KDE and Plasma Desktops

 I did not install KDE and Plasma Desktops!

Linux Fundamentals

 Linux Fundamentals

1. Boat Loader 

Systemd

System 5 Init

2. Kernel to deal with hardware

3. Dbus that integrate and share resources with application and probably daemons.

4. Desktop

5. Application on top of the Desktop (Graphic interface)

What’s is Xmonard?

 Xmonard, I think is not a desktop but a terminal emulator padded up.

 

What’s new in XMonard?

• xmonad and xmonad-contrib 0.18.0 are available. New versions of xmonad and xmonad-contrib have been released. Check out our download page for instructions on where to get them. (2024-02-03)
• Wayland. We on the XMonad devteam (Tomáš, Tony, Yecine, and myself) have been collecting contributions for the past two years with an eye toward paying someone to work on a port of XMonad to Wayland, since none of us is up to the task. We think we now have enough contributions coming in monthly to pay for someone to work with us on it. (2023-10-06)
• xmonad 0.17.2 is available. A new version of xmonad has been released. Check out our download page for instructions on where to get it. (2023-04-02)
• Report a bug and we’ll squash it for you in the next release.
• Follow us on twitter, or join the xmonad subreddit, or come say hi in the IRC channel (#xmonad@irc.libera.chat)!
• Checkout some amazing videos about xmonad, and see what other people did in the screenshot gallery.

Why use XMonad?

XMonad is..

• tiling: xmonad automates the common task of arranging windows, so you can concentrate on getting stuff done.
• minimal: Out of the box, no window decorations, no status bar, no icon dock. just clean lines and efficiency.
• stable: Haskell and smart programming practices guarantee a crash-free experience.
• extensible: It sports a vibrant extension library, including support for window decorations, status bars, and icon docks.
• full of features: core features like per-screen workspaces, true xinerama support and managehooks can’t be found in any other wm.
• easy: we work hard to make common configuration tasks one-liners.
• friendly: an active, friendly mailing list and IRC channel (#xmonad@irc.libera.chat) are waiting to help you get up and running.

XMonad features

• Very stable, fast, small and simple.
• Tiny code base (~2000 lines of Haskell)
• Automatic window tiling and management
• First class keyboard support: a mouse is unnecessary
• Full support for tiling windows on multi-head displays
• Full support for floating, tabbing and decorated windows
• Full support for GNOME and KDE utilities
• XRandR support to rotate, add or remove monitors
• Per-workspace layout algorithms
• Per-screens custom status bars
• Compositing support
• Powerful, stable customisation and on-the-fly reconfiguration
• Large extension library
• Excellent, extensive documentation
• Large, active development team, support and community
• Read more reviews of xmonad

NextStep

 NextStep was a desktop that is discontinued.

Window Maker

 Window Maker is another Lihght Weight Desktop.

Please DO NOT use the Generic term Window Manager.

Awesome Desktop

 What is this awesome window manager?

Awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license.

It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with every day computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their graphical environment.

Concepts

A window manager is probably one of the most used software applications in your day-to-day tasks, along with your web browser, mail reader and text editor. Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable.

awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible, highly configurable window manager.

To achieve this goal, awesome has been designed as a framework window manager. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language.

We provide a documented API to configure and define the behavior of your window manager.

Features and non-features

• Very stable, fast and small codebase and footprint.
• First window manager using the asynchronous XCB library instead of the old, synchronous Xlib, which makes awesome less subject to latency compared to other window managers.
• Documented source code and API.
• No mouse needed: everything can be performed with the keyboard.
• Real multihead support (XRandR) with per screen desktops (tags).
• Implements many Freedesktop standards: EWMH, XDG Base Directory, XEmbed, Desktop Notification, System Tray.
• Does not distinguish between layers: there is no floating or tiled layer.
• Uses tags instead of workspaces: allow to place clients on several tags, and display several tags at the same time.
• A lot of Lua extensions to add features: dynamic tagging, widget feeding, tabs, layouts, …
• D-Bus support.
• And more.

IceWM

IceWarm is beat out of the lot with everything in one place. 

I am going to use on Regular Basis.

IceWM

IceWM is a window manager for the X Window System. 

