The graphical interfaces of Linux

After the advent of windowing systems, first popularized by the Mackintosh computers in the 1980's, all other computer systems developed similar graphical user interfaces. In the beginning the differences were significant, but most seem to converge now to very similar layouts. Linux, different from Windows 9and Mackintosh) does not have only one layout but many. This means that the system that manages the graphical interface is separate from the operating system. The user can choose from a series of window managers the one that best fulfills his/her needs. Another advantage is that the Linux systems can upgrade their window managers to newer versions without having to install a new version of Linux.

In this section we will introduce KDE, a very popular Linux windows manager that is probably the most similar to the Windows XP's interface. In this section we will use Windows XP as a base reference for describing KDE. However, we expect Macintosh users to be able to follow the description as well.