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Chapter 8 8
Session Managers, Desktop
Environments, and Window
Managers
8.1 X and Desktop Environments
When the X Window System was first released, no desktop environment was available.
Even when Motif was released in 1989, it did not include a desktop environment;
although a few proprietary desktops were available, none of them gained
widespread acceptance.
If you look back at X screen dumps taken in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you will
find that in most cases there were no panel bars, application launching menus, or
window lists. Instead, applications were launched from file-management windows
containing icons or from root menus invoked by clicking on the root (background)
window, and icons representing minimized programs sat directly on the root window
or in icon boxes. This was possible because most of the window managers
evolved (out of necessity) basic root-menu and icon-box capabilities.
By the mid-1990s, system vendors recognized the need for a desktop manager, and in
1995, the Open Software Foundation (OSF) introduced the Motif-based Common
Desktop Environment (CDE), based upon HP??™s Vue environment.
Today the dominant desktop environments are GNOME and KDE.
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