2009

Linux desktop
environments
Submitted By
Prasham Trivedi (6044)
As a partial fulfillment of the course of
B.E.I.T.
SHANTILAL SHAH ENGINEERING COLLEGE

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that below mentioned student

Mr. Prasham H Trivedi(Roll No. 6040)

of semester 8th , course B.E.I.T. , have successfully and

satisfactorily completed his Seminar report on

“Linux Desktop Environment”

in subject Seminar report and produced this report of year

2009 and submitted to S.S.E.C., BHAVNAGAR.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: ---------------------------------------------

 STAFF IN CHARGE: HEAD OF DEPARTMENT:

PRINCIPAL:

Table of Contents
Desktop Environments
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………
………3
GNOME 13
KDE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………52

The Battle: Gnome vs. KDE…….

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…89

XFCE: The
Underdog…………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………….90

Conclusion And
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………
……………….93
1. Desktop environment introduction
In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) commonly refers
to a style of graphical user interface (GUI) that is based on the desktop
metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers
today. Desktop environments are the most popular alternative to the older
command-line interface (CLI) which today is generally limited in use to
computer professionals. A desktop environment typically consists
of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets.
Software which provides a desktop environment might also
provide drag and drop functionality and other features which make
the desktop metaphor more complete. On the whole, a desktop environment
is to be an intuitive way for the user to interact with the computer using
concepts which are similar to those used when interacting with the physical
world, such as buttons and windows. -Source WIKIPEDIA

The term desktop environment did not originally refer to software, and
was adopted as a way to describe a particular style of user interface
provided by that software. Desktop environment therefore is first and
foremost describing the style of a user interface, in that it is like a desktop.

However a program, or set of programs which simulate a desktop

environment may sometimes themselves be referred to as a desktop
environment, with a desktop environment being considered either a window
manager, or a suite of programs which includes a window manager. There is
some disagreement on precisely what constitutes a desktop environment,
and how one distinguishes one from a window manager.

While historically, and even logically, this may seem incorrect as a

suite of applications are obviously not required to provide desktop metaphor,
suites such as the The K Desktop Environment have popularized this usage,
and may provide a more complete desktop environment consisting of a
number of supporting programs, configuration tools, and in the case of KDE a
large number of other applications such as office and productivity software,
and games.
A more correct term for application suites like KDE might be something
more along the lines of a desktop manager. However, for the moment, the
term desktop environment in relation to computer science refers both to a
type of user interface, and to a lesser extent a particular class of window
manager.

X Window System
Figure 1 X Window System graphical user interface and applications common to the MIT X
Consortium's distribution running under thetwm window manager: X Terminal, Xbiff, xload
and a graphical manual pagebrowser.

The X Window System (commonly X or X11) is a computer software

system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface(GUI)
for networked computers. It implements the X display protocol and
provides windowing on raster graphics (bitmap) computer displays and
manages keyboard and pointing device control functions. In its standard
distribution, it is a complete, albeit simple, display and human interface
solution, but also delivers a standard toolkit and protocol stack for
building graphical user interfaces on most Unix-like operating systems
andOpenVMS, and has been ported to many other contemporary general
purpose operating systems. All modern GUIs, such as GNOME, KDE, andXfce,
developed for Linux and other UNIX-like systems use the X Window System
as a foundation.
X provides the basic framework, or primitives, for building such GUI
environments: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting
with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface —
individual client programs handle this. As such, the visual styling of X-based
environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically
different interfaces. X is built as an additional application layer on top of
the operating system kernel.
Unlike previous display protocols, X was specifically designed to be
used over network connections rather than on an integral or attached display
device. X features network transparency: the machine where an application
program (the client application) runs can differ from the user's local machine
(the display server).
X originated at MIT in 1984. The current protocol version, X11,
appeared in September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with
the current reference implementation, X.org Server, available as free
software under the MIT Licenseand similar permissive licenses.
Design

In this example, the X server takes input from a keyboard and mouse
and displays to a screen. A web browser and a terminal emulator run on the
user's workstation, and a system updater runs on a remote server but is
controlled from the user's machine. Note that the remote application runs
just as it would locally.
X uses a client-server model: an X server communicates with
various client programs. The server accepts requests for graphical output
(windows) and sends back user input (from keyboard, mouse, or
touchscreen). The server may function as:
• an application displaying to a window of another display system
• a system program controlling the video output of a PC
• a dedicated piece of hardware.
This client-server terminology — the user's terminal as the "server",
the remote or local applications as the "clients" — often confuses new X
users, because the terms appear reversed. But X takes the perspective of
the program, rather than that of the end-user or of the hardware: the local X
display provides display services to programs, so it acts as a server; any
remote program uses these services, thus it acts as a client.
 The communication protocol between server and client
operates network-transparently: the client and server may run on the same
machine or on different ones, possibly with
different architectures and operating systems, but they run the same in
either case. A client and server can even communicate securely over
the Internet by tunneling the connection over an encrypted network session.
An X client itself may contain an X server having display of multiple
clients. This is known as "X nesting". Open-source clients such
as Xnestand Xephyr support such X nesting.
To use a client program on a remote machine, the user does the following:
• On the local machine, open a terminal window
• use telnet or ssh to connect to the remote machine
• request local display/input service ( export DISPLAY=[user's machine]:0 )
The remote X client will then make a connection to the user's local X
server, providing display and input to the user.
Alternatively, the local machine may run a small program that
connects to the remote machine and starts the client application.
Practical examples of remote clients include:
• administering a remote machine graphically
• running a computationally intensive simulation on a remote Unix
machine and displaying the results on a local Windows desktop machine
• running graphical software on several machines at once, controlled by a
single display, keyboard and mouse.
X is primarily a protocol and graphics primitives definition and it
deliberately contains no specification for application user interface design,
such as button, menu, or window title bar styles. Instead, application
software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop
environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces - define and
provide such details. As a result, there is no typical X interface and several
desktop environments have been popular among users.
A window manager controls the placement and appearance of
application windows. This may have an interface akin to that of Microsoft
Windows or of the Macintosh (examples
include Metacity in GNOME, KWin in KDE or Xfwm in Xfce) or have radically
different controls (such as a tiling window manager, like wmii or Ratpoison).
The window manager may be bare-bones (e.g. twm, the basic window
manager supplied with X, or evilwm, an extremely light window manager) or
offer functionality verging on that of a full desktop environment
(e.g. Enlightenment).
 Many users use X with a full desktop environment, which includes a
window manager, various applications and a consistent
interface. GNOME,KDE and Xfce are the most popular desktop environments.
The Unix standard environment is the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).
Thefreedesktop.org initiative addresses interoperability between desktops
and the components needed for a competitive X desktop.
As X is responsible for keyboard and mouse interaction with graphical
desktops, certain keyboard shortcuts have become associated with X.
Control-Alt-Backspace typically terminates the currently running X session,
while Control-Alt in conjunction with a function key switches to the
associated virtual console. Note, however, that this is an implementation
detail left to an individual X server and is by no means universal; for
example, X server implementations for Windows and Macintosh typically do
not provide these shortcuts.
Implementations
The X.Org reference implementation serves as
the canonical implementation of X. Due to liberal licensing, a number of
variations, both free andproprietary, have appeared. Commercial UNIX
vendors have tended to take the reference implementation and adapt it for
their hardware, usually customising it heavily and adding proprietary
extensions.

Figure 2 Cygwin/X running rootless on Microsoft Windows XP. The screen shows X
applications (xeyes, xclock, xterm) sharing the screen with native Windows applications
(Date and Time, Calculator).

Up to 2004, XFree86 provided the most common X variant on

free Unix-like systems. XFree86 started as a port of X for 386-compatible PCs
and, by the end of the 1990s, had become the greatest source of technical
innovation in X and the de facto standard of X development. Since 2004,
however, theX.Org reference implementation, a fork of XFree86, has become
predominant.
 While it is common to associate X with Unix, X servers also exist
natively within other graphical environments. Hewlett-
Packard's OpenVMS operating system includes a version of X with CDE,
known as DECwindows, as its standard desktop environment. Apple's Mac OS
X v10.3 (Panther) andMac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) includes X11.app, based on
XFree86 4.3 and X11R6.6, with better Mac OS Xintegration, on Mac OS X
v10.5 (Leopard) Apple included X.org (X11R7.2 Codebase) instead of
XFree86 (X11R6.8). Third-party servers under Mac OS 7, 8 and 9
included White Pine Software'seXodus and Apple's MacX.
Microsoft Windows does not come with support for X, but many third-
party implementations exist, both free software such
as Cygwin/X, Xming and WeirdX; and proprietary products such
asXmanager, MKS X/Server, Exceed and X-Win32. They normally serve to
control remote X clients.
When another windowing system (such as those of Microsoft Windows
or Mac OS) hosts X, the X system generally runs "rootless", meaning the host
windowing environment looks after the root window (the background and
associated menus) and manages the geometry of the hosted X windows —
although some servers (Xmanager, and Exceed, for example) can also create
the root window for the remote clients to display to as a separate window in
the host system.
X terminal
In computing, an X terminal is a display/input terminal for X Window
System client applications. X terminals enjoyed a period of popularity in the
early 1990s when they offered a lower total cost of ownership alternative to
a full Unix workstation.
An X terminal runs an X server. (In X, the usage of "client" and "server"
is from the viewpoint of the programs: the X server supplies a screen,
keyboard, mouse and touchscreen to client applications.) This connects to
an X display manager (introduced in X11R3) running on a central machine,
using XDMCP (X Display Manager Control Protocol, introduced in X11R4).
Thin clients have somewhat supplanted X terminals in that they are
'fattened' with added flash memory which contains software that duplicates
much of the various Microsoft operating systems, thus acquiring the ability to
"speak" a range of remote desktop protocols. Due to the existence of free
software implementations of multiple protocols X terminals which do not
have this extra flash memory have been commercially obsoleted by more
general-purpose thin clients and by low cost PCs running an X server.
Limitations and criticisms of X

Limitations and criticisms of X

The UNIX-HATERS Handbook (1994) devoted an entire chapter to the
problems of X. Why X Is Not Our Ideal Window System (1990) by Gajewska,
Manasse and McCormack detailed problems in the protocol with
recommendations for improvement.
User interface issues
The lack of design guidelines in X has resulted in several vastly
different interfaces, and in applications that have not always worked well
together. The ICCCM, a specification for client interoperability, has a
reputation as being difficult to implement correctly. Further standards efforts
such as Motif and CDE did not alleviate problems. This has frustrated users
and programmers. Graphics programmers now generally address
consistency of application look and feel and communication by coding to a
specific desktop environment or to a specific widget toolkit, which also
avoids having to deal directly with the ICCCM.
The X protocol provides no facilities for handling audio, leaving it to the
operating system or its audio subsystems like OSS or ALSA to provide
support for audio hardware and sound playback. Most programmers simply
use local, OS-specific sound APIs. The first generation of client-server sound
systems included rplay and Network Audio System. More recent efforts have
produced EsounD (GNOME), aRts (KDE), andPulseAudio to name a few. In
2001, the X.org foundation announced the development of the Media
Application Server (MAS) to remedy this problem. However, none of these
are generally used as a solution to the problem. Another effort, X11 AUDIO,
was announced by Helge Bahmann in September 2007 as an extension to
the X server.
Network
Figure 3 Example of tunnelling an X11 application over SSH.

An X client cannot generally be detached from one server and

reattached to another, as with Virtual Network Computing (VNC), though
certain specific applications and toolkits are able to provide this
facility. Workarounds (VNC :0 viewers) also exist to make the current X-
server screen available via VNC.
Network traffic between an X server and remote X clients is not
encrypted by default. An attacker with a packet sniffer can intercept it,
making it possible to view anything displayed to or sent from the user's
screen. The most common way to encrypt X traffic is to establish a Secure
Shell(SSH) tunnel for communication.

Client-server separation
X's design requires the clients and server to operate separately, and
device independence and the separation of client and server incur overhead.
Most of the overhead comes from network round-trip delay time between
client and server (latency rather than from the protocol itself): the best
solutions to performance issues depend on efficient application design. A
common criticism of X is that its network features result in excessive
complexity and decreased performance if only used locally. That used to be
the case, but modern X implementations are able to use unix domain
sockets and shared memory (the MIT-SHM extension) to work around the
network overhead[citation needed]. The programmer must still explicitly
activate and use those extensions in order to improve performance and must
also provide fallback paths in order to stay compatible with older
implementations.
Competitors to X
For graphics, Unix-like systems use X almost universally. However,
some people have attempted writing alternatives to and replacements for X.
Historical alternatives include Sun's NeWS, which failed in the market,
and NeXT's Display PostScript, which was discarded in favor of Apple's
entirely new Quartz in Mac OS X.
Mike Paquette, one of the authors of Quartz, explained why Apple did
not move from Display PostScript to X, and chose instead to develop its own
window server, by saying that once Apple added support for all the features
it wanted to include in to X11, it would not bear much resemblance to X11
nor be compatible with other servers anyway.
Other attempts to address criticisms of X by replacing it completely
include Berlin/Fresco and the Y Window System. These alternatives have
seen negligible take-up, however, and commentators widely doubt the
viability of any replacement that does not preserve backward compatibility
with X.
Other competitors attempt to avoid the overhead of X by working
directly with the hardware. Such projects include DirectFB and the very
smallFBUI. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), which aims to provide a
reliable kernel-level interface to the framebuffer, may make these efforts
redundant. However, in Linux embedded systems requiring real-time
capabilities (e.g. using RTAI), the use of hardware acceleration via DRI is
discouraged; X may be unsuitable for such applications.
Other ways to achieve network transparency for graphical services
include:
• the SVG Terminal, a protocol to update Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG) content in a browser in near-real-time
• Virtual Network Computing (VNC), a very low-level system
which sends compressed bitmaps across the network; the
Unix implementation includes an X server
• Citrix XenApp, an X-like product for Microsoft Windows
• Tarantella, which provides a Java client for use in web
browsers
• RAWT, IBM's Java-only Remote AWT, which implements a Java
"server" and simple hooks for any remote Java client
Desktop Environments
The most common desktop environment on personal computers is the
one provided by Microsoft Windows; another common environment is the
one provided by Apple Mac OS X.
Other mainstream desktop environments for Unix-like operating
systems using the X Window System include KDE, GNOME, Xfce and CDE.
A number of other desktop environments also exist, including (but not
limited to): Aston, EDE, GEM, IRIX Interactive Desktop, Sun's Java Desktop
System, Jesktop, Mezzo, Project Looking Glass, ROX
Desktop, UDE, Xito, XFast.
X window managers that are meant to be usable stand-alone —
without another desktop environment — also include elements reminiscent
of those found in typical desktop environments, most
prominently Enlightenment. Other examples include Window
Maker and AfterStep, which both feature the Nextstep GUI look and feel.
The Amiga approach to desktop environment was noteworthy; the
original Workbench desktop environment in AmigaOS evolved through time
to originate an entire family of descendants and alternative desktop
solutions. Some of those descendants are the AmigaOS 4.0 Workbench
based on the ReAction_GUI object oriented GUI engine, the Ambient
desktop of MorphOS based on the MUI (Magical User Interface) object-
oriented GUI engine, the ScalOS third-party desktop environment for Amiga,
the Zune graphical environment of the AROS open source OS, and
the Feelinthird party programming environment which has its internal GUI
engine built on the XML markup language. Third party Directory
Opus software which was originally just a navigational file manager program
then evolved to became to a complete Amiga desktop replacement called
DirOpus "Magellan".
There is the Workplace Shell that runs on IBM OS/2 or eComStation.
The BumpTop project is an experimental desktop environment. Its
main objective is to replace the 2D paradigm with a "real world" 3D
implementation, where documents can be freely manipulated across a
virtual table.
.GNOME Environment

