Fluxbox is a lightweight window manager for the X Windowing System.Fluxbox 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 which allows you to add or remove workspaces. The `slit' can be used to dock small applications, e.g. most of the bbtools can use . A double-click on the titlebar of the window will shade it, i.e. the window will disappear leaving only the titlebar visible. Fluxbox styles are compatible with those of Blackbox 0.65 or earlier versions, . ,
fluxbox screenshot



KDE

GNOME

GNOME is a popular, multi-platform desktop environment for your computer. GNOME's focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and Accessibility support. GNOME is Free and Open Source Software and providesall of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, such as email, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia, and games. Furthermore, GNOME provides a flexible and powerful platform for software developers, both on the desktop and in mobile applications.The GNOME Desktop is released every six months and GNOME 2.22 is the latest version of GNOME.

Software are coming in "packages" in linux. In Linux , there are several kinds of packages, and each distribution has its own preferred package format.

The standard Linux package format (according to the Linux Standard Base) is RPM. RPM is a packaging system originally developed by Red Hat and widely used in the Linux community. Distributions using it include Fedora, Mandriva, Red Hat (naturally), and SUSE. An RPM package file normally will be named something like program-version-other.rpm

Another popular package format is DEB, the Debian software package. Debian packages and the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) were the first to introduce several advanced features that are now common, such as automatic dependency resolution and signed packages. Debian packages are used by Debian GNU/Linux , and distributions based on it, including Ubuntu, Knoppix, and Mepis. A Debian package file normally will be named something like program-version-other.deb

Quick Reference

Remember, you will need to become SuperUser to install software.

Debian, Ubuntu: APT

There is a broad array of tools for working with DEB packages, but the one you will commonly use is apt-get, arguably the easiest of Linux package management tools. apt-get is so easy because it not only keeps track of what packages are installed, but also what other packages are available. It will even download them from the Internet for you (if properly configured).

[root]# apt-get install packagename

To remove software is just as easy.

[root]# apt-get remove packagename

Although the repositories that contain installable packages might live on the Internet or on a disc somewhere, APT keeps a local database on your hard drive with a list of all available packages and where to find them. This database needs to be explicitly updated. To update the APT database:

[root]# apt-get update

To update your package database, and to upgrade all the packages that have patches or security updates to install. The following command will do this all at once.

[root]# apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

For a more indepth apt-get tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with APT and dpkg.

Fedora, Red Hat: yum

yum does for RPM packages roughly what apt-get does for Debian packages. Like apt-get, yum can download and install packages from a configured repository.

[root]# yum install packagename

To remove software is just as easy.

[root]# yum remove packagename

yum does not keep a local copy of your package database by default, so normally there is no need to update it. To install all available security patches and bug fixes, use this command:

[root]# yum update

You can also explicitly update a single package with:

[root]# yum update packagename

For a more indepth yum tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with yum and rpm.

Mandriva: urpm

Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake and Connectiva) has a toolset similar to APT called urpmi. To install software:

[root]# urpmi packagename

To remove software:

[root]# urpme packagename

To update the local package database:

[root]# urpmi.update -a

To install security updates and bug fixes:

[root]# urpmi --auto-select

For a more indepth yum tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with urpm.

Tar Balls

No, this is not a naughty term! A tar ball is a (usually compressed) archive of files, similar to a Zip file on Windows or a Sit on the Mac. Tar balls come in files that end in .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, or something along these lines. To unpack a tar ball, use this command.

[user]$ tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz

The parameters are x to extract files, z to filter through gzip for decompression (leave this off if the file does not have a gz extension), v for verbose mode so you can tell what's going on, f indicating there will be a filename to follow. You may want to create an alias called "untar" that feeds in these options if you have a hard time remembering command line options as I do.

This command will not install the software, it will only extract the archived files. It is your job then to find the README file or INSTALL file and read its instructions for installation. If the archive contains binaries there will usually be a setup script (often called install.sh) that you must execute as SuperUser.

Very often, software delivered in tar balls is not in executable form, but in source code, which must first be compiled before it can be installed. For more details on this, see Installing Software from Source Code.