The goal of IceWM is speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user’s way.          It comes with a taskbar with pager, global and per-window keybindings and a dynamic menu system. Application windows can be managed by keyboard and mouse. Windows can be iconified to the taskbar, to the tray, to the desktop or be made hidden. They are controllable by a quick switch window (Alt+Tab) and in a window list. A handful of configurable focus models are menu-selectable. Setups with multiple monitors are supported by RandR and Xinerama. IceWM is very configurable, themeable and well documented. It includes an optional external background wallpaper manager with transparency support, a simple session manager and a system tray.

IceWM is available on popular Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, CentOS, antiX, NixOS and on most *BSDs.

Software

IceWM was coded from scratch in C++ by Marko Maček since 1997. It is now maintained at Github.

Releases

The latest released version is 3.5.0 (2024-05-20).

Features

Easy to use, simple and fast

Standards compliant

Fully usable with keyboard

Alt+Tab window switching

Efficient resource usage

Task bar (optional)

Multiple work spaces

Fully documented

A large number of themes

Usable with GNOME and KDE environments

Regenerates menus when configuration changes

Support for sound effects

Multiple focus modes

Manual placement of windows option

Auto raising of windows option

Tool tips

Configurable keybinding

Supports Dock Apps in a container

Tabbed windows

GNUstep

GNU guys has given a wrong impression on all the Widow mangers.

Window Manager is generally used as a collective terms.

JWM is the lightest but has no Internet or Office (AbiWord) packages and I think the developers should include those two applications.

 

GNUstep "this is cut paste piece".

GNUstep is development environment, not a window manager

Many people have confused GNUstep with WindowMaker. GNUstep, however, is not a window manager. WindowMaker is the most often-used NeXT-looking application on a non-NeXT system. WindowMaker also uses a derivation of the GNUstep logo. WindowMaker is the preferred GNUstep window manager, but GNUstep applications also work with any window manager, although you're most likely, currently, to have a more cohesive desktop experience if you use the two in conjunction.
What GNUstep is

GNUstep is an advanced, cross-platform, object oriented environment composed of frameworks, tools and servers (daemons). It is very close to the Cocoa frameworks from Apple and tries to maintain compatibility with Cocoa wherever it is desired and possible. The roots of the GNUstep application interface are same as the roots of Cocoa: NeXT and OpenStep.
Relation to WindowMaker

WindowMaker is a window manager, not a workspace manager nor a file browser. It is nothing more. WindowMaker and GNUstep share almost no libraries or functionality. WindowMaker is written in C, and GNUstep is written in Objective-C. WindowMaker does make certain things easier for GNUstep, but it is not GNUstep itself, although it is a part of the project.
The Importance of this difference

In many people's minds the environment and the frameworks used to create programs merges. WindowMaker can be used with Qt or GNOME apps, just as easily as it can be used with GNUstep. Similarly GNUstep applications can run using KDE (Qt's preferred Window Manager) or Enlightenment (GNOME's preferred Window Manager). This misconception can make one loose sight of the powerful programming frameworks underneath.
Please note

WindowMaker is an excellent window manager and none of the preceeding should be construed to imply otherwise.

BlackBox

 Blackbox

Blackbox which is a X11 implementation has both Blackbox and Fluxbox  in one place.

It has panel on the right side. 

 

Fluxbox

Fluxbox

Fluxbox(1) is a window manager. As such it provides configurable window decorations, a root menu to launch applications and a toolbar that shows the current workspace name, a set of application names and the current time. There is also a workspace menu to add or remove workspaces.

Fluxbox can iconify (or minimize) windows to the toolbar One click and they reappear. A double-click on the titlebar of the window will shade it; i.e. the window will disappear, and only the titlebar will remain visible.

There are also two areas commonly used by small applets: the ‘slit’ can be used to dock small applications; e.g. most of the “bbtools” and “Window Maker dockapps” can use the slit, and the ‘systray’ which lives in the toolbar supports standard system tray icons provided by some applications.

Fluxbox uses its own graphics class to render its images on the fly. By using style files, you can determine in great detail how your desktop looks. fluxbox styles are compatible with those of Blackbox 0.65 or earlier versions, so users migrating can still use their current favourite themes.