The name “GNOME” was proposed as an acronym of GNU Network Object

Model Environment.
GNOME is...
Free
GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, dedicated to
giving users and developers the ultimate level of control over their desktops,
their software, and their data. Find out more about the GNU project and Free
Software at gnu.org.
Usable
GNOME understands that usability is about creating software that is
easy for everyone to use, not about piling on features. GNOME's community
of professional and volunteer usability experts have created Free Software's
first and only Human Interface Guidelines, and all core GNOME software is
adopting these principles. Find out more about GNOME and usability at
the GNOME Usability Project.
Accessible
Free Software is about enabling software freedom for everyone,
including users and developers with disabilities. GNOME's Accessibility
framework is the result of several years of effort, and makes GNOME the
most accessible desktop for any Unix platform. Find out more at theGNOME
Accessibility Project.
International
GNOME is used, developed and documented in dozens of languages,
and we strive to ensure that every piece of GNOME software can be
translated into all languages. Find out more at the GNOME Translation
Project.
Developer-friendly
Developers are not tied to a single language with GNOME. You can use
C, C++, Python, Perl, Java, even C#, to produce high-quality applications
that integrate smoothly into the rest of your Unix or GNU/Linux (commonly
referred to as Linux) desktop.
Organized
GNOME strives to be an organized community, with a foundation of
several hundred members, usability, accessibility, and QA teams, and an
elected board. GNOME releases are defined by the GNOME Release Team
and are scheduled to occur every six months.
Supported
Beyond the worldwide GNOME Community, GNOME is supported by the
leading companies in GNU/Linux and Unix, including HP, IBM, Mandriva,
Novell, Red Hat, and Sun. Find out more at foundation.gnome.org.
A community
Perhaps more than anything else, GNOME is a worldwide community of
volunteers who hack, translate, design, QA, and generally have fun together.
Find out more at GNOME Developer's site.
-Source http://www.gnome.org/

History GNOME
In 1996, the KDE project was started. KDE was free software from the
start, but members of the GNU project were concerned with KDE's
dependence on the then non-free Qt widget toolkit. In August 1997, two
projects were started in response to this issue: the Harmony toolkit (a free
replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop not using
Qt, but built entirely on top of free software). The initial project leaders for
GNOME were Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena.
In place of the Qt toolkit, GTK+ was chosen as the base of the GNOME
desktop. GTK+ uses the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a free
software license that allows GPL-incompatible software (including proprietary
software) to link to it. The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL
for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME
project. Having the toolkit and libraries under the LGPL allows applications
written for GNOME to use a much wider set of licenses (including proprietary
software licenses).
In 1998, Qt became open source. While Qt is dual-licensed under both
the QPL and the GPL, the freedom to link proprietary software with GTK+ at
no charge makes it differ from Qt. However proponents of the free software
philosophy deem the LGPL a disadvantage for free softwaredevelopers. Using
the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage
over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary
developers cannot use it. With Qt licensed under the GPL, the Harmony
Project stopped its efforts at the end of 2000, as KDE did not depend on non-
free software anymore. In contrast, as of 2009, the development of GNOME
did not stop.
Look and feel

Figure 4 The GNOME Desktop

GNOME is designed around the traditional computing desktop

metaphor. Its handling of windows, applications and files is similar to that of
contemporary desktop operating systems. In its default configuration, the
desktop has a launcher menu for quick access to installed programs and file
locations; open windows may be accessed by a taskbar along the bottom of
the screen and the top-right corner features a notification area for programs
to display notices while running in the background. However these features
can be moved to almost anywhere the user desires, replaced with other
functions or removed altogether.
GNOME uses Metacity as its default window manager. Users can
change the appearance of their desktop through the use of themes, which
are sets consisting of an icon set, window manager border and GTK+ theme
engine and parameters. Popular GTK+ themes
include Bluecurve andClearlooks (the current default theme).
GNOME puts emphasis on being easy for everyone to use. The HIG
helps guide developers in producing applications which look and behave
similarly, in order to provide a cohesive GNOME interface.
Usability
Since GNOME v2.0, a key focus of the project has been usability. As a
part of this, the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) were created,
which is an extensive guide for creating quality, consistent and usable GUI
programs, covering everything from GUI design to recommended pixel-based
layout of widgets.
During the v2.0 rewrite, many settings were deemed to be of little or
no value to the majority of users and were removed. For instance, the
preferences section of the Panel were reduced from a dialog of six tabs to
one with two tabs. Havoc Pennington summarized the usability work in his
2002 essay "Free Software UI", emphasizing the idea that all preferences
have a cost, and it's better to "unbreak the software" than to add a UI
preference to do that:
A traditional free software application is configurable so that it has the union
of all features anyone's ever seen in any equivalent application on any other
historical platform. Or even configurable to be the union of all applications that
anyone's ever seen on any historical platform (Emacs *cough*).
Does this hurt anything? Yes it does. It turns out that preferences have a
cost. Of course, some preferences also have important benefits - and can be crucial
interface features. But each one has a price, and you have to carefully consider its
value. Many users and developers don't understand this, and end up with a lot of
cost and little value for their preferences dollar.
Some people believe that GNOME should be more functional. One of these
is Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, who commented in a usability-related
discussion on the GNOME usability mailing list:
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome
is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use
Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where
it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE.
—Linus Torvalds
GNOME Applications -Basic Tools 1

File Manager: Nautilus

Figure 5 Screenshot of Nautilus 2.22.1 in Spatial mode

Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name
is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent anoperating
system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was
the default from version 2.0 onwards.
Nautilus was the flagship product of the now-defunct Eazel Inc.
Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Nautilus is free
software.
History
Version 1.0 was released on March 13, 2001, and
incorporated into GNOME 1.4.
Version 2.0 was a port to GTK+ 2.0.
Version 2.2 saw a lot of changes to make it more compliant
with User Interface Guidelines.
Version 2.4 switched the desktop folder to ~/Desktop (the
~ represents the user's "Home" folder) to be compliant
with freedesktop.orgstandards.
In the version included with GNOME 2.6, Nautilus switched
to a spatial interface. The "classic" interface is still
available by a filing cabinetshaped icon, by an option in the
"Edit -> Preferences -> Behavior" menu in Nautilus, in a
folder's context menu, and by using the "--browser" switch
when started by a command via a launcher or shell.
Several Linux distributions have made "browser" mode the
default.
 GNOME 2.14 introduced a version of Nautilus with
improved searching, integrated optional Beagle support
and the ability to save searches asvirtual folders.
With the release of GNOME 2.22, Nautilus has been ported
to the newly introduced GVFS, the replacement virtual file
system for the agingGnomeVFS.
The latest stable release of Nautilus (2.24.0) adds some
new features (tabbed browsing, better tab completion
etc.).
Features
Nautilus supports browsing local filesystems as well as filesystems
available through the GVFS system, including FTP sites,
Windows SMBshares, ObexFTP protocol often implemented on
cellphones, Files transferred over shell protocol, HTTP and WebDAV servers
and SFTPservers.
Bookmarks, window backgrounds, emblems, notes, and add-on scripts
are all implemented, and the user has the choice between icon, list, or
compact list views. In browser mode, Nautilus keeps a history of visited
folders, similar to many web browsers, permitting easy access to previously
visited folders.
Nautilus can display previews of files in their icons, be they text files,
images, sound or video files via thumbnailers such as Totem. Audio files are
previewed (played back over GStreamer) when the pointer is hovering over
them.
For its own interface, Nautilus includes original vectorized icons
designed by Susan Kare.
With the use of the GIO library, Nautilus tracks modification of local
files in real time, eliminating the need to refresh the display manually. GIO
internally supports Gamin and FAM, Linux's inotify, and Solaris' File Events
Notification system.
E-mail client: Evaluation
Figure 6 Screen shot of evaluation

Evolution or Novell Evolution (formerly Ximian Evolution, prior

to Novell's 2003 acquisition of Ximian) is the official personal information
manager and workgroup information management tool for GNOME. It
combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management
functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in
September 2004. Evolution development is sponsored primarily by Novell.
Its user interface and functionality are similar to Microsoft Outlook.
Features include: iCalendar support, full-text indexing of all incoming mail,
powerful email filters writable in Scheme, and a "Search Folders" feature
(i.e., saved searches that look like normal mail folders).
Evolution can be connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server using its
web interface and an Evolution add-on formerly called Ximian Connector.
Using gnome-pilot, it may be synchronized with Palm Pilot devices,
and OpenSync enables it to be synchronized with mobile phones and
otherPDAs.
Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Evolution
is Free software.
Evolution 2
Evolution 2, which has been available since September 2004, delivers these
features:
integrated connectivity to Novell GroupWise
integrated connectivity to Microsoft Exchange Server
integrated support for GPG email encryption
improved offline support for IMAP accounts
numerous calendar improvements
support for S/MIME, enhanced contact management
Pidgin instant messaging integration
improved desktop integration.
improved compliance with GNOME's Human interface guidelines
 integrated SpamAssassin functionality (with user-defined spam
score and whitelist rules in ~/.spamassassin/)
a connector for Scalix is available

Distribution
Evolution 2.22 was released on 2008-03-11, together with GNOME 2.22
(March 2008). GNOME is the default desktop environment for several Linux
distributions, most notably Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu. Foresight
Linux showcases the latest releases of GNOME. Novell distributes Evolution
with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and the openSUSE community
project.
Evolution 2.22 is also available as source code. Some pre-built install
packages are available for other operating systems, but only for older
versions.

X Window Manager : Metacity

Figure 7 metacity enabled desktop

Metacity is a compositing window manager used by default in

the GNOME desktop environment. The development of Metacity was started
by Havoc Pennington and it is released under the GNU General Public
License.
Before the introduction of Metacity in GNOME 2.2, GNOME
used Enlightenment and then Sawfish as its window manager. Although
Metacity is part of the GNOME project and designed to integrate into the
GNOME desktop, it does not require GNOME to run, and GNOME can be used
with different window managers provided that they support the part of
the ICCCM specification that GNOME requires.
Metacity uses the GTK+ graphical widget toolkit to create its user
interface components, which makes it themeable and makes it blend in with
other GTK+ applications.

Philosophy
Metacity's focus is on simplicity and usability rather than novelties or
gimmicks. Its author has characterized it as a "Boring window manager for
the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops;
Metacity is likeCheerios.".
 What is Metacity’s role in GNOME Shell? GNOME Shell uses a fork
of Metacity called Mutter (i.e. Metacity with Clutter). Whether this will
become the main Metacity in future, or whether the two will be developed in
parallel, or whether it’ll be merged back upstream and have some way of
controlling which control path is taken, is not yet decided.

Widget Toolkit: GTK+

GTK+, or The GIMP Toolkit, is a cross-platform widget toolkit for
creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for
theX Window System, along with Qt.
GTK+ was initially created for the GNU Image Manipulation
Program (GIMP), a raster graphics editor, in 1997 by Spencer
Kimball and Peter Mattis, members of eXperimental Computing Facility (XCF)
at UC Berkeley.
Licensed under the LGPL, GTK+ is free software and is part of the GNU
Project.
Design
GTK+ is written in the C programming language, and its design uses
the GObject object system. The GNOME platform provides language
bindingsfor:
C++ (gtkmm)
Perl (Gtk2-perl)
Ruby (ruby-gtk2)
Python (PyGTK)
Java (java-gnome) (not available for Microsoft Windows)
C# (Gtk#)
PHP (PHP-GTK)
Others have written bindings for many other programming
languages (including Ada, D, Haskell, Lua, Ocaml, Pascal, Pike, Javascript, Tcl
,Euphoria and all .NET programming languages). GTK-server provides a
stream-based IPC interface to GTK+ allowing it to be used from any language
with I/O capabilities, including shell scripts. Bindings for many languages can
be generated automatically via GObject-introspection.
Languages purpose-written for GObject and therefore GTK+
include Vala and GOB.
Like Qt, but unlike several other widget toolkits, GTK+ is not based
on Xt. This allows flexibility and allows GTK+ to be used on platforms where
the X Window System is unavailable. However, without this dependency,
GTK+ lacks access to the X resources database, the traditional way for
customizing X11 applications.
GTK+ initially contained some utility routines that did not strictly relate
to graphics, for instance providing such data structures as linked lists
andbinary trees. Such general utilities, along with the object system
called GObject, have now migrated into a separate library, GLib, which
programmers can use to develop code that does not require a graphical
interface.
Platforms
GTK+ was originally targeted at the X Window System, and this
remains its primary target platform. Other targeted platforms are Microsoft
Windows (Windows 2000 and upwards, near complete support), DirectFB,
and Quartz (Mac OS X v10.4 and upwards, still under development).
Look and feel
The end-user can configure the look of the toolkit, down to offering a
number of different display engines. Engines exist which try to emulate the
look of other popular toolkits or platforms such as Windows
95, Motif, Qt and NEXTSTEP.
History
GTK+ 2 has succeeded GTK+ 1. Its new features include improved text
rendering using Pango, a new theme engine, improved accessibility using
the Accessibility Toolkit, complete transition to Unicode using UTF-8 strings
and a more flexible API. However, GTK+ 2 lacks compatibility with GTK+ 1,
and programmers must port applications to it.
Starting with version 2.8, GTK+ 2 depends on the Cairo library for
rendering with vector graphics in GTK+ 2.
Releases
Release Latest minor
Initial release date Major enhancements
series version
1.0.x ? ? 1.0.?
1.2.x 27 February 1999 ? 1.2.10
GObject, Unicode UTF-8
2.0.x 11 March 2002 2.0.9
support
2.2.x 22 December 2002 ? 2.2.4
2.4.x 16 March 2004 ? 2.4.14
2.6.x 16 December 2004 ? 2.6.10
2.8.x 13 August 2005 Cairo integration 2.8.20
2.10.x 3 July 2006 ? 2.10.14
14
2.12.x GtkBuilder 2.12.12
September 2007
4 Jpeg2000 load
2.14.x 2.14.7
September 2008 support
Future developments
Project Ridley is an attempt to consolidate several libraries that are
currently external to GTK+, including: libgnome, libgnomeui,
libgnomeprint22, libgnomeprintui22, libglade, libgnomecanvas, libegg, libeel
and gtkglext.
Developers are also considering new directions for the library,
including breaking ABI, removing deprecated API components, and adding an
integrated scene graph system, similar to the Clutter graphics library,
effectively integrating GTK+ with OpenGL.
GTK hello world
GTK hello world in Linux
#include <config.h>

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

/*
* Terminate the main loop.
*/
static void
on_destroy (GtkWidget * widget, gpointer data)
{
gtk_main_quit ();
}

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
GtkWidget *window;
GtkWidget *label;

gtk_init (&argc, &argv);

/* create the main, top level, window */

window = gtk_window_new (GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);

/* give the window a 20px wide border */

gtk_container_set_border_width (GTK_CONTAINER (window), 20);

/* give it the title */

gtk_window_set_title (GTK_WINDOW (window), PACKAGE " " VERSION);

/* open it a bit wider so that both the label and title show up */
gtk_window_set_default_size (GTK_WINDOW (window), 200, 50);

/* load the icon for the window; here we just load one, default icon */
gtk_window_set_default_icon_from_file (PIXMAPS_DIR "/hello-icon.gif",
NULL);
 /* Connect the destroy event of the window with our on_destroy function
* When the window is about to be destroyed we get a notificaiton and
* stop the main GTK loop
*/
g_signal_connect (G_OBJECT (window), "destroy",
G_CALLBACK (on_destroy), NULL);

/* Create the "Hello, World" label */

label = gtk_label_new ("Hello, World");

/* and insert it into the main window */

gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (window), label);

/* make sure that everything, window and label, are visible */

gtk_widget_show_all (window);

/* start the main loop */

gtk_main ();

return 0;
}

Uses

Figure 8 Screenshot of GIMP 2.0. GTK+ is responsible for managing the interface
components of the program, including the menus, buttons, input fields, etc.

Environments that use GTK+

GNOME is based on GTK+, meaning that GNOME programs use
GTK+
Xfce is based on GTK+, though its applications typically do not
depend on as many libraries (this is the difference between
something being branded as a “GNOME program” or as a “GTK+
program”).
LXDE is based on GTK+, stands for "Lightweight X11 Desktop
Environment"
ROX Desktop a lightweight desktop, with features from
the GUI of RISC OS
GNOME Applications- Basic Tools 2

Terminal Emulator: Gnome Terminal

GNOME terminal, also identified as gnome-terminal, is a terminal
emulator written by Havoc Pennington and others. It is part of the free
software GNOME desktop environment software suite. This allows users
of GNOME to execute commands using a real UNIX shell whilst still remaining
on their graphical desktop. Along with this comes the benefits of being able
to move the window, resize it and shift it to another desktop, just like any
other window in GNOME.
GNOME Terminal is similar to the xterm terminal emulator, and has a
nearly identical feature set. Some of the more important features of the two
include their support for coloured text (the output of a command such as ls --
color=auto shows the use of this feature well), and support for mouse events
within the window. Mouse events are commonly used within ncurses based
applications for using menus or buttons that normally would have been
selected using the keyboard. The application aptitude makes use of this
feature. GNOME Terminal emulates many, but not all, of the escape
sequences supported by xterm, and provides a useful subset of
the VT102 DEC terminal. Newer versions support compositing and real
transparency, as well as multiple tabs. It also supports URL detection (i.e.,
making links visible in the terminal clickable, and thus simpler to open in a
web browser, ftp- or mail client than via copy-pasting).
Much of GNOME Terminal's functionality is provided by the
VTE widget.

Text Editor : G Edit

 gedit is a free software, UTF-8 compatible text editor for
the GNOME desktop environment. It is mainly designed for editing program
code, and structured text, such as markup languages. It is designed to have
a clean, simple graphical user interface according to the philosophy of the
GNOME project, and it is the default text editor for GNOME.

Features
gedit includes syntax highlighting for various program code and text
markup formats. gedit also has GUI tabs for editing multiple files. Tabs can
be moved between various windows by the user. It can edit remote files
using GVFS (GnomeVFS is now deprecated) libraries. It supports a full undo
and redo system as well as search and replace. Other typical code oriented
features include line numbering, bracket matching, text wrapping, current
line highlighting, automatic indentation and automatic file backup.
Some advanced features of gedit include
multilanguage spellchecking and a flexible pluginsystem allowing to
dynamically add new features, for example snippets and integration with
external applications including terminal. A number of plugins are included in
gedit itself, with more plugins in the gedit-plugins package and online.
gedit has an optional side pane displaying the list of open files and (in
a different tab of the side pane) a file browser. It also has an optional bottom
pane with a Python console and (using gedit-plugins) terminal. gedit
automatically detects when an open file is modified on disk by another
application and offers to reload that file. Using a plugin (in gedit-plugins
package), gedit can save and load sessions, which are lists of currently open
tabs.[citation needed]
gedit supports printing, including print preview and printing
to PostScript and PDF files. Printing options include text font, and page size,
orientation, margins, optional printing of page headers and line numbers, as
well as syntax highlighting.[citation needed]
Architecture
Designed for the X Window System, gedit uses the GTK+ 2.0 and
GNOME 2.0 libraries. The GNOME integration includes drag and
dropbetween Nautilus, the GNOME file manager.
gedit uses the GNOME help system for documentation. It also
uses virtual file system and GNOME printing framework.
Currently, Windows and Mac versions are being built.
GNOME Applications -Multimedia
Image Viewer: Eye Of Gnome
Eye of GNOME is the official image viewer for the GNOME desktop
environment. Unlike some other image viewers, Eye of GNOME will only view
images. It does, however, provide basic effects for improved viewing, such as
zooming, fullscreen, rotation, and transparent image background control.

File formats
Eye of GNOME supports the following file formats:
ANI - Animation
BMP - Windows Bitmap
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
ICO - Windows Icon
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
PCX - PC Paintbrush
Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
PNM - Portable Anymap from the PPM Toolkit
RAS - Sun Raster
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
TGA - Targa
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap Format (WBMP)
X BitMap (XBM)
X PixMap (XPM)

Some Screen shots of the Eye

source: http://projects.gnome.org/eog/screenshots.html
Eye of GNOME in action!
Eye of GNOME's main window, showing a lovely hen.

The collection view, which allows you to browse your images.

The properties dialog allows you to check the details of your image.

...And also the EXIF/XMP metadata of your images.

With the print dialog, you can set the size and position of your image for printing.

Video player: Totem

Totem is a media player (audio and video) for
the GNOME computer desktop environment which runs
on Linux, Solaris, BSD and other Unix and Unix-like systems. It is officially
included in GNOME starting from version 2.10 (released in March 2005),
but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments. The
default backend is GStreamer framework but Totem can also
use xine libraries.
Totem is included as the default media player in many desktop Linux
distributions, includingUbuntu, Mandriva Linux and others. Release under the
terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, Totem is free software.
Features
There are two distinct versions of Totem, though the difference is not
visible at the user interface level. One of them is based on GStreamer, which
is a plugin-based multimedia framework. This version has superior
extensibility and supports a larger variety of media formats. The other one is
based on xine, which is a regular multimedia library. Currently it has better
encrypted DVD playback support and can play some files the GStreamer
version can't handle. An outstanding feature of Totem is its close integration
with the GNOME desktop environment and its file manager, Nautilus. This
includes generating thumbnails of video files when browsing in Nautilus and
a video plugin for Netscape-compatible browsers (e.g. Firefox).
Thanks to a large number of plugins developed for GStreamer, Totem
is able to play all mainstream media formats, both open and proprietary
ones. It also understands numerous playlist formats,
including SHOUTcast, M3U, XML Shareable Playlist
Format (XSPF), SMIL, Windows Media Player playlists and RealAudio playlists.
Playlists are easily manageable using drag-and-drop features.
Full-screen video playback is supported on nearly all X configurations,
including multi-headXinerama setups, and on displays connected to the TV-
Out. Brightness, contrast and saturation of the video can be dynamically
adjusted during playback. 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and stereo sound is supported.
On computers with an infrared port, Totem can be remotely controlled
via LIRC. Stills can be easily captured without resorting to external programs.
There is also a plugin for telestrator-like functionality using Gromit. The
loading of external SubRip subtitles, both automatic and manual (via
the command-line), is also supported.
This is the official documentation from Totem's Home page

source: http://projects.gnome.org/totem/
Play any xine- or GStreamer-supported file (depending on the
backend chosen)
LIRC support
Shoutcast, m3u, asx, SMIL and ra playlists support (also usable
from a shipped LGPL library)
DVD (with menus), VCD playback, disc-type automatically
detected
TV-Out configuration with optional resolution switching
4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, stereo and AC3 Passthrough audio output
Fullscreen mode (move your mouse and you get nice controls)
with Xinerama, dual-head and Viewport support
Remote operation mode to control a running Totem
Seek and Volume controls
Aspect ratio changing, Scaling based on the video's original size
Full keyboard control
Playlist with Repeat and Shuffle modes, with saving feature and
drag'n'drop reordering
GNOME and Nautilus integration (Totem registers the file-types,
adds a menu item, uses the proxy configuration, saves sessions,
and registers pnm, mms, uvox and rtsp schemes, removes
playlist items from a disc that's getting ejected)
Properties window (information about the current movie)
Drag'n'drop and mousewheel actions
Screenshot feature
Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation control
Visualisation plugin when playing audio-only files
Telestrator mode using Gromit
Video thumbnailer
Nautilus properties page
Works on remote displays
 Automatic external subtitle load, or manual (only on the
command-line, use like: totem file:///file.avi#subtitle:file.srt)
DVD, VCD and OGG/OGM subtitles and languages support
Dialog for more accurate seeking
Authentication dialogs when location requires it
Online help (in English, German, Spanish, Russian, French and
Bulgarian)
Codecs
Totem can display a variety of formats, based on what backend you
use. To see what backend you are using check the "About" dialog of
Totem.
GStreamer
When using the GStreamer backend, you can install multiple plugin
packages. You can install them the same way as you would install totem.
Some information about the gstreamer-plugins packages can be found here.
• gst-plugins-base
the basic and essential plug-ins for GStreamer
• gst-plugins-good
the plug-ins for most Open formats
• gst-plugins-ugly
good-quality plug-ins that might pose distribution problems,
needed for DVD playback
• gst-plugins-bad
a set of plug-ins that need more work, needed for YouTube
videos
• gst-ffmpeg
FFmpeg-based plug-in, contains all the basic decoders for
popular codecs, such as DivX and WMV
• Pitfdll
Plug-ins using the Windows codec DLLs for which no free
software implementation exists yet.
xine-lib
Everything's included in this version, apart from some proprietary
codecs that require Windows DLLs. Check the FAQ on xine-lib's website. That
should sort most of you out.
DVB support
Using Totem, you can watch TV on over-the-air and satellite digital
television. You'll need a DVB-T or DVB-S card supported by Linux, and a
channels.conf file containing the channel tuning information.
GStreamer
You will need gst-plugins-bad 0.10.6, as well as Fluendo's MPEG
demuxer to have playback working. The channels.conf file should be
named ~/.gstreamer-0.10/dvb-channels.conf.
xine-lib
The channels.conf file should be placed in ~/.xine/.

YouTube support
With the YouTube plugin you can browse YouTube and watch videos
from it. You'll need gstreamer-plugins-bad 0.10.6 or a recent version of xine-
lib. Even if videos play correctly, seeking may not yet work for them but work
is ongoing to fix this.

Audio Player: Rhythmbox

 Rhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital
music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to
work well under theGNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework.
It is currently under active development.
Features
Rhythmbox offers a growing number of features, including:
Music playback
Playback from a variety of digital music sources is supported. The most
common playback is music stored locally as files on the computer (the
'Library'). Rhythmbox supports playing streamed Internet
radio and podcasts as well. The Replay Gainstandard is supported by
using GConf-editor.
Searching and sorting of music in the library is
supported. Playlists may be created to group and order music. Users may
also create 'smart playlists,' ones that are automatically updated (like a
database query) based on a customized rule of selection criteria rather than
an arbitrary list of tracks. Music may be played back in shuffle (random)
mode or repeat mode.
Track ratings are supported and used by the shuffle mode algorithm to
play higher-rated tracks more often.
Music importing
Audio CD ripping (requires the optional Sound Juicer package)
Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
iPod support (experimental)
Audio CD burning
Since the 0.9 release, Rhythmbox can create audio CDs from playlists.
Album Cover display
Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can display cover art of the
currently playing album. However, rather than reading the embedded ID3
tags for album artwork, the plugin searches the internet to find
corresponding artwork.
Song Lyrics display
Since the 0.9.5 release, Rhythmbox can provide song lyrics of the
currently playing song (as long as they are stored in a lyrics database
likeleoslyrics).
Integration
Rhythmbox has been extensively integrated with a number of external
programs, services and devices including:
Nautilus file manager context-menu integration (off by default in
version 0.8.8), "hover mode" playback in Nautilus
XChat, via an XChat plugin. Rhythmbox XChat Announcer (Perl)
Pidgin-Rhythmbox automatically updates the Pidgin user profile
with details of the currently playing track
 Gajim and Pidgin include options for automatically updating the
user status with details of currently playing track
Music Applet (previously known as the Rhythmbox Applet),
a GNOME panel applet that provides Rhythmbox playback
controls from within the panel
Shuffle, a gDesklet providing an interface for Rhythmbox
resembling an iPod Shuffle
Rhythmlet, another gDesklet that retrieves album art locally or
from Amazon.com, has configurable display strings, playback
controls, editable ratings and a seek bar
SideCandyRhythmbox, a gDesklet-based Rhythmbox control and
SideCandy display
Rhythmbox XSLT allows the music library to be viewed as a <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_page" title="Web page"
style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 43, 184); background-
image: none; background-repeat: initial; background-
attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-
background-origin: initial; background-color: initial; background-
position:

GNOME Applications- CD Burners and Rippers

CD Burner: Brasero
Brasero is a free disc-burning program for Unix-like systems, which
serves as a graphicalfront-end (using GTK+) to cdrtools, growisofs, and
(optionally) libburn. The software itself has been reviewed in a few places.
Features
Data CD/DVD:
Supports editing of disc contents (remove/move/rename files
inside folders).
Can burn data CD/DVDs on the fly.
Automatic filtering for unwanted files (hidden files,
broken/recursive symlinks, files not conforming to the Joliet CD
standard, ...).
Supports multisession.
Supports the Joliet extension.
Can write the image to the hard drive.
 Audio CD:
Writes CD-TEXT information (automatically found, thanks
to GStreamer).
Supports the editing of CD-TEXT information.
Can burn audio CDs on the fly.
Can use all audio files handled by GStreamer local installation
(Ogg, FLAC, MP3, etc).
Can search for audio files inside dropped folders.
CD/DVD copy:
Can copy a CD/DVD to the hard drive.
Can copy DVD and CD on the fly.
Supports single-session data DVDs.
Supports any kind of CD.
Others:
Erases CD/DVDs.
Can save/load projects.
Can burn CD/DVD images and cue files.
Song, image and video previewer.
Device detection thanks to the HAL (Hardware Abstraction
Layer).
File change notification (requires kernel newer than 2.6.13).
A customizable user interface (when used with GDL).
Supports Drag-and-Drop / Cut 'n' Paste from Nautilus (GNOME file
manager) (and other applications).
Can use files on a network as long as the protocol is handled by
gnome-vfs.
Can search for files thanks to Beagle (search is based on
keywords or on file type).
Can display a playlist and its contents (note that playlists are
automatically searched through Beagle).
All disc input and output is done asynchronously (non-
concurrently) to prevent the application from blocking.
Brasero is the default CD/DVD application in Ubuntu.

The Official Page of Brasero

source:http://projects.gnome.org/brasero/index.html
Data CD/DVD:
• supports edition of discs contents (remove/move/rename files
inside directories)
• can burn data CD/DVD on the fly
• automatic filtering for unwanted files (hidden files,
broken/recursive symlinks, files not conforming to joliet
standard, ...)
• supports multisession
• supports joliet extension
• can write the image to the hard drive
• can check disc file integrity
Audio CD:
• write CD-TEXT information (automatically found thanks to
gstreamer)
• supports the edition of CD-TEXT information
• can burn audio CD on the fly
• can use all audio files handled by Gstreamer local installation
(ogg, flac, mp3, ...)
• can search for audio files inside dropped folders
• full edition of silences between tracks
CD/DVD copy:
• can copy a CD/DVD to the hard drive
• can copy CD and DVD on the fly
• supports single-session data DVD
• supports any kind of CD
Others:
• erase CD/DVD
• can save/load projects
• can burn CD/DVD images and cue files
• song, image and video previewer
• device detection thanks to HAL
• file change notification (requires kernel > 2.6.13)
• a customisable GUI (when used with GDL)
• supports Drag and Drop / Cut'n'Paste from nautilus (and
others apps)
• can use files on a network as long as the protocol is handled
by gnome-vfs
• can search for files thanks to beagle (search is based on
keywords or on file type)
• can display a playlist and its contents (note that playlists are
automatically searched through beagle)
 • all disc IO is done asynchronously to prevent the application
from blocking

Bugs
The version of Brasero included in a standard installation
of Ubuntu 8.10 as available for download in December 2008 suffers from a
serious bug, with the effect of deleting the original files under certain
circumstances

CD Ripper: Sound Juicer

Sound Juicer is an application Front-End to the Cdparanoia CD
ripping library. It allows the user to extract audio from compact discs and
convert it into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can
understand and play. It supports ripping to any audio codec supported by
a GStreamer plugin, such as mp3 (via LAME), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and
uncompressed PCM formats.
Sound Juicer is designed to be easy to use and to work with little user
intervention. For example, if your computer is connected to the Internet, it
will automatically attempt to retrieve track information from the freely-
available MusicBrainz service. Sound Juicer is free and open
source software and an official part of the GNOME desktop
environment starting with version 2.10.
Versions after 2.12 implement CD playing capability.

GNOME Office suite

Probably every Linux distribution is using open office org as their
default office application but GNOME and kde has their own office suites.

In this section we are discussing only GNOME office. The openoffice org
suite will be discussed later.
Office Suite: GNOME Office
Gnome office suite consists these application:
Word Processor: AbiWord

AbiWord is a free software word processor. The name "AbiWord"

(pronounced "Abby Word") is derived from the root of the Spanish word
"abierto" means "open". It currently runs on Linux, Mac OS
X (PowerPC), Microsoft
Windows, ReactOS, BeOS (unsupported), AmigaOS 4.0 (through
its Cygnix X11 engine), and other operating systems
.
AbiWord was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first
component of AbiSuite, as part of a plan to create a full Office Suite that
would be free software. However, SourceGear gradually moved on to other
business interests, and now the AbiWord project is run by a team of
volunteer developers. AbiWord is part of GNOME Office, a collection of office
applications with some degree of integration.

AbiWord

Figure 9 Screenshot of AbiWord on Ubuntu

Features
AbiWord has a comprehensive language database with multiple
languages. It also has support for tables and footnotes, as well as a spell
checker and an advanced grammar checking system.
Interface
 AbiWord has a similar user interface to classic versions (pre-Office
2007) of Microsoft Word, which is intended to ease migration for new users.
Although there are differences, the AbiWord developers aim to embrace and
extend this de facto standard in business.

The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each

respective platform.
File formats
AbiWord is packaged with several import/export filters,
including HTML, Microsoft Word (DOC), Office Open
XML (DOCX), OpenDocument(ODT) and Rich Text Format (RTF). LaTeX is
supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many
other formats, notablyWordPerfect documents. The native file format, .abw,
uses XML, so as to mitigate vendor lock-in concerns with respect to
interoperability and also digital archiving.
Version differences
AbiWord 2.6.x does not support Windows 9x anymore. Users of these
systems can still use AbiWord 2.4.6
SpreadSheet: GNumeric
Gnumeric is a free spreadsheet program that is part of
the GNOME desktop and has Windows installers available. It is intended to be
a free replacement for proprietary spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft
Excel, which it broadly and openly emulates. Gnumeric was created and
developed by Miguel de Icaza, but he has since moved on to other projects.
The current maintainer is Jody Goldberg.

Gnumeric
Figure 10 Gnumeric 1.8.1

Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file
formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-
3,OpenDocument and Quattro Pro; its native format is the Gnumeric file
format (.gnm or .gnumeric), an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all
of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft
Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric. Pivot tables and conditional
formatting are not yet supported but are planned for future versions.
Gnumeric's accuracy has helped it to establish a niche among people
using it for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks.For improving the
accuracy of Gnumeric, the developers are cooperating with the R Project.
Gnumeric has a different interface for the creation and editing of
graphs than the competing software. For editing a graph, Gnumeric displays
a window where all the elements of the graph are listed. Other spreadsheet
programs typically require the user to select the individual elements of the
graph in the graph itself in order to edit them.
Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. The current
stable release is version 1.8.x, the first to have basic Microsoft Office Open
XML support.

Database connector: GNOME-DB

GNOME-DB is the database application of GNOME Office, the office
suite of the GNOME desktop. The project aims to provide a free unified data
access architecture to the GNOME project for all Unix platforms. GNOME-DB
is useful for any application that accesses persistent data (not only
databases, but data), since it now contains a data management API.
GNOME Internet Applications
As Evaluation is discussed in earlier sections this application is not
discussed nither here nor in office section we'll discuss the remaining
application here

Web Browser: Epiphany

Though probably every linux distribution has mozilla firefox as their

preinstalled browser Epiphany is used widely by the die-hard GNOME fans

Epiphany

Figure 11 Epiphany showing a web page.

Development
Epiphany was developed from Galeon by Marco Pesenti Gritti (also the
initiator of Galeon) with the aim of making a fully GNOME human interface
guidelines compliant web browser and a very simple user experience. As a
result, Epiphany does not have its own theme settings, like Firefox— it uses
GNOME’s settings that are specified in the GNOME Control Center.
It is one of a family of web browsers that use the Gecko layout
engine from the Mozilla project to display web pages; however, the Epiphany
developers provide an experimental build of Epiphany 2.21.4 using
the WebKit engine instead of Gecko. It provides a GNOME integratedfront-
end to Gecko, instead of the Mozilla XUL interface. The Epiphany team
intends to drop the Gecko back-end and continue forward only with the
WebKit engine, by Epiphany 2.26. Epiphany supports tabbed
browsing, cookie management, popup blocking and an extensions system.
Epiphany can be extended with the Epiphany-extensions package
Features
Bookmarks
While most browsers feature a hierarchical folder-
based bookmark system, Epiphany uses categorized bookmarks, where a
single bookmark (such as “Epiphany”) can exist in multiple categories (such
as “Web Browsers”, “GNOME”, and “Computer Software”). Special categories
include bookmarks that have been used frequently (“Most Frequent”) and
bookmarks that have not yet been categorized. This is similar to the Firefox
3.0 Places feature which integrates bookmarks and history into
a SQLite database. Another innovative concept supported by Epiphany
(though originally from Galeon) is “Smart Bookmarks”. These take a single
argument specified from the address bar or from a textbox in a toolbar.
Epiphany-extensions
Epiphany-extensions is a set of official extensions to the Epiphany web
browser. Extensions include:
Actions
Ad filtering
Auto-reload
Autoscroll
Certificate Viewer
Dashboard
Error Viewer
Favicon.ico fallback
Greasemonkey
Imagebar
Java console
Mouse gestures
Newsfeed extractor
Tab Groups
Tab States
Page Info
Permissions
Python Console
Sample, an extension designed to show how to write one's own
extension
Select Stylesheet
Sidebar
Smart Bookmarks
Instant Messenger Client: Pidgin
Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a multi-platform instant
messaging client. The software has support for many commonly used instant
messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various different services
from one application.
The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3 million in
2007. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Pidgin
isfree software.
Pidgin

Figure 12 Pidgin Screenshot

Features
Figure 13 Pidgin's tabbed chat window inUbuntu

Pidgin supports multiple operating systems, including Windows as well

as many Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, Mac OS
X and AmigaOS(through the X11 engine). It is notable for its support for
multiple instant messaging protocols. It has built-in support for NSS, offering
client-to-server message encryption for protocols that support it. The
program is extendable through plugins, including "Off-the-Record Messaging"
and Pidgin encryption, providing end-to-end message encryption.
Pidgin features some of the standard tools for an instant messaging
client, such as tabbed conversations, a Contact list, file transfer on supported
protocols, and conversation and chat logging.
Tabbed conversations is an optional feature on Pidgin. The IM window
consists of the message window, formatting tools, and an edit box.
Contacts (usually known as "Buddies") are added by the "Buddy List"
window or by the IM window. As a client that supports IRC and other chat
programs, it can also add different IRC channels and IM Chats. Contacts with
multiple protocols can be grouped into one single contact instead of
managing multiple protocols and contacts can be given aliases as well or
placed into groups.
To reach users as they log on or a status change occurs (such as
moving from "Away" to "Available"), Pidgin supports on-action automated
scripts called Buddy Pounces to automatically reach the user in customizable
ways.
Pidgin supports some file transfers, with the ability to pause, resume,
and cancel transfers and observe multiple transfers in a separate window,
lacking more advanced features like folder sharing from Yahoo. However,
when used through the MSN protocol, file transfers are slow, as data is
routed through MSN servers to the receiver, instead of utilizing a faster peer-
to-peer functionality. A Google Summer of Codeproject aimed to add peer-to-
peer functionality in 2007. Support for MSNP15 was added in version 2.5.0
but did not include support for peer-to-peer transfers.
 Further features include support for themes, emoticons, spell
checking and notification area integration.
Supported protocols
Bonjour (Apple's implementation of Zeroconf)
Gadu-Gadu
Internet Relay Chat
Lotus Sametime
MySpaceIM
.NET Messenger Service (commonly known as MSN
Messenger or Windows Live Messenger) (no multimedia support)
Novell GroupWise
OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac)
QQ
SIMPLE
SILC
XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk)
Yahoo! (only basic chat and file transfers)
Zephyr
History

Figure 14 Gaim 2.0.0 beta 6 running underGNOME 2.16.0

The program was originally written in or before 1999 by Mark Spencer,

an Auburn University sophomore, as an emulation of AOL's IM programAOL
Instant Messenger on Linux using the GTK+ toolkit. It was
named GAIM (GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger) accordingly. The emulation was
not based on reverse engineering, but instead relied on information about
the protocol that AOL had published on the web; development was also
assisted by some of AOL's technical staff. Support for other IM protocols was
added soon thereafter.
Naming dispute
In response to pressure from AOL, the program was renamed to the
acronymous-but-lowercase gaim. As AOL Instant Messenger gained
popularity, AOL trademarked its acronym, "AIM", leading to a lengthy legal
struggle with the program's creators, who kept the matter largely secret.
On April 6, 2007, the project development team announced the results
of their settlement with AOL, which included a series of name
changes:Gaim became Pidgin, libgaim became libpurple, and gaim-
text became finch. The name Pidgin was chosen in reference to the term
"pidgin", which describes communication between people who do not share
a common language. It also harks back to its original name, as
the pigeonbird is a popular game bird and messenger. The name "purple"
refers to "prpl", the internal libgaim name for an IM protocol plugin.
Due to the legal issues, version 2.0 of the software was frozen in beta
stages. Following the settlement, it was announced that the first official
release of Pidgin 2.0.0 was hoped to occur during the two weeks from April
8, 2007. However, Pidgin 2.0 was not released as scheduled; Pidgin
developers announced on April 22, 2007 that the delay was due to the
preferences folder ".gaim".
Pidgin 2.0.0 was released on May 3, 2007. This was the first release
version to be called Pidgin, and contained a completely new graphics design.
Current deficiencies
Due to the Pidgin project's use of reverse-engineering to interact with
some proprietary protocols, there are disparities in functionality between
official clients and the Pidgin client.
Passwords are stored in a cleartext file. This password file is readable
by anyone who has physical access to the computer, access to the user or
administrative accounts, or (potentially) to anyone who is able to exploit
security vulnerabilities on that computer. The developers recognize this as a
security concern, but believe that the requirements of Pidign (and the nature
of instant messaging) make it infeasible to encrypt the password file, though
they have said that they welcome solutions to integrate Pidgin with
application-level security solutions. A Google Summer of Code 2008 project
has been approved for the Pidgin project to help address this issue by
allowing libpurple to read passwords from external password safes
(e.g. GNOME Keyring, Kwallet, or Apple keychain).
Pidgin does not currently support video and audio conferencing, nor
any form of audio/video communication. Parallel development was planned
with the uncompleted gaim-vv library but the project has been declared
dead by the developers. The developers plan on implementing multimedia
messaging in the future. A Google Summer of Code project for 2008
attempted to provide this support and development continues
using Farsight2.
Pidgin does not currently support resume of downloads that are
paused or the transfer of the file is broken, in chat protocols that support this
feature.
As of version 2.4 and later, the ability to manually resize the text input
box of conversations has been altered - it now automatically resizes between
a number of lines set in 'Preferences' and 50% of the window depending on
how much is typed. Some users find this an annoyance rather than a feature
and find this solution unacceptable. This issue led to the development of
Carrier.

