For years, Unix was used almost exclusively as the operating system for
servers, with the exception of high-powered professional workstations. Only
the technically inclined were likely to use a Unix-like operating system, and
the user interface reflected this fact. GUIs tended to be fairly
bare-bones, designed to run a few necessarily graphical applications like CAD
programs and image renderers. Most file and system management was conducted at
the command line. Various vendors (Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, etc)
were selling workstation installations with an attempt at cohesive “look
and feel”, but the wide variety of GUI toolkits in use by developers
led inevitably to the dissolution of the desktop's uniformity. A scrollbar
might not look the same in two different applications. Menus might appear in
different places. Programs would have different buttons and checkboxes.
Colors ranged widely, and were generally hard-coded in each toolkit. As long
as the users were primarily technical professionals, none of this mattered
much.
With the advent of free Unix-like operating systems and the growing number and
variety of graphical applications, X has recently gained a wide desktop user
base. Most users, of course, are accustomed to the consistent look and feel
provided by Microsoft's Windows or Apple's MacOS; the lack of such consistency
in X-based applications became a barrier to its wider acceptance. In response,
two open source projects have been undertaken: The K Desktop Environment, or
KDE, and the GNU Network Object Model Environment, known as GNOME. Each has a
wide variety of applications, from taskbars and file managers to games and
office suites, written with the same GUI toolkit and tightly integrated to
provide a uniform, consistent desktop.
The differences in KDE and GNOME are generally fairly subtle. They each look
different from the other, because each uses a different GUI toolkit. KDE is
based on the Qt library from Troll Tech AS, while GNOME uses GTK, a toolkit
originally developed for The GNU Image Manipulation Program (or The GIMP, for
short). As separate projects, KDE and GNOME each have their own designers and
programmers, with different development styles and philosophies. The result
in each case, however, has been fundamentally the same: a consistent, tightly
integrated desktop environment and application collection. The functionality,
usability, and sheer prettiness of both KDE and GNOME rival anything available
on other operating systems.
The best part, though, is that these advanced desktops are free. This means
you can have either or both (yes, at the same time). The choice is yours.
In addition to the GNOME and KDE desktops, Slackware includes a large
collection of window managers. Some are designed to emulate other operating
systems, some for customization, others for speed. There's quite a variety.
Of course you can install as many as you want, play with them all, and decide
which you like the most.
To make desktop selection easy, Slackware also includes a program called
xwmconfig that can be used to select a desktop or window
manager. It is run like so:
You'll be given a list of all the desktops and window managers installed.
Just select the one you want from the list. Each user on your system will
need to run this program, since different users can use different desktops,
and not everyone will want the default one you selected at installation.
Then just start up X, and you're good to go: