Unix/Linux Desktop Gallery

Linux and Unix can be made to look pretty much however you want. The two most common Linux desktop environments are KDE and Gnome. As at the time of writing KDE has just released version 3.0 while Gnome has just released version 2.0 beta 4.

At this point, KDE is a more polished desktop. The applications work very well together, and the overall system is very cohesive and intuitive. Having said this, I guess if I had to pick one I'd use Gnome. While I don't think it's really any better, I prefer a lot of Gnome/Gtk-based apps. I use XMMS, Evolution and Galeon regardless of the DE. Gimp, AbiWord and Gnumeric are also first-rate apps that I personally find more usable than the KDE equivalents. Whatever. We have a choice, and the options are great.

Below are a few screenshots of various desktops and apps running under Linux. The pictures are thumbnails of the actual desktop. The larger apps range in size from 1024x768 to 1600x1200, as a result they are quite large.

Again, these are just an example of what can be done. KDE can be made to look very similar to OS X or WinXP, most DEs can look pretty much however you like. At present I am playing with Sawfish and ROX with a BeOS look. I really liked BeOS. While a theme is no substitute, it's nice to remember.

For older screenshots check this out.

A typical shot of Xandros 2.0 (running on my machine at work.)

Fedora Core 1.0 running KDE 3.2, featuring Kontact, KOffice and Konqueror. FWIW, this is running on kernel 2.6.1.

This shot is setup to look as much like BeOS as I could manage. In it I am running AbiWord, Gnumeric and a few other apps as well.

This picture shows Gnome 1.4 running a slew of apps, including an MP3 player, web browser, mail client ROX filer (instead of the pretty but glacial Nautilus) and the Gimp. Of course there were no skips in the music. Oh, and I'm using Gdkxft to make all of the fonts anti-aliased. It's a touch slower, but makes a huge difference on the laptop.

This is a fairly typical Gnome 1.4 desktop using Nautilus for desktop and file management. Nautilus is nice but is _very_ slow. The word is that 1.1 is much faster. Maybe I'll try it again with Gnome 2.0. ROX just works and is so fast, though. I'm also running Gimp and a MGT Terminal. Nothing too fancy.

This shot uses the excellent XFCE desktop environment. Unlike KDE and\Gnome, XFce stresses a minimalist approach to things. It is very fast, quite capable, and has an excellent user manual. Sane keybindings and a very supportive development and user team are real boons too. Over the past few years I've tried just about every desktop for Linux. I keep coming back to XFce. Sure it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the "big two" but it's fast. I like XFce because it doesn't get in the way.

Here's Gnome 1.4 using the ROX filer again. I'm showing off some of ROX's more advanced features here. You really ought to try it. Using it really shows you how much overhead Nautilus, Konqueror and even Gmc have.

This shot is showing off two VMWare sessions and a Win4Lin session. I'm running Red Hat 7.1 and Win2K in the two VMWare sessions, and Win98 in the Win4Lin session.

I bought Codeweaver's CrossOver Office program. It lets you run Office 97 and 2000, as well as IE5 and several other programs under Linux. It's a polished version of Wine. I've been happily using StarOffice for years now, but I need MSOffice for some of my business courses. I've tried VMWare, Win4Lin and plain Wine. Crossover Office is by far the nicest.

Here I am installing IE 5 under KDE 3.0. The install finished correctly. IE5 has some display issues under Wine, but it's good enough to verify sites for my other web development. Galeon is such a great browser, if you're using Linux I honestly don't know why you'd use anything else. (Okay, Dillo is cool too.)

Another nice shot of XFce. I'm also running Galeon, Evolution and a DVD player. I'm watching "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" here. DVD playback works well under Linux, though it's a little illegal. You have to crack the copy protection in order to view it. There are no legal players available. Me, I don't have a problem with this. I own the DVD, I own the DVD-ROM, I have a license for two Windows DVD players, I don't pirate them, and I have no alternative

Finally, here's a quick shot of Galeon in full-screen mode. This is very handy when you have many tabs open. Galeon is simply the best web browser I've used. It uses Mozilla's Gecko engine, but has a very intuitive and feature-laden interface. The UI is also much faster than Mozilla, as Because it uses native widgets.

Here's my last shor for now. Again, this is set up to mimic BeOS's look. This shot shows me running MS Word editing my Honours proposal. Rox is again shown with the "Huge" icon setting. You can see some of the thumbnails it generates.

	A typical shot of Xandros 2.0 (running on my machine at work.)
	Fedora Core 1.0 running KDE 3.2, featuring Kontact, KOffice and Konqueror. FWIW, this is running on kernel 2.6.1.
	This shot is setup to look as much like BeOS as I could manage. In it I am running AbiWord, Gnumeric and a few other apps as well.
	This picture shows Gnome 1.4 running a slew of apps, including an MP3 player, web browser, mail client ROX filer (instead of the pretty but glacial Nautilus) and the Gimp. Of course there were no skips in the music. Oh, and I'm using Gdkxft to make all of the fonts anti-aliased. It's a touch slower, but makes a huge difference on the laptop.
	This is a fairly typical Gnome 1.4 desktop using Nautilus for desktop and file management. Nautilus is nice but is _very_ slow. The word is that 1.1 is much faster. Maybe I'll try it again with Gnome 2.0. ROX just works and is so fast, though. I'm also running Gimp and a MGT Terminal. Nothing too fancy.
	This shot uses the excellent XFCE desktop environment. Unlike KDE and\Gnome, XFce stresses a minimalist approach to things. It is very fast, quite capable, and has an excellent user manual. Sane keybindings and a very supportive development and user team are real boons too. Over the past few years I've tried just about every desktop for Linux. I keep coming back to XFce. Sure it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the "big two" but it's fast. I like XFce because it doesn't get in the way.
	Here's Gnome 1.4 using the ROX filer again. I'm showing off some of ROX's more advanced features here. You really ought to try it. Using it really shows you how much overhead Nautilus, Konqueror and even Gmc have.
	This shot is showing off two VMWare sessions and a Win4Lin session. I'm running Red Hat 7.1 and Win2K in the two VMWare sessions, and Win98 in the Win4Lin session.
	I bought Codeweaver's CrossOver Office program. It lets you run Office 97 and 2000, as well as IE5 and several other programs under Linux. It's a polished version of Wine. I've been happily using StarOffice for years now, but I need MSOffice for some of my business courses. I've tried VMWare, Win4Lin and plain Wine. Crossover Office is by far the nicest.
	Here I am installing IE 5 under KDE 3.0. The install finished correctly. IE5 has some display issues under Wine, but it's good enough to verify sites for my other web development. Galeon is such a great browser, if you're using Linux I honestly don't know why you'd use anything else. (Okay, Dillo is cool too.)
	Another nice shot of XFce. I'm also running Galeon, Evolution and a DVD player. I'm watching "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" here. DVD playback works well under Linux, though it's a little illegal. You have to crack the copy protection in order to view it. There are no legal players available. Me, I don't have a problem with this. I own the DVD, I own the DVD-ROM, I have a license for two Windows DVD players, I don't pirate them, and I have no alternative
	Finally, here's a quick shot of Galeon in full-screen mode. This is very handy when you have many tabs open. Galeon is simply the best web browser I've used. It uses Mozilla's Gecko engine, but has a very intuitive and feature-laden interface. The UI is also much faster than Mozilla, as Because it uses native widgets.
	Here's my last shor for now. Again, this is set up to mimic BeOS's look. This shot shows me running MS Word editing my Honours proposal. Rox is again shown with the "Huge" icon setting. You can see some of the thumbnails it generates.