GNOME Applications: Other Utility Application

Archive Manager: File Roller

File Roller

Features
 File Roller Archive Manager can:
Create and modify archives.
View the content of an archive.
File Formats
File Roller supports the following file formats: (Note: Backend programs
are needed. File Roller is only a frontend)
7z (.7z)
gzip (.tar.gz , .tgz)
bzip (.tar.bz , .tbz)
bzip2 (.tar.bz2 , .tbz2)
compress (.tar.Z , .taz)
LZO (.tar.lzo , .tzo)
ZIP archives (.zip)
JAR archives (.jar , .ear , .war)
LHA archives (.lzh)
RAR archives (.rar)
Single files compressed with gzip, bzip, bzip2, compress, LZO
ISO images (.iso) (read-only)
Limitations
File Roller doesn't support multi-volume archives for the 7z format (the
ability to view or create archives divided into multiple files)
PDF Viewer: Evince

Evince Menas: "to conquer entirely, to prevail over, to prove exhaustively,"

(source: Wikitonary)

Evince is a PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF and DVI document viewer for
the GNOME desktop environment
In developing the application the aim was to replace the multiple
GNOME document viewers with a single and simple application.
Evince has been included in GNOME since GNOME 2.12, released on 7
September 2005. It is written mainly in C, with a small part (the code that
interfaces with poppler) written in C++.
Released under the GNU General Public License, Evince is free
software.

Evince
Figure 15 Evince displaying a PDF

History
Evince began as a rewrite of GPdf, which most people thought was
getting unwieldy to maintain. In a short period of time it surpassed the
functionality of GPdf. GPdf and GGV, the default Postscript viewer in GNOME,
are no longer maintained.

Features
Search: Integrated search that displays the number of results
found and highlights the results on the page.
Page thumbnails: Thumbnails of pages show quick reference for
page navigation within a document. Evince's thumbnails are
available in the left sidebar of the viewer.
Page indexing: For documents that support indexes Evince gives
the option of showing the document index for quick moving from
one section to another.
Selection: Evince allows selecting text in PDF files.
Dual: Evince may show two pages (left, right) at a time.
Supported document formats
Evince supports many different single and multipage document
formats. Here is the list of formats that are currently supported.
Built-in support
PDF using the poppler backend
 PostScript using the Ghostscript backend
Multi-Page TIFF
IDE : Ajunta
Anjuta

Figure 16 Screenshot of a class inheritance graph

and terminal in Anjuta 2

Anjuta is an ide for the C and C++ computer programming languages,

written for the GNOME project. It comes standard on base installation DVDs
of major Linux distributions such as openSuse, Fedora, and Mandriva
(amongst others).
Anjuta features project management, application wizards, an
interactive debugger built over gdb, and a powerful source code editor with
source browsing, code completion and syntax highlighting.
Distributed under the GNU General Public License, Anjuta is free
software.
Anjuta DevStudio (2.x)
The goal of Anjuta DevStudio is to provide a customizable and
extensible IDE framework and at the same time provide the implementations
of common development tools. libanjuta is the framework that realizes the
Anjuta IDE plugin framework and Anjuta DevStudio realizes many of the
common development plugins.
It integrates new programming tools including the Glade Interface
Designer and the Devhelp API help browser.
3.KDE
KDE Stands for K Desktop Environment

What is KDE?

General Overview
KDE or the K Desktop Environment, is a network transparent
contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to
fulfill the need for an easy to use desktop for UNIX workstations, similar to
desktop environments found on Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating
systems. The UNIX operating system is according to us the best available
today. When it comes to stability, scalability and openness UNIX has no
competition. In fact UNIX has been the undisputed choice of information
technology professionals for many years. The lack of an easy to use
contemporary desktop environment, however, has prevented UNIX from
finding its way onto desktops of typical computer users in offices and homes.
UNIX today dominates the server market and is the preferred computing
platform for computing professionals and scientists alike. The Internet, a
household name traces its heritage to UNIX. Inspite of such ubiquitous
creations from the UNIX community, average computer users still expect it to
be difficult to use and often stay away. This fact is particularly unfortunate
since a number of implementations of UNIX, all of which are of exceptional
quality and stability (Debian GNU/Linux, FreeBSD,NetBSD etc.) are freely
available off the Internet.

KDE The Desktop Environment

The KDE project aims to change all that. KDE now provides an easy to
use contemporary desktop environment available for UNIX and compatible
systems. Together with a free implementation of UNIX such as GNU/Linux,
UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing platform
available to anyone free of charge. Source code is available for anyone to
look at, learn from, modify and improve. Whilst there is always room for
improvement, KDE today delivers a viable feature packed alternative to the
more commonly found commercial operating systems/desktops
combinations available.
It is our hope and continued ambition that KDE will bring open, reliable,
stable and monopoly-free computing enjoyed by scientists and computing
professionals world-wide to the everyday user.

KDE The Application Development Framework

KDE also brings to the forefront many innovations for application
developers. An entire infrastructure has been designed and implemented to
help programmers create robust and comprehensive applications in the most
efficient manner, eliminating the complexity and tediousness of general UNIX
application development. KDE recognizes the fact that a computing platform
is only as good as the first class applications available to users. KDE's
application framework, implements the latest advances in framework
technology positioning it in direct competition with popular development
frameworks like Microsoft's MFC/COM/ActiveX technology etc. KDE's
innovative KParts compound document technology enables developers to
quickly create first rate applications using cutting edge technology.

KDE The Office Application Suite

Leveraging the KDE application development framework a great
number of applicationshave been built for the K Desktop Environment. A
selection of those applications is contained in the KDE base distribution. At
this moment KDE is developing a complete office application suite based on
KDE's innovative KParts technology. This modern day office suite offers
spread-sheet applications, presentation creators, organizers, news clients
and much more. KPresenter, a part of this application suite has already been
successfully used for many presentations.

Source: http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/
KDE History
KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, who was then a student
at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. At the time, he was troubled by
certain aspects of the Unix desktop. Among his qualms was that none of
the applications looked, felt, or worked alike. He proposed the formation of
not only a set of applications, but rather a desktop environment, in which
users could expect things to look, feel, and work consistently. He also
wanted to make this desktop easy to use; one of his complaints with desktop
applications of the time was that his girlfriend could not use them. His
initial Usenet post spurred a lot of interest, and the KDE project was born.
The name KDE was intended as a word play on the existing Common
Desktop Environment, available for Unix systems. CDE was an X11-based
user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun, through
the X/Open Company, with an interface and productivity tools based on
the Motif graphical widget toolkit. It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-
to-use desktop computer environment. The K was originally suggested to
stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for
nothing in particular. Additionally, one of the tips in certain versions of KDE 3
incorrectly states that the K currently is just meant to be the letter
before L in the Latin alphabet, the first letter in the word Linux (which is
where KDE is usually run).
Matthias Ettrich chose to use the Qt toolkit for the KDE project. Other
programmers quickly started developing KDE/Qt applications, and by early
1997, a few applications were being released.

First series

Figure 17 KDE 1.0

 On 12 July 1998 KDE 1.0 was released. In the release announcement
the KDE team outlined the project and its reasons for creation:
KDE is a network transparent, contemporary desktop environment for
UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for
Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the
MacOS or Window95/NT. We believe that the UNIX operating system is the
best operating system available today. In fact UNIX has been the undisputed
choice of the information technology professional for many years. When it
comes to stability, scalability and openness there is no competition to UNIX.
However, the lack of an easy to use contemporary desktop environment for
UNIX has prevented UNIX from finding its way onto the desktops of the
typical computer user in offices and homes.
With KDE there is now an easy to use, contemporary desktop
environment available for UNIX. Together with a free implementation of UNIX
such as Linux, UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing
platform available to anyone free of charge including its source code for
anyone to modify. While there will always be room for improvement we
believe to have delivered a viable alternative to some of the more commonly
found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available
today. It is our hope that the combination UNIX/KDE will finally bring open,
reliable, stable and monopoly free computing to the average computer.

In November 1998, the Qt toolkit was dual-licensed under the

free/open source Q Public License (QPL) & a commercial-license for
proprietary software developers. The same year, the KDE Free Qt
foundation was created which guarantees that Qt would fall under a variant
of the very liberal BSD license should Trolltech cease to exist or no free/open
source version of Qt be released during 12 months. Debate continued about
compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL), so in September
2000, Trolltech made the Unix version of the Qt libraries available under the
GPL, in addition to the QPL, which eliminated the concerns of the Free
Software Foundation.

Second and third series

Figure 18 KDE 2.0

The second series of releases, KDE 2, introduced significant

technological improvements. These includedDCOP (Desktop COmmunication
Protocol), KIO, an application I/O library, KParts, a component object model,
allowing an application to embed another within itself, and KHTML,
an HTML rendering and drawing engine.

Figure 19 KDE 3.2 with Konqueror and the About screen. This has been described as a
watershed release.

The third series was much larger than the previous series, consisting of
six major releases. The API changes between KDE 2 and KDE 3 were
comparatively minor, meaning that the KDE 3 can be seen as largely a
continuation of the KDE 2 series. All releases of KDE 3 were built upon Qt 3,
which was only released under the GPL for Linux and Unix-like operating
systems, including Mac OS X. For that reason, KDE 3 was only available on
Windows through ports involving an X server.

Fourth series

Figure 20 KDE 4.0 with Dolphin and System Settings

 KDE 4 is based on Qt 4 which is also released under the GPL for
Windows and Mac OS X. Therefore KDE 4 applications can be compiled and
run natively on these operating systems as well.
KDE 4 includes many new technologies and technical changes. The
centerpiece is a redesigned desktop and panels collectively
called Plasma which replaces Kicker, KDesktop, and SuperKaramba by
integrating their functionality into one piece of technology, and is intended
to be more configurable for those wanting to update the decades-old desktop
metaphor. There are a number of new frameworks, including Phonon, a new
multimedia interface making KDE independent of any one specific media
backend, Solid, an API for network and portable devices, and Decibel, a new
communication framework to integrate all communication protocols into the
desktop. Also featured is a metadata and search framework,
incorporating Strigi as a full-text file indexing service, and NEPOMUK with
KDE integration.
The release of KDE 4.0 was met with a mixed reception. While early
adopters were tolerant of the lack of finish for some of its new features, the
release was widely criticised because of a lack of stability and its "beta"
quality. Many expected it to be an upgrade of KDE 3.5, when in fact features
regressed due to its extensive changes - some of which are still works in
progress. The criticism has emerged in spite of the environment being
labelled as non-final in distributions such as openSUSE. On the other hand
favourable reviews praised KDE 4.0 for its revolutionary changes.
KDE Applications-Basic Tools 1
File Manager: Konqueror(Default for KDE 2 &3)

Figure 21 A screenshot of Konqueror 4.2 showing the wikipedia homepage

Konqueror is a web browser, file manager and file viewer designed as a

core part of the K Desktop Environment. It is developed by volunteers and
can run on most Unix-like operating systems. Konqueror, along with the rest
of the components in the KDEBase package, is licensed and distributed
under the GNU General Public License.
The name "Konqueror" is a reference to the two primary competitors at
the time of the browser's first release: "first comes the Navigator,
then Explorer, and then the Konqueror". It also follows the KDE naming
convention: the names of most KDE programs begin with the letter K.
Konqueror came with the version 2 of KDE, released on October
23, 2000. It replaces its predecessor, KFM (KDE file manager).

User interface
Konqueror's user interface is somewhat reminiscent
of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (in turndesigned after Netscape
Navigator and NCSA Mosaic), though it is more customizable. It works
extensively with "panels", which can be rearranged or added. For example,
one could have an Internet bookmarks panel on the left side of the
browser window, and by clicking a bookmark, the respective web page would
be viewed in the larger panel to the right. Alternatively, one could display a
hierarchical list of folders in one panel and the content of the selected folder
in another. The panels are quite flexible and can even include a console
window. Panel configurations can be saved, and there are some default
configurations. (For example, "Midnight Commander" displays a screen split
into two panels, where each one contains a folder, Web site, or file view.)
Navigation functions (back, forward, history, etc.) are available during
all operations. Most keyboard shortcuts can be remapped using a graphical
configuration, and navigation can be conducted through an assignment of
letters to nodes on the active file by pressing the control key. The address
bar has extensive autocompletion support for local directories, past URLs,
and past search terms.
The application uses a tabbed document interface, wherein a window
can contain multiple documents in tabs. Multiple document interfaces are
not supported, however it is possible to recursively divide a window to view
multiple documents simultaneously, or simply open another window.
Web browser

Figure 22 Konqueror displaying the Wikipedia Main page

Konqueror has been developed as an autonomous web

browser project. It uses KHTML as its layout engine, which is compliant
with HTML and supports JavaScript, Java applets, CSS, SSL, and other
relevantopen standards.
Konqueror integrates several customizable search services which can
be accessed by entering the service's abbreviation code (for
example, gg: for Google) followed by the search term(s). One can add their
own search service; for instance, to retrieve Wikipedia articles, a shortcut
may be added with the URLhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?
search=\{@}&go=Go.
Konqueror's rendering speed is on par with that of competing
browsers, but sites with malformed HTML are sometimes less leniently
rendered than by other browsers.[citation needed] Problems can also result
from the use of plugins on a web site which cannot be run under
the operating system on which Konqueror is run; the use
of QuickTime movies, or Shockwave animations can result in such problems.
However, SWF (Flash), PDF, Java applets, and other plugins are supported if
the respective software is installed.
Konqueror is replaced as the primary web browser by Firefox in many
distributions, though it is generally present for dependency reasons.
Konqueror also allows browsing the local directory hierarchy—either by
entering locations in the address bar, or by selecting items in the file browser
window. It allows browsing in different views, which differ in their usage
of icons and layout. Files can also be executed, viewed, copied, moved, and
deleted.
The user can also open an embedded version of Konsole in which they
can directly execute shell commands.
Although this functionality is not removed from it, in KDE 4 Konqueror
is replaced by Dolphin as the default file manager.
File manager

Figure 23 Konqueror's file manager profile

Konqueror also allows browsing the local directory hierarchy—either by

entering locations in the address bar, or by selecting items in the file browser
window. It allows browsing in different views, which differ in their usage
of icons and layout. Files can also be executed, viewed, copied, moved, and
deleted.
The user can also open an embedded version of Konsole in which they
can directly execute shell commands.
Although this functionality is not removed from it, in KDE 4 Konqueror
is replaced by Dolphin as the default file manager.

