Seldomly Discussed Desktop Environments

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DevynCJohnson

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Many Linux users are familiar with some of the most common desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, MATE, Unity, etc.. However, there are some desktop environments that appear to not be as well known. It can be helpful to know a little about these desktop environments. Also, some Linux users may learn that they like one of these environments better than their current favorite.

NOTE: The images in this article are from third-party sources. Please respect the rights of the owners.

Sugar
Sugar is a GTK-based desktop environment that was designed as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. Sugar is suppose to be a easy to use environment (especially for young children). While most environments are programmed in C/C++, Vala, or some other low-level language, this one is written in Python. Despite the fact that this is a high-level language, the desktop environment still operates well. Sugar works well on touchscreens or systems with a traditional mouse. Sugar does not use the typical terms "programs", "folders", etc. Rather, programs are called "activities". The "desktop" is called "home view". The official website has a glossary for the various terms that are specific to Sugar (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Glossary). At http://activities.sugarlabs.org, users can download various activities (programs/applications).

Support for Android is being developed as seen at http://developer.sugarlabs.org/android.md.html.
https://www.sugarlabs.org/
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/
http://developer.sugarlabs.org/

Hawaii
Hawaii is a desktop environment that uses Wayland (rather than X11) and Qt-Quick. Hawaii uses Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) as the login screen.


maui-0.5.1-appchooser.png


https://github.com/hawaii-desktop/
http://www.maui-project.org/
http://www.maui-project.org/screenshots/

LXQt
LXDE is based on GTK, but LXQt is Qt-based. LXQt was merged with Razor-Qt and is still an excellent Qt-alternative to LXDE.

Screenshot_of_LXQt_0.7.png


http://lxqt.org/

MoonLightDE
MoonLightDE (MoonLight Desktop Environment) is a fork of LXQt that uses Qt5 and Simple Desktop Display Manager (a login screen). MoonLightDE is compatible with both Wayland and X11. This desktop environment is great for lightweight Linux systems that use Wayland.
http://www.nongnu.org/moonlightde/
https://github.com/moonlightde/moonlightde/wiki
https://www.facebook.com/moonlightDE


OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment)
Linux systems that run on PDAs may use OPIE. OPIE is a fork of Trolltech's Qtopia. This desktop environment commonly uses various KDE applications such as Konqueror (a web browser).


Opie_1_2_launcher.png


http://opie.sourceforge.net/

GPE
GPE (GPE Palmtop Environment) is an alternative to OPIE that uses GTK and X11. GPE also works on Palmtops.

land_15822.png


http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/
http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/gallery/gallery/

Pantheon
The Linux distro Elementary OS is a Ubuntu-based distro that has its own desktop environment called Pantheon. Pantheon uses the Gala window manager which uses the libmutter library. "libmutter" is a library from the Mutter window manager. Pantheon uses GTK.
http://elementaryos.org/

Maynard
Maynard is a graphical shell plugin for Weston. Weston is a Wayland compositor. Maynard is still a work-in-progress.

Étoilé
Étoilé is a desktop environment that is based on GNU-step. Frugalware (Slackware-based) uses Étoilé by default although Étoilé also works on BSD systems (such as MidnightBSD). Étoilé resembles the old Mac OS desktop.

etoile-0.4-about-vs-melodie.png


http://etoileos.com/

Budgie Desktop
Here is a desktop environment I have never heard about until Shiv Manas Dass (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ShivManasDass/posts) told me about it.

Budgie_Desktop_image5.jpg


https://evolve-os.com/budgie/
https://launchpad.net/~evolve-os/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
 

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LXQt seems to be a replacement for LXDE in the future since Hong Jen Yee "dissatisfied with GTK+3" (how it's written on Wikipedia).
 
There is one more, I do like it even I am not really about C++ and Qt, Trinity (TDE). It's a fork of KDE 3.5 like MATE is a GNOME 2 fork.
tde1.png
tde4.png

Repositories with TDE are available for main distributions, so installation will be easy. More info on their site trinitydesktop.org
 
I added a reference to the Budgie Desktop (thanks to Shiv Manas Dass).
 
Although not a desktop environment, I like to use i3, a tiling window manager.
I think DevynCJohnson should write an article on the difference between window managers and desktop environments. That would be cool ;).
 
Although not a desktop environment, I like to use i3, a tiling window manager.
I think DevynCJohnson should write an article on the difference between window managers and desktop environments. That would be cool ;).

Thanks for the idea. I will see what I can do.
 

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