What is a Desktop: CDE, & KDE

What is a Desktop: CDE, & KDE

CDE

Several UNIX producers, including Hewlett-packard, IBM, Novell, and sun Microsystems, have worked together to produce CDE, the Common Desktop Environment. This environment is based on earlier UNIX desktops such as HP-VUE. Although CDE provides a very configurable interface, including drag-and-drop, session management, and a powerful panel, it lacks several features that other desktops provide:

• Files and shortcuts cannot be placed directly on the desktops.
• Much of the configuration must be handled through complex configuration files instead of graphical dialog.
• Whereas CDE has been ported to Linux, it is not Open source software, nor is it free.

What is a Desktop: CDE, & KDE

KDE
In 1996, Matthias Ettrich began work on KDE. Built on top of the Qt toolkit from Trolltech, KDE provided a friendly, powerful, and highly configurable environment targeted at the novice user. Billed as "UNIX for the Desktop," KDE represented one of the first major steps toward Linux for the mass market.

What is a Desktop

Tip:- The "k" in KDE doesn't stand for anything. KDE is simply the k Desktop Environment

 KDE provides Many Features, some of which will be covered later in "Common Desktop Features." The most significant, however, is a consistent desktop metaphor, similar to the one first introduced by MacOS. Also like MacOS, KDE applications follow a consistent style guide, which means that all KDE applications tend to work similarly. For example, nearly all KDE applications have a File menu as the first entry on their menu bar and a Help menu as the last entry.

What is a Desktop: CDE, & KDE