File viewer
Using the KParts object model, Konqueror executes components that
are capable of viewing (and sometimes editing) specific filetypes and
embeds their client area directly into the Konqueror panel in which the
respective files have been opened. This makes it possible to, for example,
view an OpenDocument (via KOffice) or PDF document directly from within
Konqueror. Any application that implements the KPartsmodel correctly can
be embedded in this fashion.
KParts can also be used to embed certain types of multimedia content
into HTML pages; for example, KMPlayer's KPart enables Konqueror to show
embedded video on web pages.

KIO
Figure 24 Konqueror displaying the contents of an audio CD

In addition to browsing files and web sites, Konqueror

utilizes KIO plugins to extend its capabilities well beyond those of other
browsers and file managers. It uses components of KIO, the Konqueror I/O
plugin system, to access different protocols such as HTTP and FTP (support
for these is built-in).
Similarly, Konqueror can use KIO plugins (called IOslaves) to access ZIP
files and other archives, smb (Windows) shares, to process ed2k links
(edonkey/emule), or even to browse audio CDs, ("audiocd:/") andrip them
via drag-and-drop. The FISH ("fish://user@host") IOslave allows Konqueror to
manage files on remote secure shell servers, and the "man:" and "info:"
IOslaves are handy for fetching nicely formatted documentation.
A complete list is available in the KDE Info Center's Protocols section.
Platforms

Figure 25 Konqueror displaying Wikipedia in Windows Vista

Konqueror has traditionally been developed for Linux, but it supports

all platforms that KDE supports. This includes other Unix-like systems, such
as BSD and Solaris, as well as Mac OS X. Konqueror can be run under
Windows as part of the KDE on Windows project.

File Manager : Dolphin (Default for KDE 4.0s)

Figure 26 Screen shot of Dolphin Unlike Konqueror, Dolphin is focused purely on file
management.

Dolphin is a file manager for KDE. It is the default file manager for the
current version, KDE 4, and can be optionally installed on KDE 3. Although
replaced as the default file manager for KDE 4, Konqueror is still the
default web browser, and can be used as an alternative file manager
for power users.
Under previous KDE versions, Konqueror had served both as the
default file manager and web browser. However, for many years users have
criticized that Konqueror was too complex for simple file navigation. As a
response, the two functions were divided into two separate applications.
Under KDE 4, Dolphin was streamlined for browsing files, while sharing as
much code as possible with Konqueror. Konqueror continues to be developed
primarily as a web browser.

Dolphin and KDE 3

As development of the KDE 4 version was underway, the KDE 3 version
of Dolphin was discontinued. However, the program continues to be
unofficially available for KDE 3 under the slightly modified name of "D3lphin".
D3lphin contains many bugfixes and a new sidebar, but is no longer
maintained.
Features
Breadcrumb navigation bar - each part of the URL is clickable
3 view modes (Icons, Details and Columns), remembered for
each folder
File Previews
Split views (for copying and moving files)
Network transparency - using KDE's KIO slaves
Undo/Redo functionality
Tabbed navigation
Renaming of a variable number of selected items in one step
NEPOMUK integration
E-Mail Client Kontact
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software
suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and
email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications
(KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, etc.) into the container application.
History
The initial groupware container application was written in an afternoon
by Matthias Hölzer-Klüpfel and later imported into the KDE source repository
and maintained by Daniel Molkentin. This container application is essential
for Kontact to operate, but without embedded components is not useful by
itself.
The first embedded components were created by Cornelius
Schumacher. He modified the KAddressBook and KOrganizer applications to
create the initial addressbook and organizer components. At this stage no
mail client component existed so KDE still lacked a functional integrated
groupware application. However Cornelius' groundbreaking work acted as a
prototype for other developers to base their efforts on.
Don Sanders created the missing mail client component by modifying
the KMail application. He then integrated the mail client component with the
other components, and the groupware container application, assembled and
released the initial Kontact packages, and created the initial Kontact website.
Daniel Molkentin, Cornelius Schumacher and Don Sanders then formed
the core Kontact team. The KMail and container application changes were
imported into the KDE source repository, and Kontact was released as part of
KDE 3.2.
During the construction of the Kontact application suite,
the Kolab groupware server was being worked on
by Erfrakon, Intevation andKlarälvdalens Datakonsult simultaneously and
was completed at approximately the same time. This work was done as part
of the Kroupwareproject that also involved modifying the KMail and
KOrganizer applications to enhance them with additional groupware
features.
The core Kontact team, the Kolab consortium, and several independent
KDE PIM developers then worked together to enhance Kontact by integrating
the Kroupware functionality and making Kolab the primary Kontact server.
Additionally a news component was created from
the KNode application by KDE developer Zack Rusin, and Kontact was
modified to support an array of mainly web based suites of collaboration
software.
E-Mail
KMail
 Figure 27 KMail using the default layout: the folder
list on the left side and the preview pane below
the message list (top right)

KMail is the e-mail client of the KDE desktop environment.

It supports folders, filtering, viewing HTML mail, and international
character sets. It can handle IMAP, dIMAP, POP3, and local mailboxes for
incoming mail. It can send mail via SMTP or sendmail.
Spam and filtering
KMail uses two special filters to provide a modular access to spam-
filtering programs:
Send this e-mail to a program allows any program to be specified, and
when that KMail filter is activated, the program will be run and supplied with
the contents of the e-mail as its standard input.
Pipe this e-mail through a program not only sends the e-mail to a
specified program, but replaces the e-mail with the output of that program.
This allows the use of systems such as SpamAssassin which can add their
own headers to a piece of e-mail.
These modular filters can be combined with text filters to detect (for
example) e-mail which has been flagged by SpamAssassin by looking for the
special headers it added.
KMail allows manual filtering of spam directly on the mail server, a
very interesting feature for dial-up users. Emails that exceed some threshold
size (standard is 50 kb, but it may be set any value) are not automatically
copied to the local computer. With "get, decide later, delete" options, KMail
lists them but does not download the whole message, which allows the
deletion of spam and over-sized messages without wasting time.
Cryptographic support
Figure 28 KMail's built-in encryption and signature support

KMail supports the OpenPGP standard and can automatically encrypt,

decrypt, sign, and verify signatures of email messages and its attachments
via either the inline or OpenPGP/MIME method of signing/encryption. KMail
depends on GnuPG for this functionality. As a visual aid, KMail will colour
verified email messages green for trusted signatures; yellow for untrusted
signatures; red for invalid signatures; and blue for encrypted messages.
KMail also supports S/MIME messages as well as Chiasmus, a
proprietary cryptographic system created by the German Federal Office for
Information Security (BSI).

Address Book KAddressBook

KAddressBook is an address book software application made for the K

Desktop Environment.
Features
Exports and imports cards to and from vCard format.
Uses DCOP to interface with other applications.
Interoperable with KMail and Kopete, as well as Kontact.
Customize fields and categories.
Automatic formatting of names.
 Filter ability, to search for addresses.
Capability to query an LDAP database containing person
information.
Description
KAddressBook is a graphical interface to organizing the addresses and
contact information of family, friends, business partners, etc. It integrates
with KDE, allowing interoperability with other KDE programs, including the e-
mail client KMail – allowing one-click access to composing an e-mail – and
the instant messenger Kopete – showing the online status of and easy access
to instant messaging contacts. It can be synchronized with other software or
device using Kitchensync and OpenSync.
A contact may be classified into customizable categories, such as
Family, Business, or Customer. Many of the fields can have multiple entries,
for example, if the contact has several e-mail addresses. A contact's fields
are separated into four tabs and one tab for custom fields.

Organizer KOrganizer

Figure 29 KOrganizer’s Calendar view

KOrganizer is the personal organizer of the KDE desktop environment.

It has the ability to manage calendars, journals, and a to do list.
 News Feed Aggregator Akregator

Figure 30 Akregator running under KDE 4.2

Akregator is an open source feed aggregator which is part of KDE. It

supports both RSS and Atom. Feeds can be sorted into categories. Akregator
will aggregate all feeds in a particular category into a single list of new
entries so that, for example, all news in the category "Politics" can be shown
in one list. It has an incremental search feature for the titles of all the entries
in its database.
Akregator can be configured to fetch feeds within regular intervals. The
user can also manually request to fetch all feeds, individual ones, or those in
a selected category. It supports feed icons and embeds KHTML as an
internal, tabbed web browser. Any external browser can also be called.
Akregator is part of KDE since the 3.4 release, and it is distributed with
the kdepim module.

X-Window Manager: KWin

In Unix computing, KWin is a window manager for the X Window

System. It is an integral part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE), although it
can be used on its own or with other desktop environments.
 History
Nam Versi KDE
Details
e on Version
KWM 1.0 1.0 1
KWin 2.0 2.0 Extended support for themes and window effects.
Improved support for the
KWin 3.0 3.2
extended ICCCM standards from freedesktop.org
KWin 4.0 4.0 Compositing support and Compiz-like effects.

Look and feel

There are many window decorations for KWin, including the default
Plastik, Microsoft Windows-like Redmond, and Keramik. IceWM themes can
also be used with it, provided the kdeartwork package is installed.

Widget Toolkit: QT

Qt (pronounced "cute") is a cross-platform application development

framework, widely used for the development of GUIprograms (in which case
it is known as a widget toolkit), and also used for developing non-GUI
programs such as console tools and servers. Qt is most notably used
in KDE, Opera, Google Earth, Skype, Qt Extended, Adobe Photoshop
Album,VirtualBox and OPIE. It is produced by the Norwegian company Qt
Software, formerly known as Trolltech, a wholly owned subsidiary
of Nokia since June 17, 2008

Distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public

License (among others), Qt is free and open source software.
Varieties
• Qt/X11 – Qt for X Window System (Unix / Linux)
• Qt/Mac – Qt for Apple Mac OS X
• Qt/Windows – Qt for Microsoft Windows
• Qt/Embedded – Qt for embedded platforms
(PDA, Smartphone, etc.)
• Qt/WinCE – Qt for Windows CE
 • Qt Jambi – Qt for Java
• Qt Extended – Application platform for Embedded Linux-
based mobile computing devices (Discontinued)
Qt software on October 20, 2008 announced a version of Qt on S60
platform.

License
Until version 1.45, source code for Qt was released under the FreeQt
license — which was viewed as not compliant with the open source principle
by the Open Source Initiative and the free software definition by Free
Software Foundation, because while the source was available it did not allow
the redistribution of modified versions.
With the release of version 2.0 of the toolkit, the license was changed
to the Q Public License (QPL), a free software license but one regarded by
the Free Software Foundation as incompatible with the GPL. Compromises
were sought between KDE and Trolltech whereby Qt would not be able to fall
under a more restrictive license than the QPL, even if Trolltech were bought
out or went bankrupt. This led to the creation of theKDE Free Qt foundation,
which guarantees that Qt would fall under a BSD-style license should no free
software/open source version of Qt be released during 12 months.
Later Qt became available under a dual license, the GPL v2 or v3 with
special exception and a proprietary commercial license on all supported
platforms. The commercial license allows the final application to be licensed
under various free software/open source licenses such as the LGPL or
the Artistic License, or a proprietary software license.
As announced on January 14, 2009, Qt version 4.5 adds another option,
the LGPL, which should make Qt more suitable for non-GPL open source
projects and for commercial users.
All editions support a wide range of compilers, including the GCC C++
compiler and the Visual Studio suite.
Current
Trolltech released Qt 4 on June 28, 2005 and introduced five new
technologies in the framework:
Tulip A set of template container classes.
Interview A model/view architecture for item views.
Arthur A 2D painting framework.
Scribe A Unicode text renderer with a public API for performing low-
level text layout.
MainWindow A modern action-based main window, toolbar, menu, and
docking architecture.
Qt 4.1, released on December 19, 2005, introduced
integrated SVG Tiny support, a PDF backend to Qt's printing system, and a
few other features.
 Qt 4.2, released on October 4, 2006, introduced Windows
Vista support, introduced native CSS support for widget styling, as well as
the QGraphicsView framework for efficient rendering of thousands of 2D
objects onscreen, to replace Qt 3.x's QCanvas class.
Qt 4.3, released on May 30, 2007, improved Windows Vista support,
improved OpenGL engine, SVG file generation, added QtScript
(ECMAScriptscripting engine based on QSA).
Qt 4.4, released on May 6, 2008. Features included are improved
multimedia support using Phonon, enhanced XML support, a concurrency
framework to ease the development of multi-threaded applications,
an IPC framework with a focus on shared memory, and WebKit integration.
Qt 4.5, released on March 3, 2009. Major included features
are QtCreator, improved graphical engine, improved integration
with WebKit,OpenDocument Format read support and new licensing options.
Mac OS X Cocoa Framework support.
Design
The innovation of Qt when it was first released relied on a few key
concepts.
Use of native UI-rendering APIs
Qt used to emulate the native look of its intended platforms, which
occasionally led to slight discrepancies where that emulation was imperfect.
Recent versions of Qt use the native APIs of the different platforms to draw
the Qt controls, and so do not suffer from such issues.
Meta object compiler
Known as the moc, this is a tool that is run on the sources of a Qt
program prior to compiling it. The tool will generate C++ code with "Meta
Information" about the classes used in the program. This meta information is
used by Qt to provide programming features not available natively in C++:
The signal/slot system (which has also been implemented in native C++ by
other parties), introspection and asynchronous function calls.
Criticism
The use of an additional tool has been criticized for making Qt
programming different from pure C++ programming. In particular, the
choice of an implementation based on macros has been criticized for its
absence of type safety and pollution of the namespace. Trolltech viewed this
as a necessary trade-off to provide introspection and the dynamically
generated slot and signal mechanism.
Qt hello world
#include <QtGui/QApplication>
#include <QtGui/QLabel>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])

 {
QApplication app(argc, argv);
QLabel label("Hello, world!");
label.show();
return app.exec();
}
Applications built using Qt
opular examples of applications which use Qt include:
Adobe Photoshop Album, an image organizing application
Avidemux, a Free Software program designed for multi-
purpose video editing and processing, has a Qt frontend since
version 2.4
Doxygen, an API document generator
Freemat, a free numerical computing environment and
programming language
Gadu-Gadu, a popular Polish instant messaging client
Google Earth, a 3D map program
KDE, a popular desktop environment for Unix-like operating
systems
KDELibs, a library base for many KDE applications
including Amarok, K3b, KDevelop and KOffice
Last.fm Player, the desktop client for the popular internet radio
and music community website.
Launchy, the open source keystroke launcher for Windows
LMMS, a free open source sequencer and software synthesis
package
LyX, a GUI frontend to LaTeX
Mathematica, Linux version uses Qt for the GUI front-end
Mixxx, cross-platform open source DJ mixing software
Motorola A760, uses Qt/Embedded in its UI
MythTV, an open source digital video recorder
Opera, a web browser (only Linux and *BSD builds)
Psi, an instant messaging client for XMPP
Quantum GIS, a free desktop GIS
Scribus, a desktop publishing application
Skype, a P2P VOIP application
TeamSpeak, cross-platform voice communication software
Tlen.pl, a popular Polish instant messaging client
TOra, a database administration tool
VirtualBox, a PC virtualization application
VisIt, an interactive parallel visualization tool for viewing
scientific data
VisTrails, a scientific workflow management and visualization
system
 VLC Media Player, an open source media player, Qt frontend
since version 0.9
Xconfig, Linux Kernel configuration tool

KDE Application-Basic Tools 2

Terminal Emulator: Konsole

Figure 31 Konsole on openSUSE 11.1

Konsole is a free terminal emulator which is part of KDE. Konsole was

originally written by Lars Doelle.
The KDE applications Konqueror, Krusader, Kate, and KDevelop use
Konsole to provide embedded terminal functionality.
Features
Tabbed terminals. Tab titles update dynamically depending on the
current activity in the terminal.
Split-view mode.
Directory and SSH bookmarking
Customizable color schemes.
 Customizable key bindings.
Notifications about silence or activity in a terminal
Incremental search
Can open Dolphin or the user's preferred file manager at the terminal
program's current directory
Export of output in plain text or HTML format.

