter
Widget engine built-in – Plasma (SuperKaramba before SC 4) gDesklets Elementary
Licenses used GPL, LGPL, BSD, others GPL, LGPL GPL, LGPL, BSD GPL, LGPL GPL GPL, BSD GPL, LGPL BSD

Comparison of ease of use and stability

GNOME's graphical file manager Nautilus is intended to be very easy to use and has many features, which make it easy for new Linux users to pick up without reading any documentation.[9] KDE's Konqueror is also intended to be very easy for novices to use, both as a file manager and as a web browser.[10] However, in both cases this ease of use comes at a price, since both Nautilus and Konqueror are noticeably slower than lighter weight file managers on older hardware. Some users also object to dual functionality (both local file browser and remote client) in browsers such as Konqueror, fearing potential security vulnerabilities, and preferring a more minimalist approach. Both GNOME and KDE come with many graphical configuration tools, reducing the need to manually edit configuration files for new users. They have extensive bundled software such as graphical menu editors, text editors, audio players, and software for doing administrative work. All applications installed in most distributions are automatically added to the GNOME and KDE menus. No major configuration changes are necessary to begin working. However, by using graphical tools, the extent to which the desktops can be configured is determined by the power provided by those tools.

Blackbox, Fluxbox, Openbox, Ratpoison, Ion and wmii require users to edit configuration files by hand to configure virtually every aspect of the desktop environment and are hence highly configurable. A new user, however, may feel uncomfortable without any graphical tools. These window managers also do not provide any additional software like file managers, text editors or web browsers, leaving it up to their users to decide upon the software they prefer.[11]

Compatibility and interoperability issues

Although there are some major issues with using some applications made for KDE on GNOME and vice versa[further explanation needed], they are likely to be ironed out in the future. Some desktop environments and window managers claim that they support applications made for other desktop environments explicitly. For example, Fluxbox states KDE support in its feature list.[12] Using software made specifically for the desktop environment in use or window manager agnostic software is a way to avoid these issues. For software developers, the Portland Project has released a set of common interfaces that allows applications to integrate across many desktop environments.[13]

System resources utilization

Tests with the default installation of Ubuntu show that LXDE 0.5's memory utilization is lower than that of Xfce 4.6, which in turn is lower than that of GNOME 2.29, with KDE 4.4 using the most RAM compared to the aforementioned desktops.[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ XFree86 Official Website line 5
  2. ^ Cygwin/X website
  3. ^ Xming project homepage on SourceForge
  4. ^ Official websites of GNOME and KDE
  5. ^ a b Excerpts from official websites
  6. ^ Analysis of source code tells the programming language used
  7. ^ Dependency list for metapackages
  8. ^ Reported apt-get installation size on a very basic Debian system with X
  9. ^ Official Nautilus screenshots page
  10. ^ Official Konqueror features page
  11. ^ Their official websites: Blackbox, Fluxbox, Ion, Ratpoison, and wmii
  12. ^ Fluxbox official website line 15
  13. ^ Linux leaps toward KDE/GNOME compatibility
  14. ^ Larabel, Michael. "Phoronix: Power & Memory Usage Of GNOME, KDE, LXDE & Xfce". Phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_desktop_vitals&num=1. Retrieved 30 July 2011. 

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