Chapter Summary

The X Window System GUI is portable and flexible and makes it easy to write applications that work on many different types of systems without having to know low-level details about the individual systems. This GUI can operate in a networked environment, allowing a user to run a program on a remote system and send the results to a local display. The client/server concept is integral to the operation of the X Window System, in which the X server is responsible for fulfilling requests made of X Window System applications or clients. Hundreds of clients are available that can run under X, and programmers can also write their own clients, using tools such as the Qt and KDE libraries to write KDE programs and the GTK+ and GTK+2 GNOME libraries to write GNOME programs.

The window managers, and virtually all X applications, are designed to help users tailor their work environments in simple or complex ways. You can designate applications that start automatically, set such attributes as colors and fonts, and even alter the way keyboard strokes and mouse clicks are interpreted.

Built on top of the X Window System, GNOME is a desktop manager that you can use as is or customize to better suit your needs. It is a graphical user interface to system services (commands), the filesystem, applications, and more. Although not part of it, the Metacity window manager works closely with GNOME and is the default window manager for GNOME under Red Hat Linux. The window manager controls all aspects of the windows: placement, decoration, grouping, minimizing and maximizing, sizing, moving, and so on.

GNOME also provides many graphical utilities that you can use to customize and work with the desktop. It supports MIME types so that when you double-click an icon, it generally knows which tool to use to display the data represented by the icon. In sum, GNOME is a powerful desktop manager that can make your job easier and more fun.

The KDE desktop environment offers an extensive array of tools, including multiple help systems; a flexible file manager and browser; an office package that includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, charting, and email applications; numerous panels and menus that you can configure in many ways; and enough options to please the most critical user.

Konqueror, the KDE file manager and browser, has very little functionality of its own. Instead, it depends on other programs to do its work. Konqueror opens these programs within its own window, giving the impression that it is very capablea good example of seamless program integration. When you ask Konqueror to open a file (which can be a local or remote text, music, picture, or HTML file), it figures out what kind of file it is (the file's MIME type) so it knows which program to use to open or display the file.

Panels and menus, which are closely related, enable you to select an object (which can be just about anything on the system) from a list. On a panel, you generally click an icon from a box of icons (the panel); on a menu, you typically click text in a list.

The KDE environment provides the casual user, the office worker, the power user, and the programmer/system designer a space to work in and a set of tools to work with. KDE also provides off-the-shelf productivity and almost limitless ways to customize its look, feel, and response.