Text Editor : Kate And Kwrite

Kate

In computing, Kate is a text editor for KDE. The acronym "Kate" stands
for "KDE advanced text editor".
Kate has been part of the kdebase package since KDE release 2.2
(August 15, 2002). Because of the KParts technology which is part of KDE, it
is possible to embed Kate as an editing component in any other KDE
application. The integrated development environment KDevelop, the web
development environment Quanta Plus, and the LaTeX front-end Kile are
three of the major KDE applications that make use of Kate as an editing
component.

Features of Kate include:

Syntax highlighting engine, extensible via XML files
Search and replace text using regular expressions
MDI, window splitting, window tabbing
CR, CRLF, LF newline support
 column selections (aka block selection)
Encoding support (utf-8, utf-16, ascii etc.)
Encoding conversion
Column selections
Code folding capabilities for Java, C++, C, PHP, Python and
others.
Shell integration
Keep multiple documents open in one window
Named session support (known as "projects" before KDE version
2.5)
Drag and drop text editing
Interpuncts are used to denote space characters
HTML export
Plugin architecture for the application and editor component,
including:
Basic word completion
Thesaurus / spell checking
Wide protocol support (http, ftp, ssh, webdav etc.)
Customizable shortcuts
Scriptable using JavaScript (KDE 3.5)
Kate is built using the KatePart widget in KDE which provides the bulk
of the applications' editing support.
KWrite
KWrite

KWrite 4.3

KWrite is a lightweight text editor for the K Desktop Environment

(KDE).
Features
export to HTML, PDF, PostScript
Block selection mode (see screenshot)
 Code folding
Bookmarks
Syntax highlighting
Encoding selection
End-of-line mode selection (Unix, Windows, Macintosh)
Word completion
KParts technology
In KDE 2.x, KWrite didn't use KParts technology, which allows
embedding one application into another. Then, KWrite was rewritten to use
this technology. It allows the user to choose, for example, Vim to be
embedded into KWrite. Other options include Qt Designer based text
editor and KDE advanced text editor (KATE). The latter is the default option,
and makes use of Kate text editor.
Location of KWrite
KWrite is a part of kdebase package. Recently, it has been merged with
Kate, and as such, its source code is located in the kate/ directory.

KDE Applications-Multimedia
Image viewer : Gwenview
Gwenview

Figure 32 Gwenview

Gwenview is an image viewer for the KDE desktop environment. The

current maintainer is Aurélien Gâteau. The word "Gwen" means "white" in
the Breton language and is commonly used as a first name. While it was
available in KDE 3, the KDE 4 version has a simplified user interface, making
it more suitable for quickly browsing through collection of images. Gwenview
is also used to display images. It provides full-screen interface that can be
used to display images as a slide-show.
Major features:
Directory browser
Image viewer
Metadata comment editor
Thumbnail image view of current directory
Use of KIPI (KDE Image Plugins Interface) plugins for
manipulating images
Versions
Version 1.4.0, released in September 2006, adds several new major
features, including:
SVG and video support
Filtering based on file type, file name pattern, and date.
Latest version for KDE 3 is 1.4.2, released in September 2007

Video Player: Kaffeine And Dragon Player

kaffeine

Kaffeine

Figure 33 Kaffeine title screen on Ubuntu

Kaffeine is a media player for Unix-like operating

systems running KDE. By default it uses xine-lib media framework but also
supportsGStreamer. It also supports the use of MPlayer project's binary
codecs for proprietary formats. Kaffeine developers have also produced
aMozilla plugin to start the player for streaming content over the web.
Features include streaming, DVB, DVD, Video CD and CD audio.
Kaffeine 0.8.7 released
 The kde4 version taking more time than expected, this is a new kde3
release.
It introduces some important features.

Dragon Player
Dragon Player

Figure 34 Dragon view's screenshot

Dragon Player is a simple media player for the KDE desktop

environment. It is the renamed continuation of a video player for KDE
3 called Codeine, which was originally created and developed by Max Howell,
and is now developed by Ian Monroe under the new name for KDE 4.Because
Dragon Player makes use of Phonon—a multimedia API that itself connects to
any of several multimedia frameworks—it will play anything the particular
connected multimedia framework supports. It is the default video player in
the KDE 4 version of Kubuntu 8.04.
Features
Simple interface
Resuming videos
Support for subtitles
 Video display settings (brightness, contrast)
Due to using Solid and Phonon, Dragon Player is independent of
any multimedia framework or hardware abstraction layer
Supports playing CDs and DVDs

Audio Players : Amorak And JuK

JuK
JuK

Figure 35 A screenshot of JuK audio jukebox for

KDE

JuK is a free software audio player for KDE, the default player since
KDE 3.2 part of the kdemultimedia package. JuK supports collections
ofMP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC audio files.
JuK was started by Scott Wheeler in 2000, and was originally
called QTagger — however, it was not until 2002 that the application was
moved into KDE CVS, where it has grown into a mature audio application. It
was first officially part of KDE in KDE 3.2.
Features of JuK
Though an able music player, JuK is primarily an audio jukebox
application, with a strong focus on management of music. The following
features reflect this:
Collection list and multiple user defined playlists.
Ability to scan directories to automatically import playlists (.m3u files)
and music files on start up.
Dynamic Search Playlists that are automatically updated as fields in
the collection change.
A Tree View mode where playlists are automatically generated for sets
of albums, artists and genres.
Playlist history to indicate which files have been played and when.
Inline search for filtering the list of visible items.
The ability to guess tag information from the file name or
using MusicBrainz online lookup.
File renamer that can rename files based on the tag content.
ID3v1, ID3v2 and Ogg Vorbis tag reading and editing support (via
TagLib).

Amarok
Amarok

Figure 36 Screenshot of Amarok audio player,

showing the playlist, dynamic playlist editor, and
several applets.

Amarok is a free software music player for Linux and other varieties of
Unix. It makes use of core components from the K Desktop Environment, but
is released independently of the central KDE release cycle.
Despite the fact that Amarok uses wolf-based artwork, and that the
name "amarok" or "amaroq" literally refers to the Inuktitut word for "wolf", it
was originally named after the album Amarok by Mike Oldfield. The 1.2
release originally had a wolf icon, but this was later withdrawn due to
similarity with the logo of WaRP Graphics Inc. Amarok's wolf logo has now
been modified sufficiently so as not to infringe on WaRP's trademarked logo,
and reinstated.
Originally named amaroK, it was renamed to Amarok in June 2006.
The latest version of the software called Amarok 2 was released
on 2008-12-10 and it is a complete aesthetic and functional redesign of the
Amarok 1.4x series.
Amarok 1.4 established a reputation for innovation after its release,
but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult
as Amarok grew. With the release of KDE4 the developers decided to give
Amarok a complete overhaul aesthetically as well as functionally leading to
the birth of a new, improved and robust media player named Amarok 2.
Features
Basic uses and functions
Amarok serves many functions rather than just playing music files. For
example, Amarok can be used to organize a library of music into folders
according to genre, artist, and album, can edit tags attached to most music
formats, associate album art, attach lyrics, and automatically "score" music
as it is played.
Although a more technical list of features is listed below, here are the
primary functions or uses for Amarok:
Playing media files in various formats including but not limited to
(depending on the setup) FLAC, Ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, Windows
Media Audio, Apple Lossless, WavPack, TTA and Musepack.
Amarok does not play digital music files embedded with DRM.
Tagging digital music files (currently FLAC, Ogg, WMA, AAC, MP3,
and RealMedia).
Associating cover art with a particular album, and retrieving the
cover art from Amazon
Creating and editing playlists, including smart and dynamic
playlists. The dynamic playlists can use such information as the
"score" given to a song by an Amarok script, and the playcount
which is stored with the song.
Synchronizing, retrieving, playing, or uploading music to the
following digital music players: iPod, iriver iFP, Creative
NOMAD, Creative ZEN, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices
with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support.
Displaying artist information from Wikipedia and retrieving song
lyrics.
Last.fm support, including submitting played tracks (including
those played on some digital music players) to Last.fm,
retrieving similar artists and playing Last.fm streams.
Podcast
 From version 1.4.4, Amarok introduced the integration
of Magnatune, a non-DRM digital music store, enabling users to
purchase music in Ogg,FLAC, WAV and MP3 formats.
Some of these features depend on other programs or libraries
that must be installed on the computer to operate.
Amarok 2.0
Amarok 2 was released on 10 December 2008 bringing along a
plethora of new features and a completely redesigned interface. New
features include:
Tight integration with online services such as Magnatune, Jamendo,
MP3tunes, Last.fm and Shoutcast.
Completely overhauled scripting API and plugin support to allow better
integration into Amarok.
Migration from the KDE 3 to KDE 4 framework, and utilization of core
technologies such as Solid, Phonon, and Plasma.
The user interface has been redesigned to make context information
like lyrics and albums from the same artist more accessible and allows the
user to decide which information is available by adding applets to the
Context View in the middle. The new Biased Playlists offer a way to let
Amarok take care of the playlist in an intelligent way similar to Dynamic
Playlists in previous versions. New services can easily be added via
GetHotNewStuff in Amarok or from kde-apps.org. The migration to the KDE 4
framework allows Amarok 2 to make use of technologies like Plasma,
Phonon, and Solid which make Amarok easier to use and maintain.

KDE Applications- CD Burner and Ripper

CD Burner and ripper- K3b
 Figure 37 Screenshot of K3b 1.0

K3b (from KDE Burn Baby Burn) is a CD and DVD authoring application
for the KDE desktop environment for Unix-like computer operating systems.
It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks
like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as
well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also
perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings
which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual
disc recording in K3b is done by thecommand
line utilities cdrecord or wodim, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b
features a built-in DVD ripper.
As is the case with most KDE applications, K3b is written in the C+
+ programming language and uses the Qt GUI toolkit. Released under
theGNU General Public License, K3b is free software.
A finalized KDE 4 version of K3b is expected sometime around April or
May.
Features
Some of K3B's features include:
Data CD/DVD burning
Audio CD burning
CD Text support
DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW support
CD-R/CD-RW support
Mixed Mode CD (Audio and Data on one disk)
Multisession CD
Video CD/Video DVD authoring
eMovix CD/eMovix DVD
Disk to Disk CD and DVD copy
Erasing CD-RW/DVD-RW/DVD+RW
ISO image support
Ripping Audio CDs, Video CDs, Video DVDs
K3B can also burn data CDs that support Linux/Unix based OS,
Windows, DOS, Very Large Files (UDF), Linux/Unix +
Windows, Rock Ridge,Joliet file systems.

KDE Applications-Office Application

KOffice
 Figure 38 KWord screenshot

KOffice is an office suite for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). All its
components are released under free software/open source licenses and
use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible. The latest
version of KOffice is 1.6.3, which was released on June 7, 2007. KOffice is
released separately from KDE and can be downloaded at the KOffice
homepage.
KOffice 2.0
The current KOffice 1.6.x series is designed for Unix, but the upcoming
2.0 release is expected to add compatibility for Mac OS X and Windows. In
addition, KOffice is undergoing a large overhaul to use Flake and Pigment as
much as possible within applications. KOffice developers plan to share as
much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and
improve the user experience. They also want to create an OpenDocument
library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to easily
add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their
applications. Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom
functionality can be done with dbusor with scripting languages
like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript.
KOffice components
KOffice includes the following components:

A word processor with style sheets and

KWord frame-support for DTP-style editing of
complex layouts.

A spreadsheet application with multiple

KSpread sheet support, templates and more than
100mathematical formulas.
 A presentation program with image and
KPresenter
effect support.

A programmable flowchart drawing program

with dynamically loadable stencils. Developed
Kivio
bytheKompany, which offers additional (non-free)
stencils for sale.

A vector drawing application with a variety

Karbon14
of drawing and editing tools.

(Formerly known as Krayon and

KImageshop). A bitmap graphics manipulation
Krita program, primarily designed as
a painting program, with some image
processing features.

Kugar andK
Integrated report and chart generators.
Chart

KFormula An integrated mathematical formula editor.

An integrated data management

application, designed as a Microsoft
Access or FileMakercompetitor. It can be used for
Kexi designing and implementing databases, inserting
and processing data and performing queries. It
has limited compatibility with the MS Access file
format.

A project management application that can

KPlato
create Gantt-style charts.
 KOffice includes import filters for some file formats provided by
competitors.

KDE Applications- Internet Applications

All the main internet applications i.e web browser and e mail client are
discussed earlier in the section

Instant Messanger - Kopete

Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client.
Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and
integrates with the KDE desktop environment. According to the Kopete FAQ,
the name Kopete comes from the Chilean word Copete, a word to refer to
alcoholic drinks.
Protocols
Kopete allows users to connect to the following protocols:
.NET Messenger Service
AOL Instant Messenger
Bonjour
Gadu-Gadu (mostly broken in current releases)
ICQ
Jabber (XMPP) with jingle for voice (same as Google Talk uses)
Lotus Sametime via the Meanwhile plugin
Novell GroupWise
QQ
SMS
Skype (via Kopete Skype) (deprecated)
Winpopup Windows' legacy network messenger service.
Yahoo! Messenger

Features
Grouping messages within a window, with tabs for easy switching
of conversations.
Accounts option allows user to log on with multiple accounts.
Ability to define/handle multiple accounts of the same transport
(e.g. 3 of ICQ and 2 of Jabber) at the same time.
Alias nicknames for contacts.
Grouping different contacts who are really the same person as
one meta contact.
Custom notifications for meta contacts.
KAddressBook and KMail integration.
Logging conversations supported using the History plugin.
Style chat window appearance via XSL and CSS.
Custom emoticons supported.
 Custom notification feature pops up a notification, plays a sound,
or sends contact a message based on contact's status changes.
MSN and Yahoo! messenger webcam support.
Spell checking on-the-fly in chats.
Plugins
By default, Kopete supports the following plugins.
Auto Replace
Connection Status
Contact Notes
Cryptography
Highlight
History
KopeteTeX
Motion Auto-Away
Now Listening
Statistics
Text Effect
Translator
Web Presence
With a third party plugins Kopete supports:
Off-the-Record Messaging enabling for encrypted conversations
with deniable authentication and perfect forward secrecy.
Antispam by asking simple question to unknown contacts.