Most of the default keyboard and mouse button actions mentioned in this manual can be changed and configured in the ‘keys’ file. This powerful configuration file can also be used to automate almost any action you may want to perform, from launching applications to moving windows around the screen. See fluxbox-keys(5) for details.

Fluxbox can also remember certain attributes of individual application windows and restore these settings the next time the window opens. See the fluxbox-apps(5) for details.

Fluxbox supports the majority of the Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH) specification, as well as numerous other Window Hinting standards. This allows all compliant window managers to provide a common interface to standard features used by applications and desktop utilities.

Open Box Desktop

 Open Box Desktop

Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.

The *box visual style is well known for its minimalistic appearance. Openbox uses the *box visual style, while providing a greater number of options for theme developers than previous *box implementations. The theme documentation describes the full range of options found in Openbox themes.

Openbox lets you bring the latest applications outside of a full desktop environment. Most modern applications have been written with GNOME and KDE in mind. With support for the latest freedesktop.org standards, as well as careful adherence to previous standards, Openbox provides an environment where applications work the way they were designed to.

Openbox is a highly configurable window manager. It allows you to change almost every aspect of how you interact with your desktop and invent completely new ways to use and control it. It can be like a video game for controlling windows. But Openbox can also be kept extremely simple, as it is in the default setup, meaning that it can suit just about anybody. Openbox gives you control without making you do everything.

Openbox makes desktop environments better. By running Openbox inside the GNOME or K desktop environments, you can combine their ease and functionality with the power of Openbox. Your desktop becomes cleaner and faster, and is in your control, when you use Openbox.Take a look at the getting started guide and change how you manage your desktop.

It has support for Gnome and KDE.

Use Synaptic Package Manager to Install it.

It is not an application but a desktop environment with many apllications bound to it.

More importantly it consumes (dark background) very little RAM and by right clicking the mouse, I can get to my favourite AbiWord and I am editing this piece using AbiWord.

Importantly, it has Falkon Browser which has integrated with our WiFi automatically ( I think WiFi is bundled into the browser).

I have this bundle insalled in Ubuntu 24.04.

Thank YOU to Everybody!

JWM is the lightest but has no Internet or Office (AbiWord) packages and I think the developers should include those to applications.

I am going to Flushbox next.

Blackbox is X11 Desktop.

Text Editors in Linux and Word Processors

Text Editors in Linux and Word Processors

Even though, I promote AbiWord and quite comfortable with it, publishing my books at Amazon books, there are lot of them, from Tiny to Majestic.

Tiniest one with b graphical interface is Bluefish which I loved during during my initiation (borrowing a word from Italian Mafia) but I settled down with small to mid level Abiword. I published my first book of 100 pages using AbiWord and never looked back since (it started as a command line utility with only 28 MBs when running) it has the best page layout features coming, from command line background.

 

1. Let me dispense with LateX which nobody uses now which had the best page layout.

 

2. LyX is a derivative from LateX text Editor and very difficult to handle unless you are a Wizard in Coding and Command line (which I have forgotten) and it has no page layout features. It has added lot of new features including graphic features of lining up to a chapter in a big book. 

I believe it has Macros!

When I finish with my books I will revisit LyX.

3. This is for Python Guys!

Bluefish has both Python 2 and 3.

It has PHP for porting to another location.

It is pretty good and I have used it when learning nuts and bolts of Linux but I never tried Python.

I consider using Python for developing a few applications (may be tiny text editor) Android Studio.

I have found Ubuntu having a Audio Studio!

That is a trend today.

I have done with the Bluefish, Abiword and LyX let me handle the others.

It may not be comprehensive.

4. First that come to my mind, is XOurnal ++.

It was developed by a American kid under 18.

It has another edition where one can use hand written stuff  (I have not used it since my hand writing and graphic skills are nothing to boast about).

5. LibreOffice the bulkiest coming from France and I begin to hate it.

OpenOffice, its predecessor, I used it for my Thesis writing, which was light weight and fantastic. I used it to remove Microsoft Macros from my thesis prepared in Office 98 (could not get my thesis in to the University Standard).

5. Focus Writer is another

6. OpenOffice, I think is proprietary.