Desktop Environment & User Interface

In the past, Linux was intimidating to the novice user as it was quite young comparatively, and did not have the kind of polished desktop applications and config tools.

Some distros do not even have GUI so it led to Linux catering to more advanced users.

Today there are so many distros that cater to many styles and preferences for the users at any level

Desktop Environments

  1. GNOME - simple KISS principle with streamlined and clean applications
    1. based on GTK Toolkit written in C
    2. Terminal known as Gnome
  2. KDE - Large selection of applications and has a Windows-like feel
    1. Qt library written in C++
    2. Terminal known as Konsole or Xterm

TTYs are simulations of a physical text-based terminal and allow for multiple sessions and depending on how commands are run, they can run through multiple sessions.

terminal session may be opened using Ctrl + Alt+ F1 (it will be F2 for the next session and so on)

Terminals can be used for more than just scripting and command access

  1. Beamer is a LaTeX class that can create slide presentations from LaTex Code. It is able to handle writing scientific documents because of its ability to handle complex math symbols.
  2. NPM Package Reveal.js creates presentation using the web. It uses already completed HTML and CSS to generate JavaScript necessary for pretty and interactive presentations
  3. GanttProject or ProjectLibre - Replacement for Microsoft Project

Industry Uses in Linux