KDE Applications Other utility apps

Archive Manager- Ark
 Figure 39 A screenshot of Ark in KDE 4.1

Ark is an archiving tool for KDE, included into kdeutils package.

Features
Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead
acts as a frontend to command-line archivers. It can work with many
backends, including 7z, tar, rar, zip, gzip, bzip2, lha, zoo, and ar.
Ark can be integrated into Konqueror, through KParts technology, if the
appropriate plugin from kdeaddons package is installed. After installing it,
files can be added or extracted in/from the archives using Konqueror's
context menus.
Support for editing files in archive with external programs. Files can
also be deleted from the archive.
Archives creation with drag and drop.

PDF Reafer KPDF and Okular

KPDF
 Figure 40 Screenshot.

KPDF is a free PDF reader based on Xpdf. It is integrated with

the KDE desktop environment, so it embeds very well in Konqueror as KPart.
Feature highlights:
Three different ways of searching: find dialog, thumbnail filter and
type-ahead find.
Capture images and text easily with kpdf by dragging a rectangle
around what is desired to be captured.
Choosing the default background/text colors, like a CSS style sheet.
Ability to add bookmarks to pages.
KPDF allows text in PDFs to be read through KTTS text-to-speech. KPDF
has been replaced in KDE 4 by Okular.

Okular
 Figure 41 Okular showing a PDF in KDE 4

Okular is the document viewer for KDE 4. It is based on KPDF and it

replaced KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, KFaxview, KDVI in KDE 4. Its functionality
can be easily embedded in other applications.
Okular was started for the Google Summer of Code of 2005; Piotr
Szymanski was the accepted student.
Okular is a successful story of the 2007 Season of Usability. In this
season the Okular toolbar mockup was created based on an analysis of other
popular document viewers and a usage survey.
Okular has additional features, including commenting on pdf
documents, highlighting and drawing lines, geometric shapes, adding
textboxes, and stamps.

Okular can also be used on GNOME desktop environment.

It supports the following file formats:
Portable Document Format (PDF) with the Poppler backend
PostScript with the libgs backend
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) with the libTIFF backend
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) with the libCHM backend
DjVu with the DjVuLibre backend
Device independent file format (DVI)
XML Paper Specification (XPS)
OpenDocument format (ODF)
FictionBook
ComicBook
Plucker
EPUB
Various image formats
IDE KDevelop

Figure 42 Screenshot of KDevelop

KDevelop is a free software integrated development environment for

the KDE desktop environment for Unix-like computer operating systems.
KDevelop does not include a compiler; instead, it uses an external compiler
such as gcc to produce executable code.
The current version, 3.5, supports many programming languages such
as Ada, Bash, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby.
Released under the GNU General Public License, KDevelop is free software.
Features
KDevelop uses an embedded text editor component through
the KPart framework. The default editor is KDE Advanced Text Editor, which
can optionally be replaced with a Qt Designer-based editor. This list focuses
on the features of KDevelop itself. For features specific to the editor
component, see the article on Kate.
Source code editor with syntax highlighting and
automatic indentation (Kate).
Project management for different project types, such
as Automake, qmake for Qt based projects
and Ant for Java based projects.
Class browser.
GUI Designer
Front-end for the GNU Compiler Collection.
Front-end for the GNU Debugger.
Wizards for generating and updating class definitions and
application framework.
Automatic code completion (C/C++).
Built-in Doxygen support.
 Revision control (also known as SCM) support. Supported
systems include CVS, Subversion, Perforce and ClearCase.
KDevelop 3 is a completely plugin-based architecture. When a
developer makes a change, he only has to compile the plugin. There is a
possibility to keep several profiles each of which determines which plugins to
be loaded. KDevelop does not come with a text editor, but instead uses a
plugin for this purpose as well. KDevelop is programming language-
independent and build system-independent, supporting KDE, GNOME, and
many other technologies such as Qt, GTK+, and wxWidgets.
KDevelop has a variety of supported languages, including C, C+
+, Perl, Python, PHP, Java, Fortran, Ruby, Ada, Pascal, SQL,
and Bash scripting. Supported build systems include GNU (automake),
cmake, qmake, and make for custom projects (KDevelop does not destroy
your own Makefilesif that's what you want to use) and scripting projects
which don't need one.
Code completion is available for C and C++. Symbols are kept in
a Berkeley DB file for quick lookups without re-parsing. KDevelop also offers
a developer framework which helps to write new parsers for other
programming languages.
An integrated debugger lets you graphically do all the debugging with
breakpoints and backtraces. It even works with dynamically loaded plugins
unlike command line GDB.
Quick Open allows quick navigation between files.
Currently, 50 to 100 plugins exist for the IDE. Major ones include
persistent project-wide code bookmarks, Code abbreviations which let you
quickly expand text, a Source formatter which reformats your code to a style
guide before it is saved, Regular expressions search, and project-
wide search/replace which helps with refactoring code.
4.The battle GNOME vs. KDE
It appears this old argument is flaring up again. On Linux.com there
was an article discussing some recent posts on the Linux Foundation’s
Desktop Architects mailing list: Christian Schaller suggested Linus Torvalds
should try using Gnome for a month and then report back on his experiences
at the forthcoming GAUDEC conference in the UK. Inspired by this I’ve
decided to take up the challenge – all be it in the opposite direction (and I
won’t be reporting back at GAUDEC!).
I haven’t used KDE in well over a year, and when I did I only used it for
a few days, so I have very few expectations about what I’m going to find. The
reason I’ve never really tried KDE before is that Gnome hasn’t given me any
reason to switch: I’ve always been very happy with it and I guess it might be
fair to say I’m something of a Gnome fan. Despite this I promise to try and
stay as impartial as possible! I’ve just installed KDE on this system and this
week I plan to report back on my first impressions. I’m hoping that things I
might find different or difficult to begin with will be highlighted here and
some kind people will point me in the right direction so I can have the best
possible experience.
Logging in for the first time seemed to take quite a while to reach the
desktop so this persuaded me to compare the two desktops in terms of
speed: this first login was a bit of a fluke because when I switched back to
compare this with Gnome the second login seemed a lot quicker. In fact I
would say that KDE actually feels a bit sharper than Gnome across the entire
desktop with applications starting quicker, specifically Firefox – a great start
for KDE!
My first major gripe, though, is the desktop pager and keyboard short-
cuts! I’m a big fan of multiple desktops and find it to be very useful in
Gnome; I’m also a big fan of being able to very easily switch desktops with
the keyboard short-cut ctrl+alt+right which is set by default in Gnome. This
seems as obvious and important to me as ctrl+alt is for switching open
windows - yet in KDE it was not set by default. I’ve heard this sort of point
raised before with people suggesting that Gnome opts for sensible defaults
where as KDE expects the user to configure everything just the way they like
it; I’m starting to believe this is true! I was able, however, to quickly find the
Keyboard and Mouse options menu and set the short-cut myself. At this point
in my journey I’m leaning more towards the Gnome way of doing things;
perhaps after a month I will have been seduced by the infinite configurability
of KDE and the satisfaction of making things just so.
While trying to sort out the above problem I found the System Settings
menu which I actually thought was very good, as are all the settings’
dialogues throughout: although I’m not convinced they’re laid out in the
most intuitive way they are very thorough and give quite a few more options
than is immediately obvious in Gnome’s menus and and applications. For
example Kopete’s options were clearly labelled and I immediately discovered
how to change my screen name and set a display picture, something which
is not that apparent in Gaim (although this has been improved in version 2).
I’m also looking forward to giving Konqueror a good work out. I’ve
heard lots of positive things about its speed and the quality of its rendering
engine so I’m interested to see what these are like in the real world; not
forgetting to mention its reputation as a brilliant file manager! I haven’t
really had much need for Konqueror yet so you’ll have to wait until my final
thoughts in a month’s time (bet you can’t wait!!).
I guess the final point I’ll make regarding my first experiences with KDE
is that it seems messy: everything looks very busy and I’m finding it quite
difficult to pick out individual applications from the K menu, to pick out
individual users in Kopete, icons in the system tray etc which makes
navigation as a whole a bit less natural. Still I hear it’s all customizable so I’ll
start playing around and see if I can set things up how I like! It would seem
to me at this early stage that Gnome makes a lot more sense out of the
box…
I realise this was very brief but I’ve not been using KDE for long! I’ll
write again in a months time and let you know all the things that have driven
me crazy, the things that I’ve loved, and whether or not I’ll decide to stay
with KDE
5.XFACE-the underdog DE
 Figure 43 A typical Xfce 4.4 desktop. Various Xfwm
effects are visible (drop shadows behind windows,
semi-transparent windows and panel).

Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-
like platforms, such as Linux,Solaris and BSD. It aims to be fast and
lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use.
The current version, 4.6, is modular and reusable. It consists of
separately packaged components that together provide the full functionality
of the desktop environment, but which can be selected in subsets to create
the user's preferred personal working environment. Xfce is mainly used for
its ability to run a modern desktop environment on relatively modest
hardware.
It is based on the GTK+ 2 toolkit (as is GNOME). It uses the
Xfwm window manager, described below. Its configuration is entirely mouse-
driven, and the configuration files are hidden from the casual user.
Xfce is somewhat similar to the commercial CDE, but has been getting
a little further away from that comparison with each new major version.

History
Olivier Fourdan started the project in 1996. The name "Xfce" originally
stood for "XForms Common Environment", but since that time Xfce has been
rewritten twice and no longer uses that toolkit. The name survived, but it is
no longer capitalized as "XFce", but rather as "Xfce". The developers' current
stance is that the initialism no longer stands for anything specific.
First versions
Xfce began as a simple project created with XForms, meant to be a
free Linux clone of CDE. Fourdan released the program, a simple toolbar,
toibiblio (then "SunSITE").
Version 2
 Fourdan continued developing the project, and in 1998, Xfce 2 was
released with the first version of Xfce's window manager, Xfwm. He
requested to have the project included in Red Hat Linux, but was refused
because the project was based on XForms. Red Hat only accepted software
that was free and open source, but, at the time, XForms was closed source
and free only for personal use. For the same reason, Xfce was not in Debian
before version 3. Xfce 2 was only distributed in Debian's contrib component.
Version 3
In March 1999 Fourdan began a complete rewrite of the project based
on GTK+, a non-proprietary toolkit whose popularity was increasing. The
result was Xfce 3.0, which was licensed under the GNU GPL. Along with being
based completely on open-source software, the project gained GTK+'s drag-
and-drop support, native language support, and improved configurability.
Xfce was uploaded to SourceForge.net in February 2001, starting with
version 3.8.1.
Version 4
In version 4.0.0, Xfce was upgraded to use the GTK+ 2 libraries.
Changes in 4.2.0 included a compositing manager for Xfwm which added
built-in support for transparency and drop shadows, as well as a new
default SVG icon set. In January 2007, Xfce 4.4.0 was released. This included
the Thunar file manager, a replacement for Xffm. Support for desktop icons
was added. Also, various improvements were made to the panel to prevent
buggy plugins from crashing the whole panel.
Applications

Mousepad

Xfce provides a development framework for applications. Other than

Xfce itself, there are third-party programs which use the Xfce libraries, most
notably the Mousepad text editor, Xfmedia audio player, Orage Calendar
and Terminal. One of the services provided to applications by the framework
is a red banner across the top of the window when the application is running
with root privileges warning the user that they could damage system files.
Other Xfce components include:
Xfmedia, a xine-based media player for Xfce
Xfprint, a print manager
Xfburn, a CD/DVD burner
Mousepad
Figure 44 Screen shot mouse pad

Mousepad is a simple text editor written by Erik Harrison. It is the

default text editor of the Xfce desktop environment. According to the Xfce
website, Mousepad is based on an older text editor called Leafpad, and was
developed in order to provide printing support. Mousepad has had a handful
of maintainers since its introduction. The next version of Mousepad, version
0.3.x, is a rewrite being conducted by Nick Schermer.
Orage
Starting with version 4.4, Xfcalendar was renamed to Orage and
several features were added. Orage has alarms and uses
the iCalendarformat, making it compatible with many other calendar
applications. It also includes a panel clock plugin and an international clock
application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different
time zones.
Thunar
Thunar is a file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems, written
using the GTK+ 2 toolkit and shipped with Xfce version 4.4 RC1 and later.
Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meurer, and was originally intended to
replace XFFM, Xfce's previous file manager. Thunar was initially called Filer
but was changed to Thunar due to a name clash.
The main goal of the Thunar project is to create a file manager that is
fast, clean, and easy to use. It is designed to start up faster and be more
responsive than other Linux file managers, such as Nautilus and Konqueror .
Accessibility, another goal of the project, is accomplished using Assistive
Technologies (i.e., GNOME Accessibility Toolkit). Like the rest of Xfce, Thunar
is designed to comply with standards, such as those stated
at freedesktop.org. Thunar is simple and lightweight by design, but its
functionality can be extended through plugins.
Thunar is named after the god of thunder in Norse mythology.
Xfwm
Starting with version 4.2, Xfwm integrates its own compositing
manager. At its inception, many users called it the most stable one available,
though at the time, in late 2004, xcompmgr was the only other compositing
manager available.

Midori
Midori ( Japanese for green) is a web browser that aims to be
lightweight and fast. It uses the WebKit rendering engine and
the GTK+ 2interface. Midori is part of the Xfce desktop environment's
Goodies component. As of February 2009, the project is still at alpha status.
Features
]

Figure 45 Midori Passing the Acid3 Test

Among the latest features are:

toggle full image zoom
graphically add and remove items from the toolbar
there is a plugin panel
the sidepanel can be moved to the right side
internationalized domain names are supported
a mouse gestures extension
integration with Maemo if you're on a mobile device
find as you type.

Conclusion
Every day we see our computer and see the desktop many times a
day. But do we think which technology is working here. This is the day when
we see the X desktop around. Windows and Mac don’t have variety in their
desktop environments but Linux has. Here you can only two as they are the
leaders here. You have seen the reason also. It’s easy to enjoy the Linux
Desktop Environments.

Bibliography
w en.wikipedia.org
w torwaldsfamily.blogspot.com
w www.linuxforyou.com
M Linux For You Dec ’08 Jan ‘09
M Digit’s supplement on Linux April 2004 